Justice Department Sues Walmart, Saying it Fueled the Nation's Opioid Crisis (nytimes.com) 129
The Justice Department sued Walmart on Tuesday for what it said was the company's role in fueling the nation's opioid crisis by allowing its network of pharmacies to fill millions of prescriptions for opioids, thousands of which authorities said were suspicious. From a report: The 160-page civil complaint alleges that the retail giant knew that its system for detecting illegitimate prescriptions was inadequate and details numerous instances when Walmart's own employees warned federal authorities and company managers about possibly suspicious prescriptions. "As one of the largest pharmacy chains and wholesale drug distributors in the country, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids," Jeffrey Bossert Clark, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil division, said in a statement. "Instead, for years, it did the opposite -- filling thousands of invalid prescriptions at its pharmacies and failing to report suspicious orders of opioids and other drugs placed by those pharmacies." In one instance, an employee identified only by his or her initials admitted to the Drug Enforcement Administration to filling prescriptions that the employee knew were not legitimate, the lawsuit alleges.
While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out what to (Score:1)
Re:While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out what (Score:4, Insightful)
Walmart has one of the best logistics and customer tracking systems in the world. Adding an app that would flag suspicious transactions would be trivial, they already do it for other items. The only reason not to is they knew how much money they were making so deliberately let it go. That makes them an accessory along with the quacks that wrote the prescriptions. Personally I think the company should get the death penalty, it would be the best thing to happen to the US economy in decades.
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Adding an app that would flag suspicious transactions would be trivial
Who determines what's suspicious? What do you do when a prescription is flagged as suspicious? You have a very sick patient at the counter who has been prescribed an opiod medicine by a medical doctor, but some algorithm flags the prescription as suspicious. Are you not going to give the medication? What if the person dies and sues you?
What the "justice" department effictively is demanding is that a Walmart employee second-guesses someones medical degree. Is that really what you want?
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Are you not going to give the medication?
That's what the pharmacist is supposed to do, at least until they review the customer's prescription history and whether there is a medical waiver (that's not expired) from the physician saying that normal limits can be exceeded. The customer can wait a couple of minutes while the pharmacist does their job. If the review (which shouldn't take more than a minute or two) shows that the algorithm was was wrong they can hand it over. If to many exceptions are being granted then it's the job of the writer of
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That's what the pharmacist is supposed to do, at least until they review the customer's prescription history and whether there is a medical waiver (that's not expired) from the physician saying that normal limits can be exceeded. The customer can wait a couple of minutes while the pharmacist does their job. If the review (which shouldn't take more than a minute or two) shows that the algorithm was was wrong they can hand it over. If to many exceptions are being granted then it's the job of the writer of the algorithm to figure out what's going wrong, either the algorithm needs to be adjusted, the pharmacists aren't doing their job correctly, or a combination. It ain't rocket surgery.
Except that's not what's going to happen. The pharmacist will just refuse to fill the prescription if it's flagged. They have no incentive not to just kick out all the flagged ones, and every incentive to do so. I've already seen this when I had a script that was 2 months old. The pharmacist said if it's still a problem you won't have any problem getting the doctor to re-write it. While that's true, I don't really like taking time off work and paying my doctor $100.
Re:While I'd like them to figure out what (Score:3)
You want fewer drooling morons graduating from medical school? End affirmative action.
It would make more sense to decertify diploma mills for rich brats like St. Georges University of Grenada and legacy admissions to good schools.
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Even if the prescription is fake, refusing to fill it doesn't solve anything.
The patient is still addicted. If they can't get a fix from Walmart, they will turn to illegal heroin on the street. That puts money into the pockets of gangs and pushers selling to kids.
Walmart didn't cause the opioid addiction epidemic, and they were never in a position to "fix" it either.
The Feds ignored this problem for years. Now the winds have shifted, and they are on a witchhunt to blame everyone but themselves.
Re: While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out wha (Score:2)
Good points but I don't think the number of opiod users willing to find heroine is a 1 to 1 ratio. This could of reduced abuse and ideally cut someone off before significant addiction occured.
This being said, I don't know first hand about opiod addiction, so maybe I underestimate the potebtial of addiction.
