You can visit the site, “Opiate Crisis in Appalachia,” by clicking on the image below.
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Opioid Crisis in West Virginia
May 2, 2019 | 3 Comments
May 7, 2019 at 1:19 pm
I love the project. I think the race component in the opioid crisis was my favorite part as it’s quite eye-opening. I’d love to see a little more detail on that.
There’s also a fantastic piece that aired on 60 minutes called “The Opioid Epidemic: Who is to Blame?” that investigates doctors, distributors, drug lobbyists , and the FDA when searching for culprits behind the opioid crisis. I’m not sure if you can watch the video – you might need CBS All Access – but I’m attaching the link to the CBS news report here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-opioid-epidemic-who-is-to-blame-60-minutes/. Some events might fit into to your timeline well, especially the FDA’s decision in 2001 to cave to Purdue Pharma’s demands and expand Oxycontin’s label to “around the clock… for an extended period of time”. Previously isolated to cases of treating short term pain, oxycontin was now pushed to tens of millions of new patients. Similarly, drug distributors also played a massive role in enabling mass prescriptions of addictive opioids. They didn’t maintain any due diligence, ignored regulations, and then intimidated the DEA and department of justice into settling at court. I think it would be interesting to dive into the chain of events that allowed the opioid crisis to happen.
May 6, 2019 at 12:44 pm
This presentation was intriguing in so many ways – I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the how the ongoing opioid crisis is affecting the Appalachia region. The opioid epidemic has taken the country by storm, and is not secular to any race or class. Without having much background knowledge on how such a large epidemic can sweep through an entire country, I found the section on Purdue Pharma the most fascinating. Not that i was necessarily surprised, (living in one of the most competitive capitalist societies in the world, it is hard to be suprised by big corporations doing unthinkable things to make money) but I was more astounded by the trickle down affect their actions have had on the country.
Although this crisis is is not specific to any group, I do believe there is a common theme in areas greatly affected by the crisis. Many of these addictions start from injury in which doctors prescribe addicting painkillers. West Virginia, as this group described, is considered the starting region of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. West Virginia is a state where many jobs are manual labor and dangerous jobs that often lead to injured workers. Although it does not seem promising at the time, I feel like their needs to be a government intervention that greatly impacts doctors ability to prescribe these dangerous drugs.
May 6, 2019 at 11:25 am
I enjoyed reading through your site. What especially caught my attention was the segment on Purdue Pharma. The timeline mentioned that their corporate performance was based on sales for their highest dosage of their Oxycotin pill. This was alarming to me. It seems sickening that these corporate companies do not recognize the significance of addiction. If anything, they would like to “allow” it because it is profitable for their business. Their marketing campaign used the infamous letter that cited strikingly low addiciton rate numbers for hospitals prescribing opiod, but that 500 word document does not tell the full story. At least not enough to run a transparent ad campaign about a life changing drug. The letter only looked at regimented hospitlized patients. Not patients that were presribed opiods at home. This is a signifcant aspect of the study that goes unnoticed.
Additionally, the note that a small town in West Virginia recieved 20.8 million pills in the past decade is alarming. It represents both the casualty of distributing the pills, and the strength of addicion. I really enjoyed reading through this site.