Big Pharma > Walgreens settles with San Francisco for $230m for opioid crisis

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There is no moral justification for what Walgreens did, or any other Big Pharma company involved in the opioid madness. But then, when has morality ever slowed the bottom line of Big Pharma?

If you ever had the idea that Big Pharma was actually concerned about your health, this should put an end to that delusion. Big Pharma is a moral abyss!

Walgreens to pay San Francisco $230M for its role in city's opioid crisis

By Sheri Walsh

 

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu announces a $230 million settlement with Walgreens on Wednesday from the steps of city hall after a federal court found that the pharmaceutical chain “substantially contributed” to the city's opioid epidemic. Photo courtesy of San Francisco City Attorney's office

May 18 (UPI) -- Walgreens has agreed to pay San Francisco nearly $230 million for its role in the city's opioid crisis, making it the largest award to a local jurisdiction since the beginning of the opioid epidemic.

City Attorney David Chiu announced the settlement Wednesday from the steps of city hall following last year's federal court ruling that Walgreens "substantially contributed" to the opioid crisis in San Francisco.

"Extremely dangerous and addictive opioids were marketed to patients as safe," Chiu told reporters. "We now know that was a blatant lie."

Walgreens will make payments over the next eight years, with the first $57 million to be paid by June of 2024.

"Walgreens over-dispensed opioids without due diligence and failed to report suspicious orders as required by law," Chiu said. "They were more concerned with profit than following their legal obligations ... pressuring their pharmacists to fill, fill, fill."

Chiu's office sued Walgreens, Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers, distributors and dispensers in 2018. Every defendant settled with San Francisco by the end of the trial last year, except for Walgreens.

San Francisco received settlements from manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and Teva, distributors AmerisourceBergen and pharmacy chains CVS and Walmart, among others, according to Chiu.

"We must remember that some of the most profitable companies in the world engineered this public health crisis," Chiu said. "Our litigation has yielded over $350 million in cash payments, fees and benefits to address the opioid crisis ruining the city."

According to Chiu's office, opioid-related overdose deaths in San Francisco jumped nearly 500% between 2014 and 2020, prompting the city to file lawsuits including the complaint against Walgreens.

In August, Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled against the pharmaceutical giant, saying "Walgreens' San Francisco pharmacies received over 1,200,000 'red flag' opioid prescriptions."

"The evidence showed that Walgreens did not provide its pharmacists with sufficient time, staffing or resources to perform due diligence on these prescriptions," the judge wrote.

In a statement Wednesday, Walgreens disputed its liability and said "there is no admission of fault in the settlement agreement," Fraser Engerman, Walgreens' senior director for external relations, said in a statement.

"We never manufactured or marketed opioids, nor did we distribute them to 'pill mills' and 'Internet pharmacies."

No, you just distributed them to people, without concern over what it was doing to them. 

Big Pharma > J&J settle opioid suits for $26 bn; Moderna sued for copyright infringement; Purdue's Owners raked over coals, but no charges for opioid crisis

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Drugmaker to pay record sum in opioid settlements

Johnson & Johnson, along with three distributors, must pay out

to local governments across the US

FILE PHOTO: A pharmacist empties a prescription bottle of opioid painkillers that she filled for a patient at Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, September 11, 2018 © Getty Images / John Tlumacki

Johnson & Johnson, as well as distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson, announced on Friday that they would pay out a combined $26 billion to state and local governments in the US affected by the ongoing opioid epidemic. The payouts, which combined make up the largest opioid settlement in history, will keep the pioneer of these drugs out of court.

The settlement plan was announced amid a raft of opioid lawsuits last year, but depended on enough state and local governments coming on board. On Friday the companies announced that they had secured enough participants and would start distributing the money in April.

According to law firm Motley Rice, more than 20,000 communities will receive payouts from the $26 billion settlement, with 90% of the funds earmarked for “treatment, education, intervention, screening, recovery and prevention efforts that are needed to curb the crisis.” The 3,200 municipalities that brought the litigation against the drug firms cover 90% of the US population.

However, the settlement means that the vast majority of the US will not be able to take further legal action against Johnson & Johnson and the distributors.

Separate lawsuits brought by municipalities in Washington and West Virginia are in the trial phase, and the drug companies earlier this month reached a separate $590 million settlement with more than 400 Native American tribes and organizations.

Opioid addiction has ravaged the United States in recent years. Overdose deaths topped 100,000 annually in 2021, with opioids responsible for more than 75,000 of these deaths, up from 56,000 the year before. According to separate figures from American Families Against Fentanyl, some 78,795 Americans aged between 18 and 45 died from overdosing on this powerful synthetic opioid between 2020 and 2021. Fentanyl, the group claims, kills more 18- to 45-year-olds than suicide, Covid-19, and car accidents, and should be declared a weapon of mass destruction.

While much of the Fentanyl in the US enters the country illicitly, blame for the addiction crisis has been laid at the feet of drugmakers. Two major opioid firms, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Purdue Pharma, have been on the receiving end of multibillion-dollar lawsuits in recent years, but J&J pioneered the development of these drugs back in the 1980s, and in 2015 was the US’ main supplier of the raw ingredients used to make pain pills like Oxycontin.

