Carmall Casey stands for a portrait in her yard in Black River, Tasmania, Australia, Wednesday, July 24, 2019. From her home in rural northwest Tasmania, not far from the poppy fields that produce half the world's supply of the raw ingredients in pharmaceutical opiates, Casey seethes over a system she says pushed her and so many others into addiction. It is a system that has made opioids the cheap and easy alternative for so many Australians.
Half a world away, Australia has failed to heed the lessons of the United States, and is now facing skyrocketing rates of opioid prescriptions and related deaths. Drug companies facing scrutiny for their aggressive marketing of opioids in America have turned their focus abroad, working around marketing regulations to push the painkillers in other countries. And as with the U.S., Australia’s government has also been slow to respond to years of warnings from worried health experts.
“It’s depressing at times to see how we, as practitioners, literally messed up our communities,” he says. “It’s our signature on the scripts. ... But the pressure being put on by the drug companies, by certain health sectors — that’s the situation that we are facing now.” Dr. Jennifer Stevens, a pain specialist, saw the surge with startling clarity while working at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
More than 3 million Australians - an eighth of the country’s population - are getting at least one opioid prescription a year, according to the latest data. “We’re living in a country that is oblivious to what’s going on,” she says. “Why aren’t we learning from America’s mistakes? Why don’t we learn?”When Rustie Lassam thinks of the drug companies that pumped opioids into Australia’s market, she thinks of her infant son’s agonized wails as he went through withdrawal.
In Australia, pharmaceutical companies by law cannot directly advertise to consumers, but are free to market the drugs to medical professionals. And they have done so, aggressively and effectively, by sponsoring swanky conferences, running doctors’ training seminars, funding research papers, giving money to pain advocacy groups and meeting with doctors to push the drugs for chronic pain.
Holliday filed a complaint with Medicines Australia, the pharmaceutical industry’s regulator. But membership to Medicines Australia is not mandatory, and Mundipharma declined to participate in the complaints process because it had dropped out as a member.
KristenGelineau Just in one day 28 innocent people have been killed in different places of Afghanistan. one father lost his four sons in one night. why you do not spread the voice of these people to the world? Is this justice that world media close their eyes about bloody war in Afghanistan?
KristenGelineau Investors sadviolin gov'll probably do what they did in America: keep profiting off of it until the public outcry gets too loud. then, fine the companies. by design. fight escapism!
KristenGelineau It’s a crisis sweeping across urban America like a F out of control wild fire. The last 20 years super meth, fentanyl & prescription meds hv transformed SF LA Seattle Oakland Baltimore Chicago etc in2 micro drug addict communities homelessness & lawlessness. Blame soft L policies
KristenGelineau I’m sorry did you say something?
KristenGelineau we never watch dubbed movie’s so if he made his own with original voice’s it at worst subtitle’s then maybe his message would get out
KristenGelineau WTF?
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