https://www.propublica.org/article/purdue-settlement-leaves-opioid-victims-behind
Showing posts with label opioids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opioids. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Many Opioid Victims Will Be Shut Out of Purdue’s $7.4B Bankruptcy Settlement — ProPublica
Nearly 140,000 people filed claims against the company for the harm they said its drugs caused. Fewer than half of them will get any compensation…
Sunday, August 3, 2025
A Decade of Reveal (Reveal podcast)
Reveal celebrates its 10-year anniversary with standout stories from the archives and interviews with the journalists behind the investigations.
The first pilot episode of Reveal exposed how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing opioids to veterans and contributing to an overdose crisis. Journalist Aaron Glantz explained how he received—surprisingly quickly—a decade’s worth of opioid prescription data from the federal government.
“Sometimes, you have to sue to get the records,” he said. “I have to think that there were some people over there in DC who were as concerned as we were about this.”
After that first show was made, host Al Letson didn’t know what to expect. “We weren’t sure if any public radio stations would even air it,” he said.
Reveal’s VA investigation sparked outrage. Congress held hearings during a government lockdown, and there’s been a sea change in the way veterans are prescribed painkillers. And today, the show is on more than 500 stations.
This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.
Interview:
The first pilot episode of Reveal exposed how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing opioids to veterans and contributing to an overdose crisis. Journalist Aaron Glantz explained how he received—surprisingly quickly—a decade’s worth of opioid prescription data from the federal government.
“Sometimes, you have to sue to get the records,” he said. “I have to think that there were some people over there in DC who were as concerned as we were about this.”
After that first show was made, host Al Letson didn’t know what to expect. “We weren’t sure if any public radio stations would even air it,” he said.
Reveal’s VA investigation sparked outrage. Congress held hearings during a government lockdown, and there’s been a sea change in the way veterans are prescribed painkillers. And today, the show is on more than 500 stations.
This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.
Interview:
Monday, May 26, 2025
How Trump Exploits Working-Class Pain (Reveal podcast)
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on how Trump uses economic decline to win over voters and push rural America further to the right.
Arlie Hochschild, an award-winning author and sociologist, has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America. She should know.
In 2016, Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land was a must-read for anyone who wanted to better understand the appeal of Trump and his ascent to the White House. She spent time in Louisiana talking with Tea Party supporters about how they believed women, minorities, and immigrants were cutting in line to achieve the American Dream. But in her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild shifted her focus to Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage.
“A lot of people in this group have felt that neither political party was offering an answer,” Hochschild says. “And they have turned instead to a kind of charismatic leader.” She argues that the secret to Trump’s charisma among his supporters has to do with “alleviating the shame of that downward mobility.”
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.
Interview:
Arlie Hochschild, an award-winning author and sociologist, has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America. She should know.
In 2016, Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land was a must-read for anyone who wanted to better understand the appeal of Trump and his ascent to the White House. She spent time in Louisiana talking with Tea Party supporters about how they believed women, minorities, and immigrants were cutting in line to achieve the American Dream. But in her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild shifted her focus to Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage.
“A lot of people in this group have felt that neither political party was offering an answer,” Hochschild says. “And they have turned instead to a kind of charismatic leader.” She argues that the secret to Trump’s charisma among his supporters has to do with “alleviating the shame of that downward mobility.”
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.
Interview:
Thursday, July 11, 2024
House appropriations panel clears HHS bill that cuts agency funding
The bill contains numerous policy provisions Democrats decried as poison pills, including eliminating funding for domestic HIV programs, tobacco prevention, teen pregnancy prevention programs and Title X family planning grants. It would also block federal funding for gender-affirming care.
The bill would cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) injury prevention program and its opioid overdose prevention and surveillance initiative…
Friday, June 28, 2024
US supreme court blocks Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement that would shield Sacklers from lawsuits
Controversial deal would have protected billionaire family owners from further liability over US opioid epidemic
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Nitazenes are a powerful class of street drugs emerging across the US
Because of the potency of the nitazenes, symptoms can develop rapidly after someone is exposed, killing them before they can get medical care…
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Secretive US rightwing group Alec designs law to give big business ‘complete immunity for bad acts’
"Because municipalities have successfully held corporations accountable for causing catastrophic harms such as the opioid crisis and environmental pollution, these companies are now turning to front groups like Alec and the US Chamber of Commerce to push laws that would give them complete immunity for their future bad acts," she said...
Friday, June 30, 2023
DOJ charges 78 people with $2.5 billion in health-care fraud
The defendants include "physicians and other licensed medical professionals who lined their own pockets, including doctors who allegedly put their patients at risk by illegally providing them with opioids they did not need," the DOJ said in a press release...
Friday, November 4, 2022
Cannabis holds promise for pain management, reducing the need for opioid painkillers – a neuropharmacology expert explains how
"I am a neuropharmacology scientist who studies both opioids and cannabinoids as they relate to pain treatment and substance abuse. My research focuses on the development of drug compounds that can provide chronic pain relief without the potential for overuse and without the tapering off of effectiveness that often accompanies traditional pain medications."
Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Opioids have killed 600,000 Americans. The Sacklers just got off basically scot-free
…Astonishingly, the Sacklers seem to have been able to work the bankruptcy process to buy themselves immunity from accountability in the civil courts – in return for handing over only a small fraction of the money they made from OxyContin – and still remain one of the richest families in the country. All while continuing to deny their responsibility for their role in creating the opioid crisis...
Monday, June 14, 2021
Republicans rebel against a powerful anti-opioid tool - POLITICO
…Needle exchanges, which have been in existence for decades, also provide a link to other services, such as drug counseling, as well as public health measures to reduce the spread of disease. People who use their services are five times more likely to begin drug treatment and three times more likely to stop using drugs than others who don't use the program, according to data compiled by the CDC…
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
US states oppose ‘unjust’ plan to shield Sackler wealth in opioid settlement
Twenty-four states object to bankruptcy proposal for Sacklers to settle lawsuits by paying $4.3bn but family would keep about $7bn…
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Why do Americans die earlier than Europeans?
…All of this suggests that our shortcomings are not simply a product of what happens in a sector called "medicine and public health". Rather, these shortcomings are deeply embedded in enduring features of American society. The failure of the United States to adequately protect its members from premature death casts doubt on American civic processes and undermines any effort of the US to serve as a model for other countries…
Sunday, November 1, 2020
Google Antitrust and Purdue Pharma Plea (Opening Arguments podcast OA433)
It’s a Tr*** free day here at OA! Not even one mention of that entity. It’s all about some major stories in the law. Google has been sued by the DoJ and a number of individual states for unlawfully maintaining monopolies for search services. And Purdue Pharma has reached a plea agreement involving billions of dollars. One of these is good and the other… isn’t… Listen to the Andrew Torrez Mr. Fantastic Signature Breakdown to found out!
Interview:
Monday, September 7, 2020
American Rehab (Center for Investigative Reporting, Reveal podcast)
Reveal exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid, shadow workforce.
Interview:
Interview:
Thursday, July 16, 2020
‘American Rehab’ And The Dark History of Rehabilitative Treatment (The 1A)
Across the nation, drug overdoses have spiked since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. While some states like Kentucky have worked for years to see a decrease in overdose deaths, experts say the pandemic has brought on a monthly increase to fatal and non-fatal overdoses since its outset. Although it could be months until more data is available, officials believe the increase in overdoses are a result of social isolation, economic turmoil, and a global disruption to the drug trade due to COVID-19.
But a new podcast explores rehabilitation facilities that exploit those who are seeking help. “American Rehab” by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, is a serial investigation three years in the making. It examines a system that exploits the vulnerable through a form of indentured servitude — sometimes with no counseling at all — and has roots in a bizarre cult from the 1950s.
We talk with the producers, reporters and a person who experienced one of these rehab facilities about how they use attendees for unpaid labor.
Interview:
https://the1a.org/segments/american-rehab-and-the-dark-history-of-rehabilitative-treatment/
But a new podcast explores rehabilitation facilities that exploit those who are seeking help. “American Rehab” by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, is a serial investigation three years in the making. It examines a system that exploits the vulnerable through a form of indentured servitude — sometimes with no counseling at all — and has roots in a bizarre cult from the 1950s.
We talk with the producers, reporters and a person who experienced one of these rehab facilities about how they use attendees for unpaid labor.
Interview:
https://the1a.org/segments/american-rehab-and-the-dark-history-of-rehabilitative-treatment/
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Deaths of despair: why America’s medical industry explains working-class suicides
The US healthcare system is helping to kill people in staggering numbers. And when it isn’t driving Americans to an early grave, the medical industry is bleeding the rest of the country of resources at the expense of decent jobs, crucial infrastructure and schools, according to a new book by two of the country’s leading economists.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/19/us-healthcare-industry-working-class-deaths
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/19/us-healthcare-industry-working-class-deaths
Sunday, March 1, 2020
More People Might Have Died from Opioids Than We Thought - The Atlantic
A new paper suggests that death certificates dramatically undercounted the number of people dying from opioid overdoses.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Homeless US student population 'highest in more than a decade' - BBC News
Most of the 1.5 million homeless schoolchildren stayed with other families or friends after losing their homes.
But 7% lived in abandoned buildings or cars, the report by the National Centre for Homeless Education showed.
It is often caused by job insecurity, unaffordable housing, domestic violence and recently the opioid crisis.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51370060
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51370060
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Diarrhea medication a growing problem in the opioid fight
Imodium is the brand-name of loperamide: a drug that, if taken in gigantic quantities, can produce an opioid-like high – and present serious dangers to a person's health. ....
https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-webb/2020/01/17/diarrhea-medication-growing-problem-opioid-fight/4490816002/
https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-webb/2020/01/17/diarrhea-medication-growing-problem-opioid-fight/4490816002/
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