President Trump threw down the gauntlet on the opioid crisis in 2017. Drug overdose began to surpass car accidents pursuant to accidental deaths, which alarmed the public. Either America – with all its “exceptionally” – had a drug problem or something else was afoot. Trump vowed to make big pharma pay for its role in the spike in drug overdose deaths, apparently driven by opioid use. The concept that prescription opioids caused the opioid crisis was trumpeted by so-called experts like Andrew Kolodny. Big pharma – Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johson (JNJ), Cardinal Health (CAH), has since been forced to fork over more than $30 billion in settlement funds.
However, the drug overdose deaths for last 12 months ended through April 2021 surpassed 100,000 to a new record. It begs the question, “If prescription opioid caused the opioid crisis then why would drug overdose deaths continue to spike after the government cut prescription opioid supply by 60% from its 2011 peak?” Last week we Trump And The GE Parsed Kolodny’s Opioid Hoax took place in front of hundreds of people in the chat room. We broke down a recent interview between Kolodny and Axios and walked away with several observations.
At the 16:30 minute mark of the above video, Dr. William Amarquaye marvels at how Dr. Kolodny actually said something right.
If you actually break down the numbers. A lot of people say, ‘Oh the numbers are opioids.’ You have to be specific. What medication are you talking about, right? You just can’t say ‘opioids.’ It was actually one of the rare moments where he actually said ‘illicit fentanyl.’ He actually said something right. He said, ‘Illicit fentanyl.’
It is pretty bad when (1) one of the guru the government relied on and (2) an expert witness for the plaintiffs’ in the opioid litigation has a rare moment when he says something right.
