As opioid litigation against Purdue Pharma reaches its final stage, the judge overseeing the case has added a human dimension to the proceedings by including in the court documents dozens of personal letters from people who say their lives were ravaged by addiction. Purdue is accused of helping fuel the opioid epidemic by downplaying the addictiveness of its product Oxycontin and using devious marketing tactics to push the sale of prescription painkillers, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals. These letters open a rare window into the tragic toll of the crisis on families and communities, describing the pain and suffering of those struggling with substance use and the grief over those who died of an overdose. Including the letters won’t change the terms of the $4.5 billion settlement deal offered to Purdue, or hold Purdue’s founding Sackler family, which denies any responsibility, accountable for the deaths. But it does provide a record of the opioid industry’s role in an epidemic in which more than 500,000 Americans have died.
Meanwhile, drug overdose fatalities are on the rise in Iowa—as they are across the country—but the governor of that state has a new take on why deaths are surging: it’s the fault of illegal immigrants. Gov. Kim Reynolds has repeatedly suggested that the uptick is due to illegal immigrants bringing drugs across the border from Mexico, although the drugs involved in opioid overdoses are mostly prescription painkillers or street drugs sold by dealers. China is the source of much of the fentanyl that is driving the increase in overdose deaths. Reynolds also says that COVID-19 restrictions are to blame, which is partly true, in the sense that lockdowns did increase isolation and make it more difficult to access services, but those measures were of course aimed at stopping a deadly and contagious virus.
And finally, was it fentanyl or not that caused a San Diego police detective to be taken to the hospital purportedly suffering from overdose symptoms? The detective became the star of a now controversial police public service video about the dangers of the powerful synthetic opioid, in which he supposedly touches a powdery white substance and subsequently collapses. Addiction experts point out that fentanyl would have to be injected or ingested—rather than simply touched—to have that effect. Now, the police say a lab report shows the substance was in fact a mixture of fentanyl and meth, further complicating what should have been an important and straightforward warning to the public about the risk of fentanyl.