Drug Companies should be Held Responsible for Opioid Crisis

According to the article titled: majority of americans say drug companies should be held responsible for opioid crisis by brian mann for npr dated april 25 2019 one third of americans have been directly affected by the deadly opioid epidemic that has killed more than 200 000 americans since the 1990's. with 57% of americans stating they think pharmaceutical companies should be held responsible for this and after big pharma has reached over 1 600 lawsuits filed against it it has been confirmed at last tuesday's conference that the executives responsible for this have been arrested for allegedly funneling prescription opioid pills to pharmacies that then sold them on the black market. It comes to no surprise that there is another article stating that half of the inmates in jail are addicted to poioids making jails the number one treatment facility for opioid addiction. What causes big pharma to get away with causing these kinds of epidemics for so long and why do the people not demand a stop to it faster why does it take for a problem to erupt to this level of magnitude before the authorities step in and act like they are doing something about it i will turn to c. wright mills and his book the power elite 1956 to explain. Today according to mills the issues that now shape man's fate are neither raised nor decided by any public at large.

Mills c. w. 1956 here mills refers to the power elite and their ability to make decisions for the public at large also referred to as the masses while the masses think that they arrived at these decisions. In order to fully understand this we must first understand the difference between a mass society what we currently are and a community of publics before we can see how the elite exploit a mass society. A community of publics is where: as many people express opinions as receive them where public communications are so organized that allows immediate and effective means to express opinion in public where opinion may immediately turn into action even if action is against the prevailing system and the authoritative institutions do not stop public from response verbal or action. A public's opposite extreme is called a society of masses characterized as follows: people receive communication from mass media typically manipulated stories and propaganda and very few people respond with their opinion due to their being no effective avenue for immediate response while reaction to communication is chosen and orchestrated by authorities in charge namely the power elite where institutions penetrate the masses reducing the masses ability to express opinion through discussion.

Mass associations and large scale interest groups that serve as liaison between the power elite and the individual citizens of the public are not only too large to make each individuals response heard but also the leaders of these very groups lose their initial association with the masses who elected them to represent them and to which they once belonged to due to the their growing desire for power which causes them to side with the elite thus selling the elites decision to the mass members as opposed to reporting the masses response back to the elite. The liaison essentially becomes a traitor due to a weak sense of identity which eventually further has lead to elections between two giant parties that no one in the masses can truly influence causing individuals to feel like they are not truly represented and to feel distant and dissociated from their political associations because there is nothing connecting them to the inaccessible power elite thus resulting in little live political struggle mills c. w. 1956 except maybe on social media which takes it nowhere but forces it to stay at home from where it is posted. Social media further divides people according to their demographics thus breaking up their opinions into pools of people that are similar to one another further creating a divide within the masses themselves. As a matter of fact the media has not helped to facilitate the discussions within the primary publics but has transformed them into a set of media markets in mass-like society where the media does the following: it gives us information that informs ours experiences especially of places far away which makes it difficult for us to confirm. even if we did fly to other countries it would mostly result in a short-lived experience that would be filtered through our experience that was manufactured back at home through the media.

The media also influences our idea of ourselves by dictating to us our aspirations then giving us techniques for our aspirations and then tells us how to feel in a form of escape dissociating us from our instinct. This way the media disconnects us from genuine human development. The media even penetrates our small scale discussions thus really invading our privacy where they distract us from any real understanding of the real world by focusing on shallow matters such as materialistic desires as opposed to helping us connect to larger issues that are of concern or helping increase rational insights into individual or societal tensions. And if anyone does not trust the media like many do not the power elite will influence those whom we trust so they in turn influence us - thus the mass media is an opinion maker a passive-aggressive way of being authoritative. The standard strategy of manipulation is to make it appear that the people or at least a large group of them really make the decisions. In order to be able to manipulate the public like this the elite must also impose a mass educational system on us that does not cultivate intellect or critical thinking causing us to not be able to translate our individual problems into societal issues and vice versa.

Our education today does not even teach us how to identify if we have issues in the first place let alone what they are. Mills states in regards to this he loses his independence and more importantly he loses the desire to be independent: in fact he does not have a hold on the idea of being an independent individual with his own mind and in his own worked-out way of life. It is not that he likes or does not like this life; it is that the question does not come up sharp and clear so he is not bitter and he is not sweet about conditions and events. He thinks he wants merely to get his share of what is around with as little trouble as he can and with as much fun as possible. mills c. w. 1956 p. 323 according to mills educational institutions have. Become mere elevators of occupational and social ascent and on all levels they have become politically timid.

