Blame the opioid maker? Right church, wrong pew

A new article appearing in VOX notes that one member of the Sackler family, longtime overseers of Purdue Pharma, is helping the treatment industry clean up what the opioid crisis cat dragged in. Richard Sackler, former president of Purdue Pharma, is listed on the patent application for a new form of buprenorphine. Buprenorphine (trade names Buprenex, Butrans, Probuphine, and Belbuca) is an opiod agonist used in the medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid addiction.  The new product is a fast-dissolving wafer, designed to keep those administered the dose from cheeking the medication and sharing/selling it.

On one hand, 'Shouldn't we be applauding ANY help going to those who need it?' is the easy question. That question is buried under the emotion of a very traumatic crisis, however. One editorial on the article went so far as to call Sackler the 'devil incarnate,' And the spin on the article is that Purdue helped spawn the opioid crisis with its drug, OxyContin, and Stackler made bank on that drug and now seeks to profit from cleaning up the mess.

Not so fast. OxyContin and Purdue are not the drugmakers that created this crisis. The drugmakers that created this crisis, every crisis before it, and the crises emerging now, are not in the pharmaceutical industry. The drugmakers who have groomed us for drug use, drug abuse, and drug addiction make the gateway drug, alcohol.

Two thirds of drug abusers identify alcohol as the first drug they used, according to an American Addiction Centers 2018 survey. The rest of us learned to take drugs from our cultural acceptance and endorsement of drug use aka drinking. What we ignore, we permit, what we permit, we condone.

The blame-game, legislation, lawsuits, etc. target Big Pharma, sketchy doctors, China, and dope dealers. Right church, wrong pew. Look What Dragged the Cat In details how the opioid crisis (spoiler: it's a crisis, not an epidemic) really emerged (spoiler: it wasn't the Sacklers) and how we can use the tragedy of this crisis to prevent the next one.


Stevens is author of five alcohol, health, and recovery books and is principal of alcohologist.com. He is a founding influencer of the world’s largest medical portal, healthtap.com. He Chaired the 2018 International Conference on Addiction Therapy and Clinical Reports in Paris, France, where Look What Dragged the Cat In was officially launched. He's also the Chair for Addiction Science 2018, in London, UK.

Image by Santalucia Art Inc., used with permission.