I ultimately agree that addicts need a more thorough system to remove dependency. We especially as a culture need more psychological resources spent to understand addictive behavior and addictive person
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I heard that the reason liquor stores were considered "essential services" in many cities and state that were closing places down to conain the COVID-19 epidemic was because they feared alcoholics might turn to drinking cleaning solutions or something to feed their addiction. I don't know how much of this is just rumor but it has a ring of truth to it.
Also, with people going nuts for anything antiseptic things like rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer was running out leading people to consider liquor as a su
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You have no idea how bad opiate withdraw is, people will literately suck dicks to get a fix.
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Who determines what's suspicious? What do you do when a prescription is flagged as suspicious? [...] What the "justice" department effictively is demanding is that a Walmart employee second-guesses someones medical degree. Is that really what you want?
You don't just have some high school kid working behind the counter handing out prescription drugs. There is a reason pharmacists are on staff. They have medical degrees too, and are more specialized in their knowledge of drugs than the doctors who wrote the prescription.
I am not sure if Walmart should be held accountable, but that is what we have the courts for. They will have access to more information about the case and more relevant case law then you're going to find in this news article.
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What if the person dies and sues you?
Dead people can't sue anyone. I know what you mean, I'm just being a pedantic asshole.
What the "justice" department effictively is demanding is that a Walmart employee second-guesses someones medical degree. Is that really what you want?
I don't want the government interfering with my medical care. I want opiates available over the counter. Or at least able to be prescribed by a pharmacist, because a pharmacist is just as much of a "doctor" as any general practicing physician. Every pharmacist in the USA that is allowed to dispense opiates has a PharmD, Doctorate of Pharmacy. The people working for this doctor will have a bachelor degree or perhaps a
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Dead people can't sue anyone. I know what you mean, I'm just being a pedantic asshole.
Nah, you're 100% right. Silly mistake on my part and you're well within your rights to point that out.
Every pharmacist in the USA that is allowed to dispense opiates has a PharmD, Doctorate of Pharmacy.
That, I did not know. I Googled it for a bit and learned about the difference between the pharmacist with just a bachelor's and the one with the 6 year degree. Good to know.
/.
But that said, I still believe, like you, that the government should keep its busy nose out of our care. Your entire post is 100% agreeable. A rare thing, here on
Re: While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out wha (Score:2)
"Who determines what's suspicious? What do you do when a prescription is flagged as suspicious? You have a very sick patient at the counter who has been prescribed an opiod medicine by a medical doctor, but some algorithm flags the prescription as suspicious."
- Everyone in the process of tasked with making sure dangerous chemicals don't make it into improper hands. Doctor, pharmacist, all of them. It's literally part of their JOB DESCRIPTION.
- There's a process at any pharmacy about what to do with suspicio
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"Personally I think the company should get the death penalty, it would be the best thing to happen to the US economy in decades."
Good one, Bezos!
Re: While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out wha (Score:2)
I imagine a scenario like The Handmaid's Tale where the stores barely have any goods. I personally have a certain amount of schadenfreude, that seeing America take the path of completely blacklisting Chinese goods would be funny to see. The problem is it could potentially lead to genuine global arm conflict, which isn't a game worth playing.
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This is exactly why a lot of processes have institutionally independent people sign off on a given thing. In an engineering development scenario, the developers write plans that say how they will work. They are expected to follow those plans, and generate evidence that someone can look at to confirm that the process is followed. Quality or Process or Product Assurance comes along and does spot checks of that evidence, and is empowered to investigate deeper if they notice something fishy. The QA/PA person
Re: While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out wha (Score:2)
Opioids by nature aren't that easy to OD on. What happens is people buying street drugs don't know what they're buying and therefore the correct dose and end up poisoned by extra strength heroin or lately various other opioids. It's an example of a lack of regulation due to the black market. Lately there is also a big problem with people using alone instead of somewhere safe so no nexslon.
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Sue them both to Hell and let Satan sort 'em out.
Re:While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out what (Score:4, Insightful)
I was just talking to a friend of mine, we both do medical research. It's amazing how everyone is falling over themselves to blame everyone except the people who's job it is to control access to prescription drugs.
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I was just talking to a friend of mine, we both do medical research. It's amazing how everyone is falling over themselves to blame everyone except the people who's job it is to control access to prescription drugs.
I am not sure who you are referring to here. There is no one agency which is responsible for this. Doctors are responsible, pharmacists are responsible, drug companies are responsible, state health agencies are responsible, the CDC is responsible, and the list goes on and on. Many of the groups I listed here are being blamed and taken to court over this. And government agencies are adjusting their practices, such as setting up Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. Who do you think is getting off scot free?
