Chicago takes 5 big drug companies to court over killer med

‘Serial killer’ in a bottle goes on trial

It was home to Capone and Dillinger.

By the mid 1800s the city had more gambling, violence and criminals than any other big metropolis of the day.

So when Chicago — the city of Chicago — says that this is a hands-down case of lying, cheating and stealing, you know that something’s really up.

Because when it comes to corruption and thievery, it looks like Al Capone has finally met his match.

It looks like Chicago Mayor Rham Emanuel is trying to play a modern-day Eliot Ness.

Only he’s not knocking on speakeasy doors saying “open up, we’ve got a warrant.” Instead, he’s knocking on Big Pharma’s door with a lawsuit.

A lawsuit saying that five big drug companies better “step up and start taking responsibility” over a dangerous drug that leads to overdoses, addiction and death.

Emanuel is talking about a problem of “epidemic” proportions. About a kind of drug that is killing over 40 people every single day.

Some of the common names of these drugs are OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin and Percodan — all opioid-type painkillers.

And because of Big Pharma’s lies and deceit, these drugs aren’t being used as intended.

They were meant to be used to ease short-term pain from trauma and surgery. Or as a last resort in treating the pain of cancer patients. Not for long periods of time for arthritis, headaches, lower-back pain or painful injuries.

The Chicago lawsuit says that five pharmaceutical giants, including Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma, knew perfectly well that no studies had been done to see what happens when people use these drugs for over three months.

Three months, seriously? People take Vicodin and Percocet for years — if they can ever get off them at all.

But despite everything they didn’t know, the drug makers went full-steam ahead with a “deceptive marketing campaign.” One targeting your doctor, the media and people like you and me.

They downplayed the risks, set up “front groups” to provide information to “evade” the law and used bogus “research” that was “misleading.”

The lawsuit also tells how Big Pharma “funded,” assisted and encouraged doctors who were considered “key opinion leaders” to misrepresent opioid drugs to their colleagues.

And it all worked better than a Dillinger bank heist.

Opioids have delivered blockbuster sales. They are now prescribed more often than drugs for high blood pressure, cholesterol and anxiety. They pulled in $8 billion dollars in sales — and that was just for 2012!

But the most tragic victims of this deception are our veterans returning home from duty.

VA hospitals are giving out these pills like candy. Prescriptions for narcotics have increased at VA facilities by over 250 percent.

Because of that veterans are dying from accidental overdoses at a rate that’s 33 percent higher than civilians.

One was Afghanistan war vet Scott McDonald.

McDonald was taking 8 kinds of these addictive pain medications when he died in 2012 from being “overmedicated.”

His widow Heather, said that he “served honorably and with pride and dignity — not to come home and die on the couch.”

And vets like McDonald were a special target for these drug makers.

One of the front groups that received the most money from industry — over $10 million — was called the “American Pain Foundation.”

The APA launched a special campaign to promote opioid use for vets when they got home. And considering how many servicemen and women are now addicted to these meds, it was obviously a very successful campaign.

Sources:
“Drug companies didn’t want you to see these allegations” David Armstrong, November 14, 2014, Bloomberg Businessweek, businessweek.com