No jail time for execs. No recall of dangerous drugs. No real loss to their pocketbooks.
So what will Big Pharma pay for the opioid epidemic?
Pennies.
Did you expect anything less? It looks like the drug companies will get away with their biggest killing spree yet…
Or will they?
In fact, there’s proof that the trillion-dollar pain industry is on its deathbed and doesn’t even know it. More on that in a second.
But first, a quick rundown on their historic scam. For three decades the giant drug conglomerates turned America into one giant “pill mill.” They churned out 1 billion painkillers each year.1 They bribed thousands of doctors to push their poison.2 And their friends in the FDA gave them a license to kill.3
How rich did Big Pharma get from it all? Get this: $12 TRILLION since 2000.4
And we pay the price for this cash cow: 700,000 Americans alone are projected to die from opioids in the next decade.5 That will bring the total death toll to 1.4 million since 1997.6 That’s more American deaths than every war we’ve fought in COMBINED. More than every mass shooting in history. More than all of the traffic deaths in history. And so on.
This doesn’t even begin to count the trillions in economic damage,7 27 million addicts,8 or the untold numbers of shattered communities, loved ones, and lives.
So what exactly will Big Pharma pay for this mountain of bodies?
The New York Times reports that the court settlement will likely be $75 billion.9
Possibly less.
It’s a drop in the death bucket. It’s $1 out of every $100 Big Pharma makes every year.
And worst of all…
This will let the big pain pill machine grind on, sucking more lives into it, and minting dollars out the other side.
The battle may be lost, but the war isn’t over.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about a fascinating 2,000-year-old pain-relief rediscovery out of Jerusalem that has the pain relief industry scrambling to cover up.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/more-than-100-billion-pain-pills-saturated-the-nation-over-nine-years/2020/01/14/fde320ba-db13-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html
2. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/is-your-doctor-getting-paid-to-prescribe-painkillers-for-you
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/health/FDA-opioids.html
4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/100-million-americans-have-chronic-pain/
5. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-02-01/opioid-death-toll-could-top-700k-over-a-decade-study-
6. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html
7. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/full-cost-opioid-crisis-2-5-trillion-four-years/
8. https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/information-sheet/en/
9. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/health/national-opioid-settlement.html