ndrosen

A court in Oklahoma has ruled against Johnson & Johnson for manufacturing legal opiates, and making them available to patients with prescriptions. One may believe that we have an opioid abuse problem without approving of this verdict. I will leave to those more learned in the law the analysis of the legal issue; I will address the incentives and likely consequences that a ruling like this creates. It sends a message to pharmaceutical companies: Don’t make opiates, or at least be very careful not to make them excessively available, and impose, one presumes, rigorous controls on the physicians and pharmacies involved in putting them into the hands of patients.

This means that people in real and serious pain will in some cases be unable to obtain opiates legally, and will either suffer, or commit suicide, or turn to the black market; the same applies to those who are already addicted, however they became addicts. Black market heroin, fentanyl, or God-knows-what will vary in content, purity, and contaminants, so at least in some cases, people who turn to illegal sources of supply will suffer fatal overdoses, or other problems that would be unlikely to occur if they were buying oxycodone from their neighborhood pharmacist.

Thus, cracking down on opiates will (and already has) result in more deaths from opiate abuse. QED.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has raided the home and office of a scoundrel running a pill mill, or a heroic physician who takes the Hippocratic Oath seriously, and treats patients in severe pain, depending on whose spin is more nearly truthful. Part of the reason for the raid may be that the doctor compounded his offenses by committing freedom of speech.

Personally, I stand ready to make a donation to Dr. Tennant's legal defense, if I learn of an opportunity to do so. That's where my sympathies lie.