[skellera]

Are you one of the lawyers?

None of that would’ve happened if they didn’t start the flood of opiates to begin with. It wasn’t a marginally increased issue, they flooded the market with it. People with minor pain were getting massive bottles of OxyContin and selling or using it. This led to pill mills and crooked doctors. You had normal people getting hooked on high dosages. These are not the people who were using opioids before that. Pills made it seem safer. Most users don’t start with heroin, they start with pills because of exactly that. “A doctor prescribed it, must be okay.”

This is some insane logic to absolve them of responsibility. I say this as someone who also saw the problem firsthand. Was regulation handled badly? Sure but there’s no way you can say they didn’t start the problem.

[cstejerean]

Not only that, some of the problem with addiction were directly caused by the dosage guidelines for oxycontin. They really wanted it to be a 12h drug, but it really isn't and it wears off after about 8 hours. Rather than admitting this and giving a smaller dosage more frequently they doubled down by using a larger dose and trying to keep with the 12h schedule.

This combination or larger dose followed by mild withdrawal then results in a higher likelihood to become addicted to opioids. So not only they marketed it heavily and got more people on opioids than necessary, they did it in a way that maximizes the likelihood of addiction.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

[dguest]

A bartender mocked my brother for getting Aspirin for his broken arm.

"man you got nothin', you should get some oxy for that!"

I'd been living outside the US and this in my first few hours back on US soil. A few hours later my friend (working in criminal defense) explained how opiates accounted for roughly 1/3rd of his income (other sources: drunk driving and domestic abuse). They all followed the same trajectory: minor condition -> prescribed oxy -> illegally obtained oxy -> heroin when the money ran out.

This wasn't normal. It didn't happen anywhere else in the world at the time, or at least not where I was living.