'only' for a middleman, who doesn't even do the bare minimum job of saying: hey, we're shipping more opiate pills to this zip code every month than there are people x 100
Of all the links in the chain for the Opiate Crisis, you're going to blame the distributor of the pills?
I get it, hindsight in 20/20 etc., but those pills were prescribed by highly-trained doctors and fulfilled by highly-trained pharmacists who thought they were doing the right thing and you expect some non-M.D. to have the foresight and understanding to say 'Sure, CVS is ordering this amount from us because they have this many pharmacist-approved scripts (keep in mind, this is one of thousands of items CVS is ordering), but I think something is fishy.'
It just seems like that expectation diffuses blame from the actual villains here (the pharma companies that specifically worked to manipulate pharmacists and doctors into writing/approving those scripts).
there were HUGE amounts of MDs purposefully not doing the right thing and running pill mills.
And yeah, distributors for sure have experts and resources to hire experts. And they were repeatedly warned/directed to stop the insane volume. They knew of this. They weren't ignorant, even on purpose.
The opiate lobbyists slyly got the law changed so the DEA couldn't enforce with stop notices.
IIRC In Gibney's documentary they interviewed some of the Congresspeople who voted for it and they thought the bill did the opposite.
pharmacists also had the right to refuse and some did! but Purdue often intervened and pressured them to fill the scripts. I think that was shown either in gibney or maybe the great hulu purdue miniseries?
I get it, hindsight in 20/20 etc., but those pills were prescribed by highly-trained doctors and fulfilled by highly-trained pharmacists who thought they were doing the right thing and you expect some non-M.D. to have the foresight and understanding to say 'Sure, CVS is ordering this amount from us because they have this many pharmacist-approved scripts (keep in mind, this is one of thousands of items CVS is ordering), but I think something is fishy.'
It just seems like that expectation diffuses blame from the actual villains here (the pharma companies that specifically worked to manipulate pharmacists and doctors into writing/approving those scripts).