US police name the drug dealers

In Massachusetts, Gloucester police force laid bare the links between opioid abuse and the dope-peddlers - the country's largest pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Andrew Kimby, executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and one of the letter's signatories, explained, "By promoting opioid use for common problems, drug makers and their proxies ushered in an addiction epidemic that will take decades for our country to recover from."

The Senate Finance Committee in 2012 launched an investigation into three pharmaceutical companies and seven nonprofit organizations—prompted by evidence that growing opioid addiction came after aggressive marketing of pain medication—and has yet to release its findings, Public Citizen noted.

"The results of the investigation are not simply a matter of historical importance," said Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research group. "They are crucial to saving lives because these groups continue promoting aggressive opioid use and continue blocking federal and state interventions that could reduce overprescribing."

Judy Rummler, chair of the Fed Up! Coalition, an alliance of grassroots organizations fighting to end the opioid addiction epidemic, who lost her son Steve to an opioid overdose from legally prescribed medication. Rummler called on Congress to release the results of the investigation, which she said "will make it harder for these pain groups to keep claiming their efforts are on behalf of patients. The prescribing practices they promote are hurting many chronic pain sufferers, not helping them," Rummler said. 

SOYMB blog would say that the pharmaceutical corporations are themselves addicts – to their much needed injections of profit.