How doctors got rich pushing Big Pharma’s addictive opioids

‘Fentanyl is the most powerful opioid that has ever been mass-marketed. Quick to kick in and powerful enough to conquer pain that other opioids couldn’t touch, it was designed with the intention of helping cancer patients die comfortably. Why, then, is this “heroin on steroids” given out to patients in New Jersey for routine operations like tonsil removal?
According to NJ.com, the answer is simple: money. Common sense says that oncologists should be the ones prescribing such a powerful and dangerous drug, but an investigation by New Jersey Advance Media revealed that in the Garden State, eight different medical specialties filed more claims with Medicare for fentanyl than cancer doctors. This includes family practitioners, who filed more than five times the number of fentanyl claims from 2013 to 2015 than oncologists did. Even nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants were heavy prescribers.
It’s probably no coincidence that during the same time period, doctors in the state were paid more than $1.67 million by Big Pharma companies marketing different forms of the drug. Deaths from fentanyl in the state rose from 42 in 2013 to an incredible 417 in 2015, and it’s pretty clear who is to blame.’
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