One of the things that I’ve been spending money on for the last 25 years or so is heroin. Recently I discovered that heroin is not part of a healthy lifestyle. My dealer has been getting pretty rich from all of the money that I and other customers have been handing over. So I’m planning to sue him for selling me the heroin that I didn’t realize was bad for me.
One other tidbit: One of my part-time activities is educating children about how they shouldn’t use heroin and other narcotics.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: How do you like my lawsuit?
Okay… now how is the above-described hypothetical different from the real lawsuit by the state of Ohio against five vendors of heroin pills:
The state of Ohio sued five pharmaceutical manufacturers Wednesday, arguing the companies fraudulently marketed addictive prescription painkillers and seeking hundreds of millions of dollars to address Ohio’s opioid crisis.
Attorney General Mike DeWine said the drug manufacturers knowingly misled physicians and patients into thinking OxyContin, Percocet and other opioids were nonaddictive and safe in large quantities. Although the state has cracked down on prescribing the drugs, DeWine said, they were and are a gateway to more dangerous heroin and fentanyl, street drugs now responsible for most opioid overdoses.
So… the state regulates doctors, deciding which can and cannot practice within Ohio. The state also runs anti-opiate classes in its schools. The state decides what pills can and can’t be purchased with Medicaid (see Who funded America’s opiate epidemic? You did.). But the drug manufacturers are responsible?
Related:
- “Generations, disabled” (Washington Post), about the government paying Americans to stay home and take pills: “They were the fourth generation in this family to receive federal disability checks…”
Just because something’s “legal” at the time doesn’t mean you can’t win a lawsuit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed
I would guess there’s something sue-able, and win-able, in how they’ve sold these products.
http://theweek.com/articles/541564/how-american-opiate-epidemic-started-by-pharmaceutical-company
“Sackler was also among the first medical advertisers to foster relationships with doctors in the hopes of earning extra points for his company’s drugs, according to a 2011 exposé in Fortune. Such backscratching in the hopes of reciprocity is now the model for the whole drug marketing industry.”
i think taking heroin is bad. Very disappointed in you Phil!
The case sounds like a loser but because the US is one of the few countries in the world without a loser pays rule of cost shifting lawsuits are free options for the plaintiff, here the state of Ohio, so why not? Always a possibility that the majority of a civil jury might agree with you and award big bucks. And if you lose, well who cares because you are not on the hook for the defendant’s costs?
How is the above-described hypothetical different?
Heroin is DEA Schedule I.
The producers of OxyContin and related drugs marketed them as safer alternatives, to improve their sales. It worked; sales were awesome.
I suppose if the manufacturers had named it “Heroin” the product wouldn’t have been prescribed as often. But had they done so, they wouldn’t be facing this lawsuit.
They did include fine print warning of the risks. “Fine print” scams are ancient, thus by now, we don’t let people use fine print as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
None of that stuff is bad for you in moderation. Get some self-control
Heroin was invented and marketed as a safer form of opium.
We need to just accept that about 8% of the population gets lost to addictions and deal with the ramifications as cost effectively as possible. We clearly don’t have the guts as a society to deal with these substance abuse problems in a serious way. The only public measure that ever worked was the death penalty for possession, as applied throughout China (by Mao) and elsewhere in the east indies. Enough with the lawsuits and jailing dealers. You actually have to kill users.
From the article “In 2015, Kentucky settled with Purdue for $24 million in a lawsuit accusing the Connecticut-based company of marketing painkiller OxyContin as nonaddictive because it slowly released the dose over 12 hours. However, the pills could be crushed for an instant high. ”
Are these cases where two people doing well, bureaucrats and pharma executives, argue over which one should do really well and which should only do well?
Many things when not used as directed are dangerous. Is there some sort of test for what is too dangerous for the common user?
Off topic: Nevada apparently wants to introduce ‘Medicaid for all’. Seems like a reasonable idea on the face of it. Any downsides?
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/6/15731622/nevada-medicaid-for-all
Tom: Medicaid is still mostly a fee-for-service system that gives providers an incentive to do as many procedures as possible. Almost anything would be smarter than what we have now, so I wouldn’t throw rocks at Nevada (they have plenty of rocks already!) if they did “Medicaid for all” (people who can’t get a favorable dispensation from a welfare bureaucrat, however, would need to pay for it). I am personally in favor of “HMO membership for all” where the cost is budgeted in advance. See http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/health-care-reform
“One of the things that I’ve been spending money on for the last 25 years or so is heroin”
Interesting. Now you are on a high horse whereas before you were high on horse.