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As far as prescription medication is concerned, physicians are where the buck stops. They are specifically entrusted as the gatekeepers for drugs that are deemed too dangerous for either pharmacists or Joe Random to hand out on their own prerogative. A few of the most egregious prescribers were caught and punished, but a crisis is not made by a handful of super prescribers.
There are lots of excuses. Perdue said it wasn't addictive. Never mind that the box itself said it was (as required by the FDA). Drug co
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Sounds like an excellent reason for the medical associations to step up and do their job. Prescribing should be subject to standard operating procedures. If you feel you need to deviate from those procedures it requires review, assessment and sign off from multiple qualified people, and gets logged and reviewed.
The opioid crisis is worst in the US, but it's also a thing in places where there's less or no profit motive for over prescription. It's not limited to opioids either. From antibiotics to antidepress
Re:While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out what (Score:4, Interesting)
Walmart isnâ(TM)t responsible for the lackluster system we have in place today. The AMA is. Their members are the ones benefiting from writing prescriptions for kickbacks.
The AMA is so corrupt it should be criminal. As it is, they send unmarked envelopes to doctors with a false overdue notice for dues even if you've never joined the AMA. Their hope (and it probably works) is that a doctor's secretary will just pay it by reflex. Then you have the criminal enterprise that is the ABMS (https://www.abms.org/) which outright extorts doctors and for some damned reason is supported by the US government. And if you haven't guessed, I say this as a doctor.
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Walmart isnâ(TM)t responsible for the lackluster system we have in place today. The AMA is. Their members are the ones benefiting from writing prescriptions for kickbacks.
The AMA is so corrupt it should be criminal. As it is, they send unmarked envelopes to doctors with a false overdue notice for dues even if you've never joined the AMA. Their hope (and it probably works) is that a doctor's secretary will just pay it by reflex. Then you have the criminal enterprise that is the ABMS (https://www.abms.org/) which outright extorts doctors and for some damned reason is supported by the US government. And if you haven't guessed, I say this as a doctor.
The problem is that people think the AMA is a medical association when it is actually a trade union.
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The AMA is not in any way responsible for the prescriptions that doctors write or that pharmacies fill. You might as well claim that the NRA is responsible for all the murders in the US that are committed with firearms.
I'm betting a lot of the same people are claiming that very thing.
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I just assumed the AC was being sarcastic.
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A professional association is absolutely responsible for the behaviour of their members. That's what they're for.
The NRA is not a professional association, and firearm ownership is not a profession.
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I don't know the details of the structure in the US, but Wikipedia says the AMA is the largest medical association in the US, exerts considerable influence on the practice of medicine, and that it has a bunch of member organizations. I couldn't find a list of those. Anyway, I expect the OP meant the AMA in general terms. Since medicine is a profession, whatever medical association is in charge of regulating physicians and the practice of medicine in a particular area is absolutely responsible for the practi
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Other than that, most doctors don't give a fig about it. We are licensed by our state medical boards (another rats' nest). They hold no actual authority, as the General Medical Council in the UK does, to license us. They're basically a trade organization, more akin to the National Association of Basket-Weavers than, say, the IEEE or any licensing body. And
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Okay, so according to some Googling it appears that in the US the state medical boards are the actual professional associations. I don't think it's really useful to a Slashdot discussion to quibble over which organization is the real one and which is the poser, although interesting info, and you would of course want to get the correct one(s) to disband for gross negligence.
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You might as well claim a drug pusher isn't responsible for the overdoses in the US that are committed with the drugs he/she pushed. I see no difference between the NRA and drug pushers.
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You might as well claim a drug pusher isn't responsible for the overdoses in the US that are committed with the drugs he/she pushed. I see no difference between the NRA and drug pushers.
You are correct. The drug pusher is not responsible. The drug user is. The pusher may offer the drugs, but only the user can accept. No acceptance, no problem.
This is like when people complain Amazon is too big and Bezos has too much money, then pick up their phone and order the latest Chinese-made product from Amazon because they have Prime.
Re: While Iâ(TM)d like them to figure out wha (Score:2)
Actually the pusher often misrepresents the drugs they are selling, leading to poisoning.
