As for this company, maybe they are guilty, I don't know. If they are, shame on them!!
My uncle eventually died of bone cancer (metastatic). His last few months were awful. They were less-awful, because he had a fentanyl patch, that we replace every 24 hours.
Please be thoughtful, that's all I'm asking.
Also, nobody is arguing these opiods don't help the people who need them. The atrocity here is that doctors were bribed to prescribe them to patients who didn't need them at all.
The opiod epidemic is hitting people in their prime. It's the leading cause of death for 15-65 year olds, and it dwarfs any other cause for people in their prime.
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_o...
(for reference, 90% of "unintentional poisonings" are opioid/opiate related, and it's data from 2015. By some measures, the increase in 2016 was an additional 10,000 ODs)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/05/upshot/opioid...
Taken straight from your PDF link, (emphasis mine) "the increasing overuse of prescription opioid painkillers, contributing to a national drug overdose epidemic and rising drug poisoning deaths"
Look at pages 153, 154 and 155. Drug poisoning deaths per 100,000 resident population (age adjusted) 1999: 6.1, 2015: 16.3
Drug poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesics (other than heroin) per 100,000 resident population 1999: 1.4, 2015: 7.0
Drug poisoning deaths involving heroin per 100,000 resident population 1999: 0.7, 2015: 4.1
Far more people die annually of alcohol related illnesses, than do opoid overdoses. This is the "crisis" is not a crisis at all. In fact, if you review the CDC's numbers, the rate of increase in opoid related deaths and the total number, relative to other more significant causes of death, are unremarkable. [link] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
By the numbers, we should be tripling and quadrupling the amount of money for mental health treatment to reduce suicide and alcohol dependency.
Please, before you vote down or troll me, review the numbers yourself. The numbers speak for themselves [link]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#019