I just finished watching the riveting series, Dopesick, on Hulu, and it brought me back in time, to when I was researching my own book about a drug company that lied to the American public and caused many deaths and untold anguish, much like Purdue Pharma did when it marketed OxyContin as a nonaddictive painkiller, even when its executives knew full well how addictive the drug was. As a result of Purdue’s lies, hundreds of thousands of Americans have overdosed on OxyContin or heroin (when they could no longer afford OxyContin or other legal opiates). Similarly, my 2008 book, Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial, revealed how GlaxoSmithKline and other drug companies manipulated scientific research to make their antidepressants look safer and more effective than they really were. As a result, hundreds of people killed themselves while taking Paxil or other similar antidepressants, which, as the FDA eventually determined from examining the data from clinical trials, actually increased the likelihood of suicidal behavior in adolescents by nearly five-fold.

It took viligant prosecutors in the New York State Attorney General’s office to realize that GlaxoSmithKline was lying to doctors and consumers about the safety of Paxil and to launch the first lawsuit against the second largest drug company in the world, just as it took prosecutors in the Virginia US Attorney’s office to make the first successful move against Purdue. Since then, of course, many other states have filed suits against Purdue for aggressively marketing OxyContin as an nonaddictive drug when in fact it is incredibly addictive, causing the opioid epidemic that continues to ravage Appalachia and many other regions in our country. Similarly, after the New York State Attorney’s office sued GlaxoSmithKline and forced them to settle, the U.S. Department of Justice and many other states successfully sued Glaxo and other drug companies for consumer fraud, winning billions of dollars in settlements and reforming the way drug companies work to sway doctors’ prescribing practices.

And yet as Dopesick shows, no drug company executive has gone to prison for perpetuating fraudulent scams that not only led to the deaths of thousands of people but wreaked unimaginable suffering on their families and destroyed whole communities. When the U.S. Virginia attorney’s office tried to bring felony charges against the Purdue executives responsible for this fraud, they were over-ruled by top political appointees in the Bush Administration’s Department of Justice. I find it beyond ironic that the main lobbyist for Purdue at this particular juncture was none other than Rudy Giuliani, who went on to become Trump’s personal attorney and the face behind the former President’s fraudulent attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

As hard it was to watch at times, Dopesick is a compelling commentary on how wealthy corporations can literally get away with murder for years as they buy off any and all opposition to their smarmy tactics. The series also puts a engaging human face on the suffering this kind of corruption causes to ordinary Americans who place their trust in what was (and still is in many cases) a broken health care system. Definitely worth your time!

This blog is also posted on medium.com.