If someone is selling defective firearms and someone dies, well the seller should be responsible. Due to firearms being somewhat regulated, you can usually trust that that weapon you bought is not going to blow up, unlike illegal drugs.
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The NRA doesn't sell guns, they would be more like the American Pharmacists Association or maybe the National Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers.
Stasi (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the Stasification of the US - pretty much everything can be a crime, and if it is not a crime then "tax evasion" and "civil forfeiture" will do.
The populace is expected to snitch on one another. The government is outsourcing its functions and shifting the cost. Banks have the responsibility for "money laundering", social media is responsible for fact-checking and correct thinking, realtors for social justice, ISPs for piracy, and now Walmart for drugs.
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THis has NOTHING to do with stasi similarities. Walmart and others did this in the open, and need to be held liable for it.
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Well, there are several comments [slashdot.org] on this article from seemingly different accounts that have all randomly started babbling in defense of tax evasion and money laundering.
Or, maybe it isn't so random.
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Ah, that's roman_mir, who's back after a long hiatus. Fanatical Libertardian, he once tried to convince me that to eliminate pollution every body of water should have an owner who can sue if contaminates are dumped in it. In that case the body of water under discussion was Lake Erie. Good luck getting anything like logic or rationality from that quarter.
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The biggest flaw with communism is that everything becomes a "tragedy of the commons": When nobody owns something, nothing gets fixed.
The traditional answer to this was a monarchy: A leader who owned, via a trust document, all other excludible assets. (ie. They can't own air or the ocean.) As royalty was separated from government, the government became the trustee. (Aside: The UK monarchy still owns all swans!) Thus, the government must respond to contaminates being dumped in common assets.
Lake
Re: Stasi (Score:2)
Actually it is owned by Ontario, not Canada. Inland waters are Provincial
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No, they're requiring companies to **NOT BREAK THE FUCKING LAW**. That's the responsibility of every citizen in every civilized country, and if we're going to pretend that "Corporations are people, my friend" then they can damn well follow the same laws that I have to. I realize that may be a bridge too far for Libertarians to understand, but they don't seem to be big fans of civilization anyway.
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No, they're requiring companies to **NOT BREAK THE FUCKING LAW**. That's the responsibility of every citizen in every civilized country, and if we're going to pretend that "Corporations are people, my friend" then they can damn well follow the same laws that I have to. I realize that may be a bridge too far for Libertarians to understand, but they don't seem to be big fans of civilization anyway.
Is that really what they are saying? It looks more like they want Walmart to prevent other people from breaking the law.
Re: Stasi (Score:2)
That's part of the law when you're a pharmacist. You are the enforcer of those laws. That's your whole job.
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No, a pharmacist's job is to distribute medication, applying their training to assemble the correct dosage, ensure instructions for correct use are provided, check for interactions, etc. From the pharmacist's perspective, drug laws are just an inconvenience we've put in the way of getting the correct drugs to patients out of some puritanical frustration over people being happy.
Re: Stasi (Score:2)
And yet you are required to refuse dispensing those drugs if you suspect something illegal is going on. So you are still responsible.
Re: Stasi (Score:2)
We're talking about Wal Mart here. They absolutely had suspicions that they were systemically covering up. Wal Mart's entire business is based on data crunching their sales. It's inconceivable they didn't know exactly what was going on. And that makes them responsible.
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No, it's illegal for pharmacies, including those in Wally World, to dispense excess opiates. Yeah, it would be good to go after the quacks that write the prescriptions too, but it's going to be a much higher priority to go after the gazillion-dollar supplier than a thousand street dealers. Definitely more bang for the buck.
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Actually, that can be legally bypassed if the doctor confirms medical necessity. Basically, just extra paperwork. As someone that has to take Ozzy Osborne levels of drugs to function, it's the difference between life and death for me. But, I get it filled at a family pharmacy that knows both the doctor and me so no one sicks the feds on us because they know I actually need it. If they put a hard limit on what my doctor can prescribe, he would either have to get very creative or I'm dead.
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that can be legally bypassed if the doctor confirms medical necessity.
Good point, and it's the job of the pharmacist to verify that the waiver is in place and not expired. Of course if Walmart wants to pay pharmacists as little as possible then they're not going to get the quality of pharmacist who will actually do their job correctly.
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Well then, all those pot smokers can rot in jail. And the guy who got life can reflect on his choices. And I shall be sure to notify the authorities when you change lanes without indicating. I have the evidence on my dashcam.
