Over half a million people in the U.S. and Canada have died from opioid overdoses, and a new study estimates 1.2 million more could die by 2029 if drastic solutions aren’t enacted by the government to reform and regulate industries that administer and
facilitate opioid use.
Stanford University established the Standford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis in response to the soaring opioid-related death rates in the U.S. and Canada over the past 25 years. In a new analysis,
the commission identified a series of problem areas that governments could act on, from reforming drug regulations, establishing stronger systems for substance use disorders, fostering healthier environments for substance use prevention and encouraging
innovation within biomedical research for pain relievers.
The commission argues that the North America opioid crisis began when “insufficient regulation of the pharmaceutical and health-care industries enabled a profit-driven quadrupling
of opioid prescribing.”
That’s been made clear in recent years, as Purdue Pharma, maker of opioid OxyContin, pleaded guilty to conspiring to impede the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) which also involved facilitating unlawful prescriptions
of OxyContin.
Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson faced a similar fate, with a judge ruling the company must pay out $572 million to abate the ongoing opioid epidemic in the state of Oklahoma. Evidence presented at trial revealed that
Oklahoma doctors were targeted over 150,000 times by J&J sales representatives aggressively marketing and bombarding them with pseudoscience and misleading information that downplayed the risks of opioids.
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