“As monumental as this accomplishment is, we must remember that we are still only in the beginning phases of this complex litigation,” Motley Rice attorney Joseph Rice wrote in a blog post on Friday. “The opioid supply chain is massive and numerous other companies and parties have yet to answer for their role in creating this crisis of addiction.”

It is very disappointing that the companies responsible for probably more than a million deaths in USA are able to avoid real punishment by paying a fine. Pharmaceutical companies know very well how many people are at risk of death from every medication they produce, and they produce them anyway even when the greatest benefits are to Big Pharma's bank accounts. It's good that some of those benefits are removed, but there should be people going to jail for these atrocities.

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Moderna Hijacked Technology for COVID-19 Vaccine, Lawsuit Alleges

By Jack Phillips

Epoch Times 

March 1, 2022 

Two biotechnology companies filed a lawsuit against Moderna this week and alleged the vaccine manufacturer infringed on patented technology in the development of its commonly used COVID-19 shot.

Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences, the companies, claim in a civil lawsuit that Moderna used “breakthrough technology Arbutus had already created and patented” to create the COVID-19 vaccine such as the lipid nanoparticle delivery system, according to a complaint (pdf) filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware. Genevant is owned by Roivant, a company that licensed the patents in question from Arbutus.

“Moderna was well aware of Arbutus’s LNP patents and licensed them for other product programs, but it chose not to do so for its COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, it attempted to invalidate several of the patents before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and when those efforts largely failed, Moderna simply used the patented technology without paying for it or even asking for a license,” the complaint read.

The two companies alleged that Moderna committed seven counts of patent infringement. They are asking for financial compensation from the company.

In a statement on Monday, Moderna denied the allegations contained in the civil lawsuit.

“Moderna denies these allegations, and will vigorously defend itself against Genevant’s claims in Court,” a Moderna spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “Our COVID-19 vaccine is a product of Moderna’s many years of pioneering mRNA platform research and development, including creation of our own proprietary lipid nanoparticle delivery technology, which has been pivotal to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The statement added: “Further, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1498, Moderna has notified the U.S. government about the accusation of infringement against sales to the U.S. government, so that the U.S. government can protect its rights in defending against any alleged liability to Genevant. ”

With the lawsuit, Genevant and Arbutus said they are not seeking a court injunction because it would “impede the sale, manufacture or distribution of MRNA-1273” in vaccines, said William Collier, the CEO of Arbutus, in a statement.

“However, we seek fair compensation for Moderna’s use of our patented technology that was developed with great effort and at great expense, without which Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine would not have been successful,” Collier continued to say.

COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

In late February, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said that orders of its vaccine rose to $19 billion for 2022 sales, which is up from the $18.5 billion that was announced a month before.

“We believe there’s a high probability that we’re moving into an endemic setting,” Bancel told CNBC last week. “We should still be cautious because as we’ve seen with Delta, which came after Alpha and was more virulent, [it] is always possible to get the more virulent variant of course.”

‘Scum of the earth’: Drug victims face Purdue Pharma owners

By GEOFF MULVIHILL and JENNIFER PELTZ

Today

Cheryl Juaire holds photos of her sons, both of whom died from overdoses, Sean Merrill, left, and Corey Merrill, after making a statement during a hearing in New York, Thursday, March 10, 2022. Victims of opioids and those who have lost loved ones to the addiction crisis are unleashing their emotions on members of the family they blame for fueling the deadly epidemic. Thursday's unusual hearing is being conducted virtually in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. It is giving people the chance to confront members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and tell them about the lasting pain that addiction and overdoses have had in their lives. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

NEW YORK (AP) — Angry, defiant and sometimes tearful, more than two dozen Americans whose lives were upended by the opioid crisis finally had their long-awaited chance Thursday to confront in court some members of the family they blame for fueling it.

They were unsparing as they unleashed decades of frustration and sorrow on members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over the course of a three-hour virtual hearing.

One woman played a recording from when she called 911 to get help for her overdosing son, then called one of the Sacklers the “scum of the earth.” Several displayed pictures of loved ones who died too soon because of their addictions. Many spoke about forgiveness, with some trying to find it — and others definitely not.

“I hope that every single victim’s face haunts your every waking moment and your sleeping ones, too,” said Ryan Hampton, of Las Vegas, who has been in recovery for seven years after an addiction that began with an OxyContin prescription to treat knee pain led to overdoses and periods of homelessness.

Dede Yoder poses for a picture with a photo of her son, Chris Yoder, after making a statement during a hearing in New York on March 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

“You poisoned our lives and had the audacity to blame us for dying,” he said. “I hope you hear our names in your dreams. I hope you hear the screams of the families who find their loved ones dead on the bathroom floor. I hope you hear the sirens. I hope you hear the heart monitor as it beats along with a failing pulse.”

