Over the past twenty years, over half a million Americans have died of opioid overdoses.
In this episode, we'll explore how this happened, who is responsible, and ask ourselves whether the USA will ever be able to kick its addiction to prescription opioids.
- Origin of "opioid"
- Opioid overdoses in the US vs Western Europe
- What caused the boom in opioid use in the United States?
- Morphine & heroin during the American Civil War
- The arrival of OxyContin
- Purdue Pharma sales representatives' tactics to sell the drug to doctors
- Increasing the doses for patients
- The "less than 1% of patients become addicted" claim
- People start abusing the drug
- Senior executives are aware but do nothing
- The cycle of addiction that doctors saw
- Moving onto heroin & fentanyl
- Why fentanyl is so powerful and dangerous
- Who has been held responsible for the opioid crisis?
- The Sackler Family (and its quest for immunity)
- Opioid prescriptions are down, but overdoses are up
- Is a solution for the opioid crisis possible?
Full interactive transcript, subtitles and key vocabulary available on the website: https://www.leonardoenglish.com/podcasts/opioid-crisis
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