> But nobody is monitoring when a doctor prescribes tons of opioids. Prescribing something seems like a privilege granted by the state, so clearly it should be the DEA monitoring this, but apparently this article is more keen to blame the salespeople at the manufacturer?!
That's exactly what the article describes, though. I feel like you didn't read it. They detail, at length, a system for keeping track of doctors and pharmacies who over-prescribe and over-order Oxycontin.
And then proceed to do nearly nothing with that information other than in one or two of the most egregious instances "reducing supply" and "instructing sales people that they shouldn't promote Oxy".
It's almost like they did the bare minimum, enough to have some plausible deniability, but not enough to actually be responsible. Oh, and then only after they knew the doctors were out of business (read "already arrested, charged, sent to trial") did they belatedly say "oh hey, you might want to look at them".
When it would do nothing to harm profit, but so no-one could say "you did nothing".
Oh, I totally agree. That's the real shocker in the article, that they had the information necessary to stop a lot of this years ago. I was just pointing out that the above's comment seems to have missed the point.
> That's exactly what the article describes, though. I feel like you didn't read it. They detail, at length, a system for keeping track of doctors and pharmacies who over-prescribe and over-order Oxycontin.
A system for keeping track of them and then largely ignoring them. Purdue had all the information they needed, and they mostly sat on it and dragged their feet. That's arguably worse than if they had been completely blind.
That's exactly what the article describes, though. I feel like you didn't read it. They detail, at length, a system for keeping track of doctors and pharmacies who over-prescribe and over-order Oxycontin.