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by Dr. Rath Health Foundation,
The Sackler family, the wealthy owners of Purdue Pharma, will be shielded from future lawsuits related to the opioid epidemic under a plan approved by a U.S. federal appeals court.
Purdue Pharma, an American drug company, is seen by many observers as having been largely responsible for the rise of the devastating opioid drug crisis in the United States. After introducing OxyContin, a powerful opioid painkiller, in 1996, the company proceeded to market it aggressively claiming that it was supposedly less addictive, less subject to abuse, and less likely to cause narcotic side effects. Seduced by Purdue Pharma’s deceptive marketing, American doctors subsequently wrote huge numbers of prescriptions for the drug.
Tragically, between 1999 and 2020, around 263,000 Americans are believed to have lost their lives as a result of overdoses related to prescription opioid drugs. Court filings suggest members of the notorious Sackler family, who own Purdue Pharma, directed efforts to mislead doctors and patients about the dangers of OxyContin.
Now, however, in exchange for $6 billion that will apparently go towards funding treatments for addiction, the Sacklers have been given immunity from future opioid epidemic-related lawsuits. This will still reportedly leave them with a collective fortune worth billions. Not surprisingly, therefore, the outcome has left a sour taste in the mouths of many, with campaigners continuing to call for criminal charges to be brought against the family.
With America’s deadly opioid epidemic showing no sign of abating, senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently called for the U.S. Senate to hold drug companies to account. In a letter sent to senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Sanders requested a hearing focusing on “the role of pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors in precipitating and exacerbating the deadly opioid crisis that is sweeping our country.” Citing the historic hearing that took place on April 14, 1994, when seven of the largest tobacco companies testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment, Sanders stated that the time has come for Congress to hold a similar investigation that addresses the role of the pharma industry in the opioid epidemic and finds out what its leadership really knew about the addictiveness of these dangerous prescription drugs.
As Sanders points out, the opioid epidemic has not only cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, it has also cost federal, state, and local governments hundreds of billions of dollars for healthcare, law enforcement, and reduced productivity. With over 2 million people in the United States now believed to be suffering from substance use disorders related to prescription opioid pain relievers, it is estimated the crisis could now claim up to 1 million lives by 2020. In 2016 alone, statistics show over 63,000 U.S. citizens lost their lives as a result of overdosing on opioid drugs.
Addressing the opioid epidemic should only be the first step
In U.S. Congressional hearings that took place in 1994, tobacco CEOs denied under oath that they knew nicotine was addictive or that it caused harm
In the historic hearing that took place in 1994, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment demanded that tobacco CEOs tell the American people what they knew and when they knew that their products were addictive, a major health hazard, and that they had killed millions of people.
As Sanders explains, while at the time these executives denied under oath that they believed tobacco was addictive, we now know they were lying. However, the subcommittee hearing eventually led to stronger regulation of tobacco with the result that the rate of smoking in the U.S. is now at an all-time low. A $246 billion settlement was also reached for smoking treatment and prevention efforts.
Based on this model, Sanders plans to introduce legislation to hold drug companies accountable for the damage they have caused. His bill would prohibit illegal marketing and distribution practices with respect to opioids, create public accountability for drug companies and their CEOs, and require firms to reimburse the economic impact of their products. But while this would clearly be a good start, in order to fully address the extent to which the pharmaceutical ‘business with disease’ is wreaking havoc on our healthcare systems, such actions should only be the first step.
Bringing the global pharmaceutical carnage to an end
While the tobacco story provides a realistic model via which the United States and other national governments could begin to hold drug companies to account, it would be naïve for any investigation into the pharmaceutical industry to be limited to opioids alone. Ultimately, because it is not in the financial interests of drug companies either to prevent, cure or eliminate common diseases, we need to address the fact that their multibillion dollar toxic products are not intended to achieve these things.
Drug firms realize that the continued existence and expansion of diseases is a precondition for their industry’s economic growth. As such, they benefit financially when the side effects and additional diseases caused by their products result in still further medications being prescribed. Anything that jeopardizes this profit-over-life business model – especially vitamins and other effective natural health therapies that optimize cellular metabolism – is seen by the drug industry as an existential threat that must be eliminated.
To protect their business interests, pharmaceutical companies have deliberately withheld lifesaving health information about nutritional and Cellular Medicine from millions of people; discredited natural health therapies through global PR campaigns; and placed their lobbyists in key political positions in leading drug export and import nations. As an eye-opening UK governmental report on the pharmaceutical industry demonstrated in 2005, its influence has resulted in regulators utterly failing to protect the health interests of patients.
