Opioid epidemic spreads despair in tribe
The opioid epidemic knows no boundaries, but its grip is stronthe gest in forgotten places where economic stagnation has brought despair and desperation.
Few places are as poor and forgotten as Native American reservations, so it should be little surprise that opioids have also ravaged many tribes. The St. Regis Mohawk tribe along the St. Lawrence River in far northern New York are among the victims.
Just before Christmas, the tribe became the latest entity to file suit against the big pharmaceutical companies, including Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma, accusing them of pushing opioids with all the care of the corner drug dealer.
That’s a familiar accusation by now, and it’s also largely true. But the tribe’s 138-page complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, details just how profoundly devastating the crisis has become
on a reservation that is “saturated” with Oxycontin and other opioids.
Here’s one depressing statistic: The tribe says that, over the last five years, opioid abuse is responsible for 85 to 90 percent of its child-welfare cases and the forced break-up of many families.
“The opioid epidemic is far more devastating and has had a more profound cost on our tribal community than anyone could have ever imagined,” St. Regis Mohawk Chief Beverly Cook said in a written statement. “An entire generation of tribal members is growing up in the shadow of the opioid epidemic.”
On and away from the reservation, the toll is staggering. Over the last two decades, more than 300,000 Americans have died by overdosing on Oxycontin and other opioids. That’s five times the number that died in the Vietnam War, and we are all but powerless to stop it.
How responsible are the drug companies?
Certainly, there is a personal responsibility component to the crisis. Some users come to opioids fully aware of the danger and might have otherwise turned to some other powerful narcotic. It’s hard to hold drug companies responsible for that.
Nor are they responsible for the despair that helps addiction flourish. This isn’t just a pharmaceutical crisis; it’s a spiritual and emotional one seemingly borne from a loss of meaning, purpose and happiness. It’s about the profound emptiness and loneliness that too many Americans feel in places where work, faith, family and community have all collapsed.
“Opioids have a remarkable capacity to alleviate anxiety,” said Michael Nerney, an anti-addiction consultant in Hamilton County. “You can’t get a better tool for medicating your feelings.”
Nerney, who has worked with the St. Regis Mohawk and other tribes, said the exceedingly desperate economic and social conditions of many reservations makes them perfect breeding grounds for addiction. For a Native culture that has been all but wrecked but outside forces, opioids are just the latest invader.
I asked Nerney what he thought about the tribe’s decision to sue.
“More power to them,” he said. “We need drugs, and they are a critical part of our medical system. But we don’t need drug companies suppressing information.”
Yes, there is ample evidence that drug companies hid the dangers as they recklessly promoted opioids and supplied them well beyond the demands of responsible use. (Americans are said to consume 30 times more opioids than are medically necessary.)
A decade ago, Purdue Pharma, the company that makes Oxycontin, pleaded guilty to lying about the addictiveness of their product and was fined $634 million. Things turned out fine for the company, though. It sold $1.7 billion of Oxycontin last year alone.
For anyone who bothers to look, it is hard not to see a terrible greed as a partner in the opioid epidemic. As communities and families and lives were devastated, the big pharmaceutical companies raked in profits and refused to acknowledge the ruin at their hands.
For that, they should be held accountable — just as Wall
Street firms responsible for the financial crisis should have been held responsible for the destruction they caused. They mostly weren’t, of course, and it’s easy to assume the drug companies will likewise escape culpability. They, too, have paid for powerful friends in government.
But even if juries demanded that drug companies hand over every penny of opioid profit, the money wouldn’t begin to make up for the damage that’s been done. How do we put a price on the lost lives we see each day in the obituaries, the bright young faces who don’t belong there? We can’t.
And while money extracted from drug companies could help fight the epidemic with more treatment centers, it will do nothing to combat the despair and anxiety that provide such fertile ground for addiction. It will do nothing to dull our pain. It won’t get at the root cause of the opioid epidemic.
Money, as the saying goes, can’t buy happiness.