May I suggest you read "Three Felonies a Day" by Harvey Silverglate.
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> NOT BREAK THE FUCKING LAW
If they did, this case could be in criminal court. Somebody just wants some of Walmart's money.
Maybe the US Army shouldn't be guarding the poppy fields in Afghanistan.
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But then what would Citibank do about the loss of money laundering revenue?
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Then change the laws to something rational, don't just pretend that Walmart doesn't have to follow it. They get away with far too much already.
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I have ZERO DOUBT I will be burying my cousin in the next 2 years as he is now chasing those pathetic Tylenol 2s with Jack Black just so he can walk to the toilet without pissing himself and its fucking nanny staters LIKE YOU that will be helping put him in the ground and I only wish I could force you to dig the hole.
That horrible. I can absolutely relate to what they are going through. Vodka was my choice before I finally got my back fixed. It's not good to be mixing alcohol with those, but what other option do they have? What other choice has our government given these people? This country can give pedophiles "gender transition" surgery and be put in a women prison, but God forbid someone with chronic pain be able to have their pain be properly managed with inexpensive drugs that actually work.
I disagree with a lot
Re: Stasi (Score:2)
"This country can give pedophiles "gender transition" surgery and be put in a women prison"
Ick, dude! How did you come up with such a hateful, specific example?
How many people on the entire planet fit this description? 2, maybe 3?
Setiously, you need to clean the MAGA out of your ears. I know it's difficult scince Trump's mouth flooded the country for the past 4 years, but still.
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Ick, dude! How did you come up with such a hateful, specific example?
Since when has it been wrong to hate rapists and pedophiles? Why are you in favor of them?
How many people on the entire planet fit this description? 2, maybe 3?
1 is too many, but since you asked, I did a quick check... How about at least 60 trans sex offenders in England alone. Source: https://fairplayforwomen.com/t... [fairplayforwomen.com]
How many have to fit the description before it's a problem to you?
Setiously, you need to clean the MAGA out of your ears. I know it's difficult scince Trump's mouth flooded the country for the past 4 years, but still.
Sure, pretend the 8 years of Obama never happened... and 4 years of the mainstream media peddling the Russian Collusion... and over half a year of Democrat Brownshirts burning cities and beatin
also need to hold them accountable for (Score:2)
Basically, if they are selling the product in America, and it is defective or illegal, they need to be held liable.
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Many of the precursor chemicals that go into illegal drugs are manufactured in China. Until China gets a significant drug problem of their own, this will not stop. There's no holding those Chinese companies liable, China won't allow it.
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However, the real issue here, is that we did this to OURSELVES. Walmart, Target, etc all sold LEGAL drugs but allowed MD to push it and even allowed fake scripts to be served.
INSANE.
Legitimate (Score:3)
Since the article is paywalled, how are they calculating the legitimacy of a prescription? I don't think a pharmacy should be expected to verify the "legitimacy" of any prescription beyond verifying that a licensed, practicing doctor wrote it for the person trying to fill it. Which is what they do, without exception, for a controlled substance, as required by law.
Something tells me they're expecting the pharmacies to do something much more stringent and investigative, along the lines of "Is your back pain really that bad"?
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No, there are limits on quantities per prescription, and the duration for a prescription. Since most people always go to the same pharmacy chain it's trivial to track prescriptions filled to see if they exceed the limits. They already track every customer's transactions in every other possible way they can, this app could be written by a summer intern in an afternoon just plugging into the existing DB hooks. There's only one reason for not doing it, they didn't want to give up the extra income.
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You must not be aware of the DEA database that keeps tracks of all an individual's controlled substance prescriptions. It doesn't matter which pharmacy you use, because they're all required by law to use the same federal database. Old-school "doctor shopping" was stopped dead by the database at least a decade ago. If a pharmacy fails to use it, they get tried in a criminal court. This is a civil suit.
You claim they didn't want to "give up the income", when in fact they took a much stricter stance than legal
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The doctor's office. Remember, prescriptions are no longer an almost-illegible scrawl on a note pad that can be carried from place to place, they're faxed, texted or emailed in from the doctor's office. They're not going to honor your request to send it to half a dozen pharmacies.
