Are opioids really making that much money?
Most of what is prescribed are generics and they're not expensive.
Most of what is prescribed are generics and they're not expensive.
> Court filings show the [Sackler] family took in $10 billion in profits from OxyContin...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/health/opioids-pharmacy-c...
> From 2006 through 2014, the Rite Aid in Painesville, Ohio, a town with a population of 19,524, sold over 4.2 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone. The national retailer offered bonuses to stores with the highest productivity.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/judge-says-pharmacies-o...
> Roughly 80 million prescription painkillers were dispensed in Trumbull County alone between 2012 and 2016 — equivalent to 400 for every resident. In Lake County, some 61 million pills were distributed during that period.
It's clearly quite profitable.
And it’s not even accounting for those premium tier subscriptions that come with trendy new formulations not yet acknowledged as dangerous.
FYI, Spotify has only ever lost money:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...
Incidentally, the huge difference between street price and wholesale price is the reason why diversion is a problem. If the drugs were sold at $10/pill but with instant rebates to the recipients of $9.90 then they'd probably be kept very strictly controlled, even without the DEA involved...