Only officials drunk on alcohol money would call opioids the 'biggest health crisis'

The maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, and the company’s controlling Sackler family agreed March 26 to pay $270 million to settle an Oklahoma lawsuit claiming they helped create the opioid crisis with aggressive marketing of the painkiller. “The $270 million is less than what the lawyering would have cost Purdue. The did the 'right' thing,” says author Scott Stevens.

This is the first settlement emerging from wave of nearly 2,000 lawsuits against Purdue threatening to push the company a bankruptcy safe-haven, says the author of Look What Dragged the Cat In: The Rise of an Opioid Crisis. In the book, presented in hardcover at academic conferences in Europe in 2018 and now available in e-book, Stevens demonstrates how the neither the drugmaker – nor doctors – are to blame in the 'ab irato' lawsuits. “Are their hands clean? No. But they didn't create this crisis, or the two it's spawned (benzodiazepines and methamphetamine),” according to Stevens.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter announced the settlement, calling the crisis “this nightmarish epidemic” and “the worst public health crisis in our state and nation we’ve ever seen.” Stevens responds, “First, the death toll from opioids in Oklahoma is about 400. They're all tragic. No question. Alcohol kills at least 1,300 a year in that state. If opioids are an epidemic, alcohol is a pandemic that costs their state $4.5 billion a year, and the U.S. 90,000 lives and $250 billion a year.” His numbers are according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “We don't call out the real problem because the alcohol business is an an advertiser, a campaign contributor, and an adored and endorsed part of our culture.”

The fifth book by Wisconsin author, Scott Stevens, calls out the beverage alcohol business and a 'buzz' culture, not pharmaceutical companies and doctors, as the culprits behind the opioid crisis. Stevens says, “If you examine how many opioid-related deaths are alcohol-related, the answer is that they all are. Two thirds of illicit drug users point to alcohol as their first drug, and all of us learn to self-prescribe from alcohol.”

The book was released Aug. 23, 2018 at the International Conference on Addiction Therapy & Clinical Reports in Paris, France, capping two-years of research by the author into the escalation of opioid overdoses. “It's the same root cause of every drug 'crisis' we've observed. Cocaine in the 1980s, heroin again in the 1970s and before that the 1920s, and between the two prior heroin crises, a methamphetamine crisis in the 1950s,” says Stevens. “The thread cinching all of them together is alcohol: The drug we don't call a drug or treat as the deadly drug it is. We encourage use of this drug, then when users can't get where they want with alcohol, they up the ante with other, harder drugs. No runner runs a marathon as their first race out.”

The book examines the self-regulation of alcohol-industry ads, the pricing, and availability of alcohol. “There really is a straight-line relationship between the opioid crisis with the gateway drug, alcohol.”

The World Congress on Addiction Science in London in Sept. 2018, as well as the 2018 International Conference on Clinical Psychology in Amsterdam, also were forums for launch of Stevens' work. He's now doing radio and conferences in support of the e-book launch of the book March 26.

Stevens has no ties to the pharmaceutical industry, nor does he practice medicine, yet he finds only moderate culpability for either profession in the rise of the opioid situation. “They were accomplices to some degree, but we fail to look deeper. What causes problems is one. We just have this fear of tagging the alcohol business because of our glorification of drinking.” The book points out that society also has a notion that anything resembling reining in the alcohol business looks like Prohibition, generally considered a failure. Americans also don't 'want to believe alcohol is a drug or a problem outside of car wrecks, cirrhosis, and disease of alcoholism. “We're told we can drink responsibly when there is no responsible way to drink a toxin and known carcinogen. Buying into the glamour of the drug seduced Americans right into opioids.”

Americans defend the gateway drug, says the author. Among his solutions is a strategy like the anti-smoking campaign that began with the Master Settlement Agreement for tobacco companies in the 1990s. “We defend drinking as some sort of rite. All we're doing by guarding drinking as a personal choice is sacrificing our own children for a product with zero life-extending or life-saving properties.”


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 byTom Baker, used with permission.

Contradiction? Walmart aims to double beer sales, yet could stop selling tobacco due to "health issues"

HUH?

Sure, you read that correctly.  Here are details from my report today (see full story) on the retail giant. 


A Walmart executive told the National Beer Wholesalers Association meeting in Las Vegas that the world's largest retailer plans to double beer sales over the next three years. According to an AdAge recap of the Oct. 2 meeting, the chain is already the largest beer seller in the United States after tripling its alcohol sales over the past decade. The aggressive sales goal comes despite the company's ongoing debate over whether to carry tobacco anymore because of its health risks.

The retailer's Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer Duncan Mac Naughton, during a presentation at the meeting, said of the beer sales goal, “"I see it as a layup. My team sees it as a big half-court shot. But I'm telling you, it's there.” The comment was interrupted by applause from the crowd of nearly 4,000 beer distributors and suppliers.

The stores already include beer in its circulars and has more prominent displays in stores. New strategies include adding more refrigeration and storage space for beer and slashing prices to nearly at-cost in states without minimum pricing.

In contrast, the retailer's vice chairman, Eduardo Castro-Wright, acknowledged after the recession that the retailer has become sensitive about its public image. He told AdWeek the world's largest retailer has considered -- and would continue to consider -- eliminating tobacco products from its stores and noted how selling tobacco conflicts with Walmart's increased emphasis on health.

In March, Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) reported alcohol is now the third out of 67 leading causes of disease and injury worldwide. (See full story) Alcohol was responsible for 5.5 percent of all disease and illness, behind only high blood pressure and tobacco use.

Among the findings: Americans drink more than 50 percent above the global average, and show a more detrimental drinking pattern than most of the 27 European Union (EU) countries, with more bingeing. “Alcohol consumption has been found to cause more than 200 different diseases and injuries,” said Kevin Shield, lead author of the study. “These include not only well-known outcomes of drinking such as liver cirrhosis or traffic accidents or the disease of alcoholism, but also several types of cancer, such as female breast cancer.” (See yesterday's alcohologist.com blog)

However, Castro-Wright also emphasized that at Walmart, "first and foremost, we service customers, which means selling them what they want to buy.”

The giant retailer in August lowered its earnings estimate after a surprise decline in second-quarter same-store sales.