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Pharmacists actually are supposed to act as a check on physicians where prescription drugs are concerned. That role gets a bit iffy when there are a whole bunch of pharmacies around though. On the other hand, if you get a prescription for a large amount of opioids with a bunch of refills, or a lot of opioid prescriptions from a particular physician, it would be worth verifying.
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If one quack is writing a bunch of prescriptions and sending them to multiple pharmacies then that's fairly difficult to track. Fortunately most of the quacks doing this are not too smart, just lazy and greedy.
Re: Legitimate (Score:2)
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There are a lot of cases where a pharmacist might be able to flag suspect prescriptions more reliably than a doctor. Some patients (try to) get multiple prescriptions from different doctors. Or they might have a suspicious number of prescriptions for different family members for the same drugs. Or the doctor may just be a scumbag who writes a lot of opioid prescriptions.
(Several of my family members are doctors. One of them worked with another doctor who was stealing drugs from the hospital, got caught,
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Or dentists. My dentist voluntarily gave up his privilege to prescribe opiates after having experienced "patients" shopping for them.
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A whistle blower at McKesson (the company that supplies drugs to Walmart) publicly outed that they were helping their pharmacies alter records to hide illegal opioid sales years before the feds took action. That's not doing their job, that's breaking the fucking law.
Punishment (Score:2)
We did this same thing with VW for their massive polluting of the air, by requiring them to fund EV charging network. Of course, they use it to compete against Tesla and others.
BUT, Walmart could set up their own network of drug rehab, and then offer the service
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Of course, VW actively cheated. The allegation here is that Walmart didn't catch OTHER PEOPLE cheating.
It's like prosecuting the sample lady at the grocery store for not noticing when a shoplifter stopped for his 3rd free sample on the way out.
Re:Punishment (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not what TFA says.
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Burn the heretic!
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I find it useful [apnews.com]
to sometimes read other articles. [justice.gov]
Civil vs Criminal (Score:3)
The fact that this is a civil lawsuit instead of a criminal one says more than anything in the article. The government had weak laws in place to prevent the opioid crisis. Now instead of trying to fix the problem with better legislation they are trying to pin the blame are the large pharmacies because they didn't go above and beyond what the law stipulated.
I suppose next week they will blame me for the deficit since I only pay the minimum amount of tax I'm required to.
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The laws have been strengthened greatly in the last few years. They've been strengthened as much as they can, short of completely banning these substances outside of hospitals. I guess you can call it "fixed".
Each prescription filled goes into a DEA database that all pharmacies are required to consult, which stopped "doctor shopping" and "pharmacy shopping" dead in its tracks. There's no way for an individual to obtain more than the specified monthly dosages. Some of the lower-categorized opiates like hydro
Re: Civil vs Criminal (Score:3)
Each month needs a new prescription with a corresponding examination at a doctor's office.
Sounds like a great racket right there, instead of getting a discount on a 3 month scrip for crushed discs and a checkup once a year, I get to pay to see the Doc for 5 minutes (yep, still crushed, haven't magically fixed themselves) 12 times, and fork out $20 for $0.25 of pills so I can sleep at night. Oh, and when the Company switches Insurance companies I have SO much fun filling out the paperwork all over again, and having my coverage interrupted at random so they can "verify" the prescription again.
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It wouldn't surprise me if the doctors got that as some sort of consolation prize to make up for all the extra scrutiny they're coming under. The shadier ones charge way more than $20 and often don't take insurance.
The end result is still a lesser availability of pharmaceutical opioids, so from that perspective it's a "success".
Not just Walmart (Score:2)
I'm sure this is an industry problem that goes far beyond Wally World
And the opoid crisis goes well beyond the simple minded thinking regarding this subject, which includes attacking the drug and locking up the users, instead of finding out WHY so many are turning to drugs in the first place.
Funny that I have never once in my life heard a politician flat out admit that our world is a soul crushing, emotionally draining, killer stress inducing piece of shit.
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I'm sure this is an industry problem that goes far beyond Wally World
And the opoid crisis goes well beyond the simple minded thinking regarding this subject, which includes attacking the drug and locking up the users, instead of finding out WHY so many are turning to drugs in the first place.
Funny that I have never once in my life heard a politician flat out admit that our world is a soul crushing, emotionally draining, killer stress inducing piece of shit.