Moreover in the hands of 'professional educators ' many schools have come to operate on an ideology of 'life adjustment' that encourages happy acceptance of mass ways of life rather than the struggle for individual and public transcendence. mills c. w. 1956 p. 319 so who is the power elite the power elite are the political economic and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. in so far as national events are decided the power elite are those who decide them. mills c. w. the power elite ch.1 1956 they have the most power and prestige and the way they are centralized allows them to constantly collect more wealth to uphold their power wealth which they do not put back into circulation thus short-handing and technically enslaving the masses.

They interchange roles based on connections through side by side work with one another where one entities problem becomes the concern of the other two entities and is quickly responded too with coordinated efforts among the big three political economic and military circles their care for one another is not only rooted in the fact that they each have power only as long as they support one another but also because they indentify with one another because they come from the same schools and social class career are american native born and have parents who also came from the upper strata are typically form the east coast and are chosen by a further code that is not mentioned in academic literature. They have loyalty to one another and not the public where their code of honor rests on codes within their circles; they have no specified duties because they set whatever goals which suit them changing their roles as they see fit essentially putting them above bureaucracy; all the while they assign duties to the masses and create and reinforce a system that does not allow the masses to dissent from their assigned duties. mills c. w. the power elite ch.1 1956 they have turned the economy into a constant war where private corporations rule society turning american capitalism into a military capitalism where the military also called warlords plan war efforts together with the corporations since a capitalistic society needs a lot of resources and low wage labor. This intersection of those who control the major means of production and those who control war has created a pseudo politician that took over the original professional politician a genuine person with civil service skills and integrity who is concerned with the people and not the vested interests. Mills c. w. the power elite ch. 12 1956 given the capacity and centralization of the means of power now available the decisions the power elite make and fail to make carry more consequences for more people than has ever been the case in the world of mankind. mills c. w. the power elite ch. 12 1956 this is a very strong statement. And with this being the case no wonder an epidemic such as the opioid epidemic spiraled out of control the way it did. big pharma is very much part of the power elite.

It is through being medicated that we are first categorized labeled and later stigmatized and this is after our predicaments of illness are nothing but latent function-like outcomes of our systems that are coerced onto us. this is a huge way that they control our identity by breaking it down after which we then willfully allow them to drug us into a further disconnection from our senses. if not then why is it that in a country so highly developed that it has the fastest rate of production and therefore should have the highest standard of living for all so many people need to numb out to a point that they get addicted to opioids another question is why do so many people who used opioids as pain killers for an arm break or some other temporary injury end up getting addicted from such short term use lastly the most shocking question is why are such highly prolific executives smuggling opioids into black markets via legitimate pharmacies i found it interesting that as soon as the public is in agreement at over 57% that pharmaceutical companies should be held responsible for this epidemic all of a sudden the elite who controls the middle man such as the courts and police are supposedly getting arrested. I wonder if this is just for show to make us think that that we live in a democratic society with all the power-elite has the power to do especially with how they control the mass media unless one overpowered the other and decided to kick them out of their group i highly doubt that this arrest is genuine.

I feel this arrest is more of a show to keep the public fooled that justice was served. with the connections the power elite has together with the money they have off shore they could flee and not be found for the rest of their lives. Getting arrested in my opinion is a tactic they use once enough of americans start speaking out against a problem. another question is why do americans not speak out against issues sooner and the answer lies in the text above about how the power elite turn us into a society of masses where our education system does not teach us how to identify if we have issues in the first place let alone what our issues are. If we unknowingly lose our desire for independence and are only concerned with getting by day to day and if we have no avenue to be heard and to act upon our opinions even if we had them then no wonder we are tuned out with what is going on above and beyond with our neighbors and their families. If we trust the media to tell us what is going on then we have no way to know if something dangerous like this is evolving because the power elite will obviously not tell on themselves then we have no choice but to wait until enough people are affected by some issue to the point that one in three people are witnesses to someone experiencing the issue at hand and only then the power elite have no choice but to act like they served justice to those responsible. this is like any other man-made matter where phenomena only lets it get to a certain maximum where in this case the power elite have no choice but to put their current indecency to rest.

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