Don't forget the insurance companies that refuse to pay their part.

m sorry sir , maybe what you say is true but reps would not tell ANYONE in the lobby what they are specifically detailing let alone a chorus of three to the patients. Its not the patients business to know and it would be stupid for ALL THREE to fuck up. Where were you, in a pill mill?

The problem with the public is that you dont see the people in your community who need these pills to function daily and are treated now like fucking criminals. My next door neighbor has had 4 neck surgeries and has such severe pain that the pills give him a moderate quality of life. It isn't anyone's fault! Not his, not the doc. Maybe the asshole who crashed into him. There are people that cannot have any more surgery and need these pills to survive bur because their name pops up on their dr and pharmacists computer screen their balls are busted and treated like criminals

IV Motrin and Tylenol  is all they get unless they are in substantial pain

Might as well put that shit in the garbage for all the good it does people like me.

There's a whole bunch of people in this thread who I'm pretty sure have never had to take many pain meds, who just KNOW all about how this is all the docs and drug companies fault.  You know what, the drug companies are in business to make money, docs are too, and I'm sure that sometimes greed makes them do things they shouldn't.  Wow, big surprise because I mean that hasn't been going on for hundreds of years or anything.

However, Navydoc is laying down a whole lot of truth.  I can understand if you've lost someone to opioid abuse that it's an emotional thing for you.  Kind of like someone who's lost someone to gun violence becoming a champion for gun control.  The fact is though that if you take them as prescribed you're not going to die.  I've taken nearly every opioid pain med there is for varying injuries, and I can tell you that since I wasn't taking more than I was prescribed, and I wasn't interested in getting high, I didn't get high.  No euphoria, no high, no "Wow I gotta have me some more of that!".  Now I've also had IV pain meds and hell yeah they were fun (in the split second before they put me to sleep).  You know what, I've never had an overwhelming urge to go out on the street and try to chase that.  That's the thing, if you don't want to get high there's no need.  Opioid pain meds just worked for me, and allowed me to live a pain free life and do the things I wanted to do without hurting.  Now I just have to hurt.  It pisses me off when my nursing instructors and docs I've worked with start up with the "We can't reduce pain to zero, we want to get it to a reasonable level."  BS.  Other than extreme cases and grievous injury or disease, zero pain is achievable with the right tool.  There is also a great difference in dependence and addiction.  A cancer patient on morphine or dilaudid is dependent.  Of course they are.  They may be physically addicted too, but they still aren't an "addict".  If you're an addict you're going to do whatever you have to do to chase and catch the high.  Punishing someone who has legitimate needs for pain medication and making them live in pain is just dumb and dare I say it abhorrent.  But of course, when the govt gets involved common sense goes out the window.

One more thing...when I was in Corpsman school way back in another life, one of the first things we were taught is that pain is subjective and one person handles pain different than another person.  Maybe you're pain threshold is higher than mine, but that doesn't make my pain any less real.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner.  Some people get it after all.

I bet they were greedily rubbing their hands together and also twisting the ends of their handlebar mustaches...

What bullshit. There is no opioid epidemic in this country. It's just another manufactured scheme for people to bitch about.

Yes. Fuck everybody's personal responsibility according to some. Johnson & Johnson made those druggies Dr shop and fake the need for painkillers just like AR-15 manufacturers force psychos to murder people.

The opioids are mind controlling drug addicts no more than food mind controls a fat person, the slot machine controls the casino junky, or alcohol does an alcoholic. Some people are weak willed and have addictive personalities. Most people do not take opioids and instantly become addicted and abuse them. J&J produce a product that has been abused by people, and that aside, quite frankly I don't care what they do with their bodies.

Thanks for coming out of sabbatical to warn me of the subsequent unavailability of aspirin.

The way I read that is that IF a doctor prescribed the drug, the risk of addiction is 2.6% less than if the drug was obtained illegally.

Which is sort of a useless statistic outside of the fact that (if true), doctors proscribing drugs doesn't really change addiction rates in a meaningful way.

Sauce for this copypasta?  Or is this the new nutvoal rant?

Correct, you want to see who the problem it, look at the 'pain' clinics.

Ding, ding, ding, nail meet hammer.

The Lawyers go for the deep pockets

In this case it is the States wanting money to fight drug abuse.  This will mainly go for heroin use as there aren’t many prescription pain meds out there anymore

This...….probably long before 1860 is the only correction I would make.

We ALL have known for centuries that opioids can be very addictive and abused.

J&J got fucked.

I am tired of society blaming businesses for the actions of individuals who abuse their products.

You are joking...…...right!!??

Who needs personal responsibility when you can sue!!
America had turned the corner folks. There is no fight to correct the country, only to preserve you and yours.

Yep

The current litigious system is based on personal responsibility and everyone attempting to prove someone else should have taken personal responsibility. What systemic changes would you institute to reward people for choosing to take the blame for their actions without government involvement?

I hope J&J wins on appeal.

When my time comes and, God forbid, I need those types of medications I don't want to have to go through a CYA session with a doc or pharmacy to get them.

So, suing someone else is taking personal responsibility for your own actions?
Are you a lawyer?

No, gun companies can name their own presidents, CEOs, CFOs, etc.

Can you read?

That's bullshit. I've been on IV fentanyl while in the hospital. They pulled the line the day I walked out and have never since craved it.

This is the same faulty thinking as holding gun Mfgs. responsible for crimes involving a gun. This will be tossed on appeal. It is a Pandora's Box.
Do we now sue beer makers for people killed by drunk drivers, the petroleum industry because some terrorist threw a gasoline bomb into a crowded theater? How about confiscating the wealth of the rich and middle class because they made money off the poor? So who sues the politician for spending our country into the poor house?

