By Dale Boyd
Osoyoos Times
The victims of the opioid crisis are all around us whether you have personal experience or not.
Overdose deaths, homelessness and those suffering out in the open are opinion-generators to say the least.
Those entrenched in their beliefs of righteousness still stick to claims that the people who choose to do drugs, choose to be homeless, that they deserve what they get. Maybe it is out of a significant lack of empathy for fellow humans, or just a dose of ignorance to help them sleep at night.
Either way it is the equivalent of yelling at lifetime smoker to pick themselves up off the ground and cure their own cancer, and throwing in an “I told you so.” Not helpful, and not necessary.
These problems, plaguing Penticton, the South Okanagan and the Okanagan Nation Alliance, they have an origin point. I have heard, anecdotally mind you, many sad stories while sitting in the Penticton Courthouse that start with “I was prescribed painkillers.”
The first opioid-producer to go to trial at the state level in the U.S., Johnson & Johnson (and acquired subsidiary Janssen), were this week ordered to pay $572.1 million in damages by an Oklahoma judge.
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Judge Thad Balkman was well aware of what his decision meant in the case creatively framed by the state’s attorneys as a public nuisance for which the company needs to pay.
The decision garnered much less than the billions sought by state’s attorney, but it is easy to presume Balkman’s intention was to open the door for jurisdictions from around the U.S., if not the world, by setting a ballpark figure with the precedent.
The judgment raised some important eyebrows on our side of the border. A class-action civil claim was filed by the B.C. Government in 2018 along similar lines to hold the makers of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma Inc., among other pharmaceutical companies, accountable for allegedly marketing opioids as less addictive than other pain drugs. The suit also alleges the drugs were overprescribed by pharmacies. The allegations have not been proven in a court of law, but B.C.’s Attorney General, David Eby, told the Globe and Mail on Monday he was pleased with Balkman’s findings.
He pointed out the province’s lawsuit, so far untested in court, holds companies accountable for the “financial burdens they have placed on our health care system,” Eby said.
Pharma company defenders said the judiciary can’t legislate its way out of the opioid crisis, and they are right. However, accountability is an important step. And the scope of the drug epidemic is vast, allegedly propped up by false marketing of addictive painkiller qualities in the late ‘90s and beyond.
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If you have not read up on the Sackler Family, the founders of the OxyContin makers, it is important to note they are worth about $13 billion — not including any ownership of Purdue, which made about $3 billion worldwide in 2017.
There is common question which even politicians have asked out loud in our valley: why do “responsible” people have to pay for expensive medication, while needles and treatment are given out for free to those suffering from addiction? The real, unselfish and systemic question to ask is why is your medication so expensive? Why are pharmaceutical companies profiting so handily while the average person struggles.
To the Liberal government’s credit, they are attempting to bring $13 billion in savings over 10 years by setting price caps on what companies can charge for prescription medication, surely to be a widely discussed issue in the upcoming election. Whomever you vote for, taking pharmaceutical companies to task for their hand in the crisis is a long time coming.
Being unable to help yourself is addiction by definition. Self-inflicted or not, addictions often need outside help to be overcome and treated. And for the cold and calculated penny pinchers among us, it is more expensive on the health care system to have someone continually in and out of hospitals with substance abuse issues than to have them treated and return to some semblance of a functioning life.
This recent ruling in Oklahoma is hopefully a lead Canada can take on, no matter which government comes to power because, for many, it is already too late.
