Maybe This Explains Everything

Here's the result of an interesting investigation by the West Virginia Sunday Gazette-Mail, which I read about at Daily Kos:

"In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers..."

780 million.  In case you are wondering, West Virginia has a population of approximately 1,850,000 people.  One town, with under 400 people, received 9 million pills.

"For more than a decade, the same distributors disregarded rules to report suspicious orders for controlled substances in West Virginia to the state Board of Pharmacy, the Gazette-Mail found. And the board failed to enforce the same regulations that were on the books since 2001, while giving spotless inspection reviews to small-town pharmacies in the southern counties that ordered more pills than could possibly be taken by people who really needed medicine for pain."

And this is just one State. Just a sign of the kind of regulation that the whole nation is about to see under Donald Trump.

Well, that's one way to get them to vote to stab themselves in the back- just keep them so doped up that they can't tell truth from lies, and then stoke their out of control emotions, telling them over and over again that it's black people and Hispanics and Muslims that are causing their problems, rather than the fact that they are a pack of junkies.  Given the fact that white people are particularly resistant to blaming anything on themselves, this strategy has worked just fine.

Comments

Magpie said…
When I lived in Japan I had an illness that required medication, so off to the doctor I went. He gave me 5 different kinds medicine, all of which I was to take, and 1 of which was to stop the other 4 from disrupting my stomach.
Doctors are of very high social status there, so he didn't take my counter-interrogation very well, but all my common sense and Australian experience told me this amount of medication is wrong.

So via some connections I managed to wrangle an appointment with a German doctor for a second opinion. He dismissed 3 of the 5 medications immediately, asked me if I ever had asthma to which I replied 'no' and then he dismissed another leaving me with 1. 'Just take this' he said, which fixed me in a few days.

Doctors in Japan can have a wholly inappropriate commercial relationship with the pharmaceutical companies. Takeda Pharmaceutical for instance is the biggest in Asia and now it has a French CEO it will aim to become a global giant. There are moves within Japan to REGULATE on this problem but given that the government there is most right-wing in recent history I would not hold my breath.

It's hard to do objective comparatives... but it appears to me that the US situation, where Big Pharma is probably much bigger, is symptomatic of a similar disease of inappropriate relationships.

Or what would be called 'corruption' in less batshit crazy political environment.

'improved health outcomes' cannot have overlap with 'expanding market share'

And as an aside it can't be a good thing that the most armed society in the world is drugged to the eyeballs.
joseph said…
Since Trump is addicted to synthetic testosterone, this makes perfect sense.
Gaspard said…
A John Denver lyric calls West Virginia "almost heaven."

What was he taking? With the exception of Cleveland, are there worse places in the area?
Marc said…
On top of what you've posted here, I just ran across this:

http://ow.ly/cWWq307jtE3

I wonder how tough the Trump administration will be on the Pharma companies, since this will end on his watch - or will it?
Marc said…
...and one more linky:

http://ow.ly/Q3Bu307jvFy

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