Look,  I did not say always. Every person is different . But to deny that narcotics can cause issues with people and that they are sometimes pushed haphazardly by pharmaceutical companies is being pretty shortsighted. As I said above this is a multiple angle issue with no easy solution.

No doubt about the elderly needing to be convinced to go to the ER. There is also a substantial issue with poor informing of the elderly and they trust what they are being told is absolute. This is what I am getting at . Sorry if I was not clear. They have little to no advocates . I am positive you have seen the bag full of medications and probably 4 different narcotic bottles in the bag. Also addiction in the geriatric population is present but does not get as much light as the younger crowd. Which is also shameful

good illustration
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4146436/

I have never had a drug prescribed to me by a pharmaceutical company.

And the issue is easy to solve.  Doctors providing the best care to their patients who also have a personal responsibility in the matter.

Great illustration.  When are we suing Anheuser-Busch?

Thats a fair statement. I see the doctor as the middle man between the pharma rep and the patient.Can you see how pharma companies exerting pressure on hospitals and doctors to administer their medication could get out of hand? And that the personal responsibility of all parties is important but it starts before the doctor?

Already happened. Thats how warning labels and advertising restrictions came about

Those were both put in place by federal legislation.

Had prior lawsuits before. I had to go look

"Here's a cool new drug and how it's used."  If doctors are prescribing the drugs contrary to their approved and accepted uses because they think the rep has great cans then why is that the pharma company's fault?

If the pharma company is being deceitful in the information being given to the doctors then yes, they should be responsible.  But that's not the case as you've been told multiple times in this thread.

Support your position then.

10 years ago it was easier for doctors to prescribe opiates. What happened? One possibility is that people unable to get prescribed meds are self-medicating with street drugs, leading to more ODs.

My position is that Companies (no matter alcohol, gun or pharma) have the greatest responsibility being the originator of a product . They need to fully ensure they have done what was required and maybe even exceed in educating the distributor and end user in the effects of the product . The judge in this case was convinced that the J&J did otherwise.

J&J's headquarters is 30 minutes from my house. There are a lot of people where I live that work there. Who wants to place a bet this results in layoffs.

Nobody made people become addicted to them. Take some responsibility for your behavior. Be an adult.

Drug epidemic? America's culture is rotten to the core. No morals, no religion, no culture, no responsibility  - JUST CONSUMPTION and DO WHAT FEELS GOOD.

Not the first case where big pharma lost

Want to be pissed off?

Go read the book "Dreamland"

Deals with the Oxy/heroin crisis when Oxy was in its heyday.

Thumbnail of the story - Purdue used a letter to the editor of the AMA journal as a basis that opiod pain killers were non-addictive.  This was based off a small study of in-hospital surgical applications of narcotic pain meds.  There was never any actual follow up by the FDA about the claims Purdue made.  This was also when the short skirted drug reps would go into offices with samples and cruises and watches etc etc.  When Purdue lost and had to make a huge payout - I believe it equaled one weeks worth of profit (this was per the book and I read it last year so forgive me if I'm a little off on the numbers).

Read the book, screw big pharma and all the politicians who invest in them.

Screw the foreign run "pain management" clinics - most are nothing but legalized drug dealing.

Take responsibility for promoting a known addictive substance. Take responsibility for prescribing them. How’s that for personal responsibility?

I'm currently preparing a $1B class action lawsuit against God for creating the poppy plant.

This is right up there with the hot coffee ruling, absolutely fucking retarded.

1) I was specifically talking your point that beer labels were due to lawsuits and not the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act.

2) You have to be blind to not see how terrible this precedent is to the gun industry.  Because here's the thing, every doctor is already informed of the risks of medications by the manufacturer and the industry standard reference.  Let's look at the first two sentences of the entry in the PDR for Fentanyl:
There they are, hiding the risks from the doctors.  Those evil pharma companies.

How about the customers, surely the pharma companies are keeping them in the dark and not telling them the risks.  Surely those medication facts that are stapled to the bags of every prescription have the risks hidden in language that is incomprehensible to the average man.

3) Given the information in number 2 and your continued insistence that the pharma companies should still hold the blame I counter that no, you do not merely want them responsible for "educating the distributor and end user in the effects of the product", you in fact want them punished for the misuse and abuse of a lawfully manufactured product.  And I don't have polite words to describe what I think of gun owners that are so short sighted.

Take responsibility for making a legal product that is later illegally used.  

Take personal responsibility for legalizing known addictive substances?

Is legal the bar by which we judge personal responsibility?

Don't worry, the .gov already took care of that.

When my wife is in so much pain from an injured back that she can hardly move but the doctors just tell her to take Tylenol which does fucking nothing to help. Who the fuck is responsible?
If you are too fucking stupid to understand that an opioid can be addictive. Then you are responsible. They've had fucking warnings on the paperwork you get with your scrip for fucking ever.
Doctors are afraid to provide the pain relief people fucking need because some people are too fucking stupid to handle life without nanny holding their fucking hands.
Fuck all you motherfucking pathetic whining fucking cheese dick infected cum bubble motherfuckers that have caused this bullshit so I have to see my wife in years from pain and there's nothing I can do to help.
Fucking panzy ass scum.

Just to be clear you are saying pharma companies have zero involvement in addiction /over use to opiates?And that the addiction and or illicit use is all on the person doing it?I think drugs and alcohol are different than firearms. Firearms dont form a  dependency inside your body. I totally agree with everyone here this opens the flood gates to all kinds of legal action . I also agree the person using/misusing the drug plays a large part in the problem. But to ignore the manufacturing companies I simply can not. No hard feelings on anyone here but Im just going to keep reading from here .