Drug maker of opioid addiction treatment Suboxone to pay $102 million settlement
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — As California struggles to stem a tragic tide of fatal fentanyl overdoses, a global pharmaceutical company will pay more than $100 million for allegedly stifling access…
California....one need say nothing more.
They work in tandem with FL, shipping people back and forth. The jails and prisons here are just as bad, the treatment centers are slightly better... but DCF is corrupt. IIRC it cost $75k to get a consultant to pass a DCF inspection and the Joint Commission is a total farce. They have been "cracking down" on rehab fraud, if you believe what you see on Justice Department's website, but LLC dba Fictional Entity allows significant dodging of legal avenues. They find creative ways to provide kickbacks, such as buying expensive gifts in cash with receipts and going to casinos and leaving the machine unattended with large cash deposits. I know of a marketer in FL that took out a $350k PPP loan saying he was running a rehab out of his apartment. AFAIK nothing has been done to collect that money, which he likely will try to use to pay his restitution when he gets out of prison.
That is a very addicting drug as my best friends husband got 'hooked' on it. He looked like a walking zombie every time I looked at him. I don't know if he still takes it or not, but he went from a good person aka Jekyll to Hyde.
Suboxone's what they call a partial agonist. That means it binds the receptor and gives a response, but it's limited. Suboxone binds strongly enough that it blocks stronger opioids from binding, and it helps people slowly wean off of opioid addiction. There's the argument that you're replacing one addiction with another, and that's true to a point, but Suboxone's limited in its effect, and closely monitored in a treatment program (if it isn't like that, the DEA would very much like to hear about it). Suboxone's a whole hell of a lot less risky than street heroin or fentanyl. And some people are too hooked. They'll never get off the Suboxone. That's ok. This is a risk reduction program for those people, and it still helps them. Remember, if they try and take something stronger while they're on Suboxone, Suboxone blocks it.
My guess would be that the "zombie" presentation was because the Suboxone dose they started was too low for his need, but of course that's at the discretion of his actual care team - and no one should trust the internet diagnosis over one from an actual doctor.
Suboxone's not the enemy here.
Indivior exploiting the shit out of its patent protection to extort huge prices out of gov't payers is a problem, and shitty gov't payers who don't negotiate better prices to save the taxpayers money is another. The money men in the system would be my targets, but I'm biased. I think this a healthcare-wide problem, and it's a bit of a personal crusade to call these amoral profiteers out for exploiting the sick.
Sorry, that's what he took to get off of them. He was on something called Soma or something like tha. Very addictive.
Suboxone maintenance is used in treatment centers to "keep people off fentanyl", however, it creates more problems than it solves. Patients are paid to attend treatment centers by marketers who are paid salary+commission in the form of bonus to lure patients from OH, FL, NY, NJ, PA and anywhere else that has out of state benefits that pay out well. Treatment centers over bill, looking to collect a percentage and then saddle the patient with significant medical debt which is likely bundled and sold as junk. Inmates' addiction to suboxone is enabled as well, they are kept high while incarcerated and they learn nothing from the "rehabilitation" process of being in prison. The over prescribing is leveraged to create and facilitate a black market for suboxone, which is just as addictive as fentanyl long term- just harder to overdose and die on.
Now, it's going to be even easier to get people hooked on this. It's better than methadone, but it's habitual use is detrimental to a person's survival. Rehab romances wind up producing kids to drug addicted parents and those kids grow up under terrible circumstances. Gotta goto work, I'm interested to hear your opinions! Thanks!
Whatever happened to Heroin, all I ever hear about is Fentanyl now. This change happened in like 5 years too it seems like
The heroin's still in the system, but what else happened? Trump took over and stopped the CIA smuggling poppies/opium out of Afghanistan's poppy fields which constitute 70% of the world's supply. Meanwhile, China got into the business making fentanyl which is synthetic and requires no actual poppies. Turns out they can make it even cheaper than heroin, so they sent it to the cartels, who started cutting it into everything and all of the sudden, our heroin epidemic became a fentanyl one.
Normally, the progression is that a person starts on the "safe" pills like oxycodone or hydrocodone. Whether they start recreationally or with a legitimate prescription under the care of a doctor, if they 1) stay on it too long or 2) take doses that are too high, they eventually run the risk of addiction. The addict then will try and keep using whatever "safe" thing they were getting, but that stuff's expensive, and prescriptions eventually run out. When the money or the supply runs out, they turn to heroin, which is cheap as hell and gives them a kick they haven't had in a while because of the huge jump in potency. Heroin's 50x more potent than morphine. Naturally, at that point, it's just a matter of time before they OD. Prior to fentanyl 50%+ of opioid OD deaths were heroin. It's closer to 70%+ now with fentanyl because it's 100x more potent than morphine, and they cut it into weed and E and the poor idiot kids have no idea what they're getting - and it only takes one to an opioid-naive person. Even a tiny spec of powder can absorb through the skin and kill you. It's that strong.
There are options even stronger than that, large animal tranquilizers, but I think the cartels don't mess with it because it'd kill their guys as fast as their customers. But they do go to the veterinary meds. Tranq is exactly that. Crocodile (however they mangled spelling) was another. Both eat the skin right off of the bodies of the junkies, so they remain as really niche products (thankfully).