The Architects of the Flood and How Sacklers and Purdue Pharma Fueled the Opioid Crisis
For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective.
They flooded the market. As a former user myself, the first Oxy I ever purchased had been prescribed to a peer of mine. A young woman. All of 19 or 20 years young. She had been taking this new medication to aid the discomfort from her menstrual cycle, her pediatrician telling her it was a “safe, non-habit forming alternative to traditional pain management.”
This was due to a revolutionary “time-release” feature, one designed to very slowly release the powerful chemical (just one molecule removed from pharmaceutical grade heroin, for the record), so that with just one dose a day, an individual might expect an entire day’s worth of relief from their ailments, with no risk of “getting high” and manifesting a growing proclivity or tolerance for more.
It was all bullshit, of course. Her doctor was just repeating what the drug rep had told him. Oh, and that revolutionary time-release feature? If one were to just add water or saliva to the little tablet for 30-45 seconds, it ceased to be, and what was left waiting was a potent & instantaneous euphoria of one of the most powerful opioid therapies to ever damn this country.
The story of the Sackler family & Purdue Pharmaceuticals is not just a tale of corporate greed, it is a literal blueprint for how a single entity can engineer a national crisis of catastrophic proportions, flooding the market with their exciting new product, profit from the wreckage that comes from creating an entire generation who got hooked (many of them long dead in the ground now), and then game the American Justice System which, if we’re being real, is designed to protect such malfeasance across countless mega-money-making-markets in this country.
In 1996, the rollout of OxyContin. The Flood. Under the orders of Dick Sackler & his cronies, Purdue Pharma launched a marketing campaign for the ages. They were selling a pill coated in a revolutionary time-release cloak of lies.
Sales representatives were trained to convince doctors that OxyContin was less addictive than other opioids due to its "delayed absorption" mechanism, blah, blah, blah, often hiring beautiful exotic dancers to meet with doctors to get them on board with selling their new product.
Doctors who hit a certain quota of prescriptions for patients in pain were rewarded with first-class airline tickets to exotic destinations, and whatever else they might’ve received during the rep’s elevator pitch in the back office.
Seriously. They flooded the market. And, as we all know now, the “delayed absorption/time-release” feature of their product was not, is not, and never would be supported by actual clinical evidence.
By funding"pain management" advocacy groups, Purdue shifted the medical culture, turning a drug once reserved for end-of-life care into a standard treatment for back pain and severe injuries. Oh, and sometimes menstrual cramps for 19-year-old kids.
One of the most sinister features of this manufactured flood, one that left any & all competitors in the dust of the crushed up tablets, was that Dick saturated the market with highly addictive opioids, got hundreds of thousands (conservative estimate) of American patients hooked, made off with all the profits, and then the family looked for ways to profit from the resulting dependency after the fact.
They got ‘em on the front-end & on the back. Wanna know how evil free-market, for-profit healthcare can be? Through secret control of other pharma companies, the Sacklers poised themselves to profit from the "cure", buying patents for replacement therapy medications, designed to mitigate opioid dependence for long-term users, making another incredible dollar amount once again from the very epidemic they created in the first place. Nice, eh?
A closed loop: they sold the poison, then sold the antidote, monetizing the entire life cycle of a patient's addiction. Most people on opioid replacement therapy will be on it for their entire lifetime.
When the medical community finally began to pull back on prescriptions, following countless armed robberies of your local CVS & overdose deaths, then predicating a new generation of heroin users, much cheaper, same bliss, those who had been hooked were abandoned in a void of perpetual agony. Then, enter Fentanyl, stage right.
Rural and poorer urban communities were hit the hardest. But OxyContin smoothly wormed its way into mainstream America, in all of its safe suburban enclaves, and created death & destruction on a scale that’s hard to even fathom. Stolen Lives, I call them. Most of the OxyContin casualties were young people. I often wonder what they might’ve become if only.
For years, the American public has waited for true justice like Dick Sackler being slapped in criminal handcuffs. But the Sackler family has remained immune from criminal prosecution. While Purdue Pharma itself has pleaded guilty to federal felonies, including criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States, the family remains free to walk the streets to this very day.
The Sacklers used Purdue’s alleged bankruptcy to seek cover. It worked. This legal tactic was designed to grant the family global immunity from future civil lawsuits in exchange for a multi-billion-dollar settlement. Sounds like a lotta dough, right?
To the Sacklers? It’s pocket change. For the families of those lost to the crisis, the message from the legal system is clear: if you are wealthy enough to manufacture a flood on par with Noah’s, the punishment is merely a write-off. A business expense, and the justice system? It’s just another marketplace where the accountability of the wealthy elites can be negotiated away, no matter how many citizens they killed.
Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling
After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is something that is worth more than any dollar amount.
