[rosser]

Please remember that Purdue were the ones who marketed Oxycontin on the premise of one dose for 12-hour pain relief.

When they learned doctors were prescribing it for eight hours, they tried to "re-train" them to use the "proper" (read: their) dosing recommendation, because there were cheaper drugs with six of eight hour doses.

Sure, the doctors made the prescriptions, but you, and I, and everyone who thinks honestly about it for two and a half seconds realizes that no matter what the recommendation is, enough people who are in bad enough pain to be prescribed oxy will take it when they need it, recommendation be damned, that to have issued that recommendation in the first place was an act of bad faith.

They marketed the drug on a lie in order to get doctors to prescribe it, which fueled — if not created — an epidemic, which has killed tens of thousands of people. Their hands are not clean, here.

[bilbo0s]

Actually, this makes me think we should be going after doctors too.

[DebtDeflation]

We should be. We should also be going after the distributors who were shipping millions of pills a year to small towns with a population of 6000. This is not an either/or situation, there is plenty of blame to go around.

[buildzr]

> that recommendation in the first place was an act of bad faith.

This seems a bit of a stretch to me.

The doctors prescribed it, even given readily available research, the FDA approved it, knowing full well this was a risk. Those are the guilty parties here. Purdue filled their role just fine, they just happened to be making an opiate and so they're getting chased for it now because China is dumping fentanyl. Pretty ridiculous really.

[simonh]

According to the congressional report:

“Purdue Pharma used front organizations and sponsored research to deceive the World Health Organization and corrupt global public health policies”

If that is true and public policy was corruptly manipulated , how can you claim that this is all ok because it was allowed by public policy?