AHS Views

Activists Marianne Skolek and Barbara Van Rooyan have targeted Purdue Pharma executives for their role in causing an epidemic of drug addiction in this country by promoting OxyContin as safe. Both women lost a child to OxyContin. They are also accusing the FDA of not acting fast enough or at all to put an end to the problems caused by this dangerous drug. Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, has sued the FDA over their lack of action and irresponsibility. The amount of addiction help needed in several states could cost more than the total fine Purdue paid - $635 million. When you add the cost of investigations, prescription monitoring systems and prison time for OxyContin-related crime to OxyContin addiction, the numbers are just to high to calculate.

The fact that Purdue executives were allowed to get off without any jail time is just the clever work of high-priced lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Look at it this way: In the last 15 days there have been about 50 crimes related to OxyContin reported by local newspapers across the country. In Sacramento, California, Special Agent In Charge, Gordon Taylor, says “we have seen a certain up tick in OxyContin investigations in pretty much the whole region. We typically go out with a whole squad, 10 investigators, more in some cases.” In Tazewell County, Virginia, the DEA estimates that 80 to 95% of the crime is OxyContin related.

But the crime is not isolated to those areas, it has to be happening all over the country all the time. The cost to local police, the FBI and the DEA has to be in the hundreds of millions a year. Yet Purdue pays nothing and receives money for every pill obtained legally or stolen. Why is congress spending time investigating steroid use by a hundred baseball players when the real problem is right under their nose? Drug addiction help services alone will cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars, should Purdue be fined again and made to clean up their mess?