So dangerous has the pharmaceutical approach to medicine now become that it has been shown in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) to be the third leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by deaths from heart disease and cancer. Quite simply, therefore, not only must this mass carnage be brought to an end, those responsible for it have to be held legally accountable. For until such time as this happens, our noble goal of creating a system of healthcare focusing on natural root cause prevention of diseases will not be possible.
Source: https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org
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Amazing how they always seem to glance/skate by a truth of reality. Found product that causes human damage. And they put this stuff on the street for such effect. Less spray it. Is this not all the same as too the 2800+ CALS (class action law suites) same as Monsanto per. And as too how Bayer soaked up Monsanto to perform all the same slick cast of action to avoid any of the trailing law suits. Setting them all in a null and void clause to avoid facing the details of their designed fault per intent to act. ??? Mainly disrupt all balance of nature harm human populace and kill the eco system.
Be the powers of off world might be the only thing left to save this planet from these, Barbarians psychopaths and narc's. All okay for them to cause harmful acts against all humanity and get away with it.
Where in this world is a real law holding S.judge to see to know this and stop it.
Haven't seen anything erupt yet. The clown show the word of taking down the cabal. Seems to be more of the building of the cabal and the enforcement of greater chaos. Tribunals or indictment. Nothing has shown to surface of its reality. Maybe its still better to nuk the planet and start again.
hmmm now where's those clone of adam and eve. Get rid of those and restart from the gene pool you manufactured 2 million years ago and improve on it before setting it into motion of life forever. Other galaxies out there contain far better Subject that this rock of clowns.
as the beat goes on. When can we see this – change we all have been hopepornified too build on as to seeing the real change to a reality better than stupid. Nothing but shock and awe. Time to end this and close the drapes on it all. may I add Please for good manor.
Money! Money makes the World go around! The 'Chosen Few' makes profit$$s, while the rest of US suffer and DIE!
Sacklers part of the ZOG mindset: people with no loyalty to any country but only to the profit of their "superiority" culture over all others.
Old family bloodlines that have seen nations come and go. Can you blame them if they know from long observation that the masses will bleat about "freedom" and ideals but then go right back to pizza, beer, and yelling like chimps at sports games?
Unfortunately the worship of profit as highest human achievement is shared by all too many humanoids.
Time to plow the orchard under again. Galactic superwaves and solar mini-novas are just God's way of taking out the trash.
Please cite the evidence that "in 2016, 63,000 Americans lost their lives overdosing on opioid drugs.". Furthermore, please cite the evidence that these alleged overdoses have anything whatsoever to do with prescription use, as opposed to the actual cause, which is illicit street drugs and polysubstance abuse. We know that these alleged deaths are often reported as "opioid deaths" when an opioid is involved, while other contributing substances and factors are left out of the cause of death, thereby wrongly attributing the deaths to opioids. We also know that the blame for "substance use disorder" having origins in prescription drugs is wildly suspect. We know that illicit fentanyl, heroin, and other street drugs are actually to blame for most of the alleged "opioid deaths," and that the idea that a medically supervised prescription treatment leads to a wildly inappropriate use of overdose levels of street drugs is simply overstated. Humans have ALWAYS had a segment of the population that abused substances long before oxycontin was manufactured. Also, the current focus on supervised prescription pain care and limiting access to necessary pain medication instead of focus directed at the illicit drug trade which is actually the cause of most of these deaths is now causing direct harm to surgical and intractable pain patients, who are being denied access to appropriate pain care. This is a HUGE problem that must be addressed. The current round of opioid hysteria and propaganda released against these life-saving medications has resulted in major surgery patients such as joint replacements and open-heart surgery routinely being denied opioid pain relief in the hospital or after discharge, causing more harm than the claimed harm reduction sought by denying these medications because of the alleged possibility of "substance abuse disorder" arising in the future. These allegations are completely overblown. The vast majority of persons treated with opioids has a successful treatment and resumes life unaffected. And, there are many complex chronically ill patients for whom long-term, and even lifetime opioid treatment is appropriate of all other measures have failed and the opioid treatment allows them to have a level of function and quality of life higher than they would otherwise have. The bottom line is that these punitive efforts are currently centered on the wrong cohorts – prescribing doctors are now routinely being arrested by the DEA with no evidence of wrongdoing, and we are finally seeing the courts beginning to rule against the DEA. The focus of illicit drug use and attempts to reduce opioid overdose deaths by denying appropriate care to acutely or chronically sick patients is a very misguided approach to this problem, and it must be corrected now. The country is flooded with illicit fentanyl, promoted as a feel-good party drug with deadly consequences. In the vast majority of these death cases, there simply is no correlation between medically supervised prescription medicines and the use of illicit street drugs.
Hello David, there are many documentaries of the The Sackler Family & their Billion Dollar Opioid Empire (oxycontin) . it only takes a few clicks to find and watch the plentiful evidence available online…