> The origin of the entire opioid epidemic comes from a company looking to enrich itself. You can't raise the bottom when the top is pushing the folks at the bottom, drowning them and taking the life vests from them to sell for pennies.

Furthermore, it was the Sacklar family who used it's wealth to protect its self from personal liability, despite it being a family operation, and avoided some much needed Civil lawsuits in order to put harsher Corporate Laws in place and instead let Perdue pharma take the bulk of the fines [0] and they only had to kick some in an offer a contrite apology for all the death and misery they profit(ed) from.

I'm as anti-CCP as they come and I'm very vocal about it, and I see them as an illegitimate group of thugs and cronies who should be overthrown; but to think that US Pharma, with the help of paying politicians for favourable laws isn't to blame for the opioid crisis is outright delusional.

Moreover, its been suggested by those with ties with the major Mexican drug cartels who supply the US--and have added precautions to help ID contamination--that the rise in fentaynol is coming from domestic sources as poverty has risen dramatically since COVID and made things worse for so many, and thus US based drug dealers (be it of American, Chinese or Russian lineage) have been cutting their drugs with them in order to either stretch them as demand has exceeded supply due to the wide reach [1] on social media as a lucrative but short-lived cash grab, or in order to attract more serious addicts who built tolerances is a more likely scenario than the CCP trying it's hand at re-creating the addiction tactics used in the Sino-Anglo war--they're too busy destroying it's economy and rattle-sobering in the Taiwan straight.

This says it all:

> “Drug dealers are using American innovation to sell lethal products,” executive director Paul DelPonte wrote. “Social media platforms bear some responsibility for these deaths.”

Honestly, it's as if the core story of Breaking Bad, which was a dramatized critique of social divides within the US medical system, law enforcement and hyper crony Capitalist system, has been entirely forgotten despite it being a land mark series of the 2010's that exposed some of the obvious hypocrisy of the US Society.

The truth is if the US had any real interest in solving any of this, they'd likely offer free testing of drugs for users without punishment but since it mainly affects poorer people they really have no interest in doing so since the war on drugs, and homelessness is such a cash cow to funnel public funds into NGOs and non-profits; ironically the very website/DNM the FBI took down (Silkroad) had a reputation system to solve this in addition to a licensed Chemist (Dr.X) who DPR paid [2] to keep it's members safe and who is now serving multiple life sentences in a Super Max prison for doing something innovative to reduce unnecessary deaths and violence in drug deals and a pubic health service!

Ross was many things, naive most above everything else, but this goes to show that it isn't a lack of talent in the US to try and address the immense drug issue it has (and continues to get worse) but rather self-interest, regulatory capture and the Industrial Prison Complex an an entrenched legal system to blame.

0: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/03/purdue-pharma-us-states-agre...

1:https://www.seattletimes.com/business/group-urges-feds-to-in...

2: https://web.archive.org/web/20210413041647/https://www.daily...