I'm not from the US, but I think there is enough people already, all pointing out in the same direction:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/opioid-lobbying-...
Over the past decade, pharmaceutical companies have spent more than $880 million on lobbying and political contributions at the state and federal level. That’s more than eight times what the gun lobby and more than 200 times what those advocating for stricter prescribing rules spent over the same time period. The makers of prescription painkillers have adopted a 50-state strategy that includes hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to help kill or weaken measures aimed at stemming the tide of prescription opioids
[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/1719/pharmaceutical-industry...
I'm not parent, but I'm sure this is intentional as the consequences of such a scenario are easy to extrapolate...
> The US market is where pharmaceutical companies expect to recoup their R&D costs.
They could do this in two ways - having high margins on their drugs, and/or selling a lot of drugs. It is no surprise to see pharma lobbying against tight laws on prescriptions, or anything that gets in the way of the 'market' getting access to their products. Not coincidentally, the opioid crises means they get to sell more drugs.
On the other hand in my home country we had some big pharmaceutical companies (compared to the size of the country) exporting drugs world wide. I thought that for example the pain killers I knew as I child would be used everywhere on the world. When I moved to Germany I realized that I was wrong. There are tons of different drugs for the same purpose with the same ingredients sold by different producers. Therefore only becasue you in the US buy some expensive - and highly addictive - pain killers you are not automatically financing the R&D of pain killers sold in Europe by Europian companies to the Europian people.
Let me be a smart ass and improve your calculation:
45% of drug revenue is generated by 5% of earth's population:
45% / 5% = 9
but you do not compare this number to 1 but to
55% of drug revenue is generated by 95% of earth's population:
55% / 95% = 0.58
So a US citizen spends 9 / 0.58 = 15.54 more on drugs as a non US citizen. Even if price difference is a valid argument, this number is still too high.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/01/15/drug-companies-do...
Just give them the opiates for free in supervised facilities and let them have otherwise normal, albeit constipated lives. It works and costs very little.
What people don't think about is the extra societal costs associated with drug addition: thefts/violent crimes, prison costs, unproductive time from seeking the next high, etc. Cutting out the middleman would solve a great deal of these issues, and save the taxpayer money too.
It seems the moral issue of giving "free drugs" to addicts is just too much to bear, unfortunately.
By cutting out the time and money needed to "feed the beast" while providing professional help, they can break this cycle and move towards bettering themselves when they don't have the nagging of addiction voicing itself at every turn.
Of course its not simple and perhaps there will be people who refuse to better themselves. My biggest point is that it not only will save money from going underground, but allow potentially productive members of society to have a means to break the cycle.
When I had my wisdom teeth pulled and was prescribed an entire bottle of Vicodin, when I didn't even need a single one, that wasn't a greater issue in my life. That was medical malfeasance and a just society would execute the principal architects of it.
Going off on a tangent, what my country might have a problem with, is benzos, however. They're prescribed like psychiatric vitamins.
I agree that there is a problem with over prescription of opioids, but this problem isn't solely due to a simple conspiracy of drug makers. I think that sort of rhetoric is unhelpful.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2013/...
From my reading (and I will admit I do not see the logical reasoning at all, which I think is why the case was later overturned) the judge thought that they were guilty not of failing to predict it, but of giving an inadequate message. Presumably, to me this implies some sort of laziness, or intent to not make more of an effort despite knowing better.
I will admit that I am biased being a doctor dealing with this daily, but I think that blaming this solely on the pharmaceutical companies is easier to do than looking at what is happening to our culture, expectations of pain, the way we deliver healthcare, how we grade healthcare (for example read about Press Ganey's Fifth Vital Sign).
This is not how opioid pharmacology works. Tolerance to the desired effects (analgesia) increases but so does tolerance to the problematic effects (respiratory depression).
Opioid use -- even chronic and long-term use -- is not a death sentence. The phenomenon of so many opioid-related deaths referred to as the "opioid epidemic" is an extremely recent one (compared to the timescale that humans have been using opiates for pain relief) and is a product of drug policy/enforcement, not of the inherent evil of opioids.
People have actually been trying vaccine approaches to opioid addiction for a while, but it's tricky since opioids are small molecules which inherently don't give you a lot to work with as far as antigen presentation.
Apparently there has been some promising evidence recently though. See Derek Lowe's blog below for details.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/06/26/a-h...
Along with its therapeutic cousins Cannabis and MDMA, look what else we have on the list of substances for which federal research funds are banned (Schedule I):
Yea. That doesn't necessarily sound good:
> Clinical studies of ibogaine to treat drug addiction began in the early 1990s, but concerns about cardiotoxicity led to termination of those studies. There is currently insufficient data to determine whether it is useful in treating addiction.
I'm not really sure this is some sort of miracle drug that the establishment just doesn't want us to know about.
The thing is, it doesn't matter if you're "sure" or not, because while it's on Schedule I there can be no federal funds used for research into whatever degree it may be a "miracle" (nirvana fallacy) drug. I hope we can agree that therapeutic substances have been derived from harmful ones.
I'm not sure there is an ethical way to find out.
The opioid crisis seems like a symptom of our social problems (hopelessness in the rust belt, unscrupulous over-prescribing of pain meds) that has fatal consequences.
Short of a drug that provided a permanent cure for opioid addiction itself, I'm not sure what sort of solutions can be pursued by scientific/tech research, as opposed to addressing the root social causes.
I'm interested in what ideas others might have though.