"I don't think most doctors/pharmacist really bought into the idea there was zero chance of abuse."APPENDIX TO WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS Naked Lunch : Burroughs quote in The British Journal of Addiction, Vol 53, No.2
"LETTER FROM A MASTER ADDICT TO DANGEROUS DRUGS (August 3rd, 1956. Venice (p. 189, Paladin 1992 ed.):"
"I have Taken morphine for acute pain. Any opiate that effectively relieves pain to an equal degree relieves withdrawal symptoms. The conclusion is obvious: Any opiate that relieves pain is habit forming, and the more effectively it relieves pain the more habit forming it is. ..."
William Burroughs.
There is no argument about this and there hasn't been any for about at least a century or more. This is medicine/pharmacy 101 stuff.
All those who thought/think otherwise are fools and should not be anywhere near such decision-making processes. Those qualified in pharmacy or medicine and involved in the pushing and peddling of oxycontin had to know EXACTLY what they were doing - that's to say the serious damage they were doing to patients' health not to mention the deaths - the 65-year old Burroughs quote being the scientific orodoxy in hundreds of medical and pharmacopeia texts.
Burroughs, an opiate addict for 15 years, is one of the most articulate drug users to have written on the matter of opiate addiction and the fact that his descriptions of the addictiveness of opioids has been widely published for decades in the popular press meant that not just the professions knew the details intimately but also that everyone did.
Nothing that Purdue or the Shacklers can say or do can absolve them from their responsibility for the deaths of over 800,000 people - a truly staggering number.
The original settlement was a fucking farce of the first order. Why the Shacklers weren't stripped of everything they own then locked up and the key thrown away simply amazes me. What's wrong with US justice that it can fail so terribly? Here, justice is nothing other than a joke - a joke run and told by the accused.
Moreover, what went wrong with the medical profession and the regulators? Why was the FDA AWOL on this matter for decades - a matter with very well known and long-honed parameters?
After all, the matter of narcotics and addiction is the subject of international treaties. We all know the issues and yet it still happened.
The Purdue, Sacklers and oxycontin matter is one of the greatest failures of public health of all time: a tragedy of unprecedented proportions - and as far as I can determine, no one - except the dead - have paid any penalty whatsoever.