Oh it is. Then there are the unintended side-effects of this. Patients are kept in the hospital for days and days for "pain control" because doctors have to screw around with insane laws and regulations about pain meds. I had to keep a girl in the hospital for two weeks because of that, because the state medical board decided that they would bend the knee to the politicians and be dicks to anyone legitimately prescribing opiates. Consider how much that cost.
Re:Not just Walmart (Score:4, Interesting)
And she can be counted as lucky. They marked me as a drug addict, even though the 17! drug tests they did on me all came out negative and I had proof of a valid prescription and my doctor verified it personally. Instead of following the evidence, they made up their mind when I came in the door and that was it. I was "drug addict gaming the system" in their mind instead of actually needing treatment, even though I had all the signs of a stroke. The only reason I haven't sued the hospital for maleficent malpractice is I made a full recovery and my pain and suffering is my word against theirs. Lawyer said I'd likely win and get nothing except a bill.
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Dead Wrong (Score:2)
I don't think the Justice Department could possibly be more wrong on this entire subject. Addiction to anything is almost always a symptom of a larger problem. But it's easier to waive the red herring of drugs than to deal with real societal issues.
The Boeing Problem (Score:2)
We’ve recently learned of a series of utterly ludicrous mistakes that were made during the certification of the 737Max aircraft. Among the many more technical problems, a key issue was ‘regulatory capture’ - the situation that came about because the FAA permitted aircraft
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the FAA actually created a situation of dangerous regulatory capture
Actually Congress did that, and it was deliberate. Newt Gingrich's moment of brilliance was when he realized that he didn't need to eliminate organizations like the FAA, FDA or EPA, all they had to do was to make their enforcement budgets a line item and squeeze it to death. Once upon a time the FAA had competent people on staff to review things like whether the 737 MAX needed to be recertified or could contract with competent people to do so. Now they have no choice but to accept Boeing's word because a
Really? (Score:2)
So your gonna try and make a Patsy out of Wal-Mart after let the Sacklers just walk away with the fortune after paying fines equivalent to light handslaps relative to the profit and harm they've caused? Good luck with that shit. When the courts and enforcement are going out of their way to look this inept, we REALLY aught to look closer at what kind of shit they're pulling right before and right after we looked in the first place. This stinks to the stars, and aught to piss off the entire country. Just ano
Remove the corrupting money motive and legalize. (Score:3)
The problem with opiates is the profit motive. Legalize them fully (as we do booze which is far more deadly but doesn't trigger delicious moral panic then treat the junkies as required.
When booze was made legal the second time it was understood freedom of choice means freedom to kill yourself and that you do not belong to anyone else. This is VERY hard for some people to accept but we don't have Bi-Lo and Food Lion doing drive-bys over Coors Light.
Opiates are NECESSARY because pain is often not effectively treatable without them, life is pain, and pain gets worse before you die. I've had to use opiates since 2012 as I'm doomed thanks to so much spinal damage there is no cure, just periodic nerve ablation and surgery. There are many more in the same boat and as the US ages chronic pain will only get worse. Knowing I can't afford to have them not work I take as directed (and use cannabis for flareups and ordinary nausea etc, I rather dislike opiates but nothing else will do the job. This is pretty standard but addiction gets more press.
Recreational opiates are NOT necessary but inevitable not thanks to Walmart but to the illegal imports of Fentanyl etc. They can only be interdicted just enough to make the illegal market richly profitable but never enough to halt it. The idea laws can halt public demand is absurd, Puritanical and foolish.
Let humans have their opiates and treat the relatively few who become addicts.
A major problem caused by limiting opiate access is crime. I rather doubt anyone wants to be a lot lizard for drug money but when what is cheap to produce suffers from artificial scarcity and high cost they've little choice in the matter (and drug treatment options in the US aren't great).
Like the very long era of history when opiates were legal, many people without medical care options (let's not pretend the US will fix this in our lifetimes as that's delusional or dishonest) used them to survive and progress marched on. Puritans objected and got us the Prohibitionist model which enriches organized crime, enriches LEO empires, and is used to justify the surveillance state.
The cost of fighting the drug bugbear as a war is arguably far worse than managing freedom of choice though others freedom to do what one considers degenerate utterly enrages Puritans on the Right and (p)uritans on the Left.
Either way people will continue to die on the way to dying of one thing or another. Choices which mitigate social damage and defund legal and illegal drug merchants by making opiates safely affordable would be radical but worth exploring. The US methods are a complete failure.
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