DEATH IS INTERNATIONAL –

Sept. 28, 2023 – Developed in the field of anesthesiology, it has jumped from operating rooms to the streets and, once distributed in its illegal form, has swelled the so-called opiate epidemic, responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. In the United States alone, according to official data, 91,799 people died in 2020 from overdoses of these substances. In 2021 the figure rose to 106,699 and in 2022 these drugs were responsible for at least two thirds of the 110,000 deaths recorded from this cause. It is considered the worst health crisis in recent history, only on a par with AIDS in the 1980s and the Covid-19 pandemic. 

An especially outrageous aspect of this crisis is that its introduction into regular consumer habits was not done through clandestine drug dealing on the streets, but in medical offices, where fentanyl was prescribed by tens of thousands of doctors for the treatment of non-oncological chronic pain. Tens of thousands of people sued the manufacturer for manifest deception regarding the dependency created by the drug — OxyContin — whose economic benefits made the laboratory, Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical giant that has become the target of massive legal action. In this way, international drug trafficking was able to land in a pre-existing market with much more powerful and dangerous doses. 

READ@ElPais