America's epidemic of pain pill addiction is a national nightmare. One report begins:
"More Americans die from overdosing on painkillers each year than from heroin and cocaine combined. In the United States, 45 people are killed by these opiate-based medications every day."
Sadly, West Virginia is the most grotesque example, with the nation's worst rate of overdose deaths. Thousands of young lives are wrecked by addiction, with many victims turning from expensive pills to cheaper street drugs. It's a curse upon families and employers. Repeated prosecution of "pill mills" and overprescribing doctors fill the news.
Health and law officials held a summit on how to save overdose victims last week at the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department. "I think it's well known to the community that we face a real crisis," U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said.
Who's to blame for this tragic trauma? Various studies accuse profit-seeking pharmaceutical manufacturers who induce physicians to prescribe - then flood markets with - vastly more pills than needed for normal pain treatment.
In 2007, Purdue Pharma and three of its executives pled guilty to criminal charges of concealing the danger of OxyContin and over-marketing it. Former Attorney General Darrell McGraw sued various manufacturers and won large settlements for West Virginia. Currently, 11 drug firms are begging the state Supreme Court to free them from McGraw suits.
Medical writer Martha Rosenberg said:
"Thanks to Big Pharma's narcotics party, more than 17,000 people are dying in the United States every year from opioid overdoses, and emergency room admissions for non-heroin opioids have leapt from 299,000 in 2001 to 885,000 in 2011. Poisonings from legal and illegal drugs now exceed car accidents in injury deaths ... Narcotic painkillers are becoming a health catastrophe."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is trying to fight this menace by requiring manufacturers to design pills that can't be crushed into powder and "snorted," or can't be dissolved and injected into veins. However, these steps will have limited effect, because 80 percent of pill addicts simply swallow them.
Losing 17,000 American lives per year is a terrible waste. It's maddening, because it's unnecessary. Worst of all, it's outrageous that pharmaceutical corporations make huge profits from the tragedy.