The unusual hearing was conducted virtually in U.S. Bankruptcy Court at the suggestion of a mediator who helped broker a deal that could settle thousands of lawsuits against Purdue over the toll of opioids, generating billions for the fight against the addiction and overdose crisis and giving Sackler family members protection from lawsuits.

Appearing via audio was Richard Sackler, the former Purdue president and board chair who has said the company and family bear no responsibility for the opioid crisis; he is a son of Raymond Sackler, one of the three brothers who in the 1950s bought the company that became Purdue Pharma. Attending on video were Theresa Sackler, a British dame and wife of the late Mortimer D. Sackler, another of the brothers; and David Sackler, Richard Sackler’s son.

Theresa’s and David’s expressions remained largely neutral as people spoke on video about the pain of losing children after years of trying to get them adequate treatment, about their own journeys through addiction, and about caring for babies born into withdrawal and screaming in pain.

Under court rules, the Sacklers were not allowed to respond to the victims, who were selected by lawyers for creditors in the case. Some victims spoke from a law office in New York; others were at their homes or offices around the country.

Jannette Adams told of her late husband, Dr. Thomas Adams, who was a physician and church deacon in Mississippi and a missionary in Africa and Haiti. He became addicted to opioids after pharmaceutical representatives pitched them, she said. After a terrible decline, he died in 2015.

“I’m angry, I’m pissed, but I move on,” Adams said. “Because our society lost a person who could have made so many more contributions. ... You took so much from us, but we plan to, through our faith in God, move forward.”

Tiffinee Scott poses for a picture with a photo of her daughter, Tiarra Renee Brown-Lewis, after making a statement during a hearing in New York on March 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Kristy Nelson played for the Sacklers a tense recording of a 911 call in which she summoned police to her home the day her son Bryan died of an opioid overdose. The dispatcher asked whether his skin had gone blue; she said it was white. She said she replays the call in her mind daily.

Thursday was Richard Sackler’s 77th birthday, according to public records. Later this month, Nelson said, she and her husband will visit the cemetery on what would have been Bryan’s 34th birthday.

“I understand today’s your birthday, Richard, how will you be celebrating?” she said. “I guarantee it won’t be in the cemetery. ... You have truly benefitted from the death of children. You are scum of the earth.”

Her words echoed a 2001 email from Richard Sackler, made public during lawsuits over OxyContin, in which he referred to people with addiction as “scum of the earth.”

Jenny Scully, a nurse in New York, gave birth in 2014 while on OxyContin and other opioids prescribed years earlier when she was dealing with both breast cancer and injuries from an accident. She was told her baby would be healthy, Scully said, but the little girl has had a lifetime of physical, developmental and emotional difficulties.

“You have destroyed so many lives,” she said, pulling her daughter into view. “Take a good look at this beautiful little girl you robbed of the person she could have been.”

Kara Trainor poses for a picture with a photo of her son, Riley, 11, after making a statement during a hearing in New York on March 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The forum was unconventional for the White Plains, New York, courtroom of Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who on Wednesday gave tentative approval to key elements of a plan to settle thousands of lawsuits against the company.

Other drugmakers and wholesalers and even a consulting company have also been settling lawsuits over the opioid crisis, which has been linked two more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades. But Purdue’s case stands out because it was an early player with OxyContin and is privately owned.

The settlement is estimated to be worth at least $10 billion over time. It calls for the Sacklers to contribute $5.5 billion to $6 billion over 17 years to fight the opioid crisis. That’s an increase of more than $1 billion over a previous version rejected by another judge on appeal. Most of the money would be used for efforts to combat the crisis, but $750 million would go directly to victims or their survivors.

The overall settlement, which still requires actions by multiple courts to take effect, provides more than $150 million for Native American tribes and over $100 million for medical monitoring and payments for children born in opioid withdrawal.

The plan also calls for family members to give up ownership of the company so it can become a new entity, Knoa Pharma, with its profits dedicated to stemming the epidemic. In exchange, Sackler family members would get protection from lawsuits over opioids.

The family also agreed not to oppose any efforts to remove the Sackler name from cultural and educational institutions they have supported and to make public a larger cache of company documents.

Purdue Pharma starting selling OxyContin, a pioneering extended-release prescription painkiller, in 1996. At the same time, Purdue and other drug companies funded efforts to get doctors and other prescribers to think differently about opioids — suggesting they be used for some pain conditions for which the potent drugs were previously considered off limits.

Over the decades, there were waves of fatal overdoses, first associated with prescription drugs and then, as prescriptions became harder to obtain and some drugs became harder to manipulate for a quick high, from heroin. More recently, fentanyl and similar drugs have become the biggest killer.

Purdue has twice pleaded guilty to criminal charges, but no Sacklers have been charged with crimes. There are no indications any such charges are forthcoming, although seven U.S. senators last month asked the Department of Justice to consider charges.

The Sacklers have never unequivocally apologized. Last week, they released a statement saying in part, “While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people suffering from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many families and communities.”

Following the hearing, a spokesperson for Mortimer Sackler’s descendants said the family would not make a statement; a representative of Raymond Sackler’s side of the family did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The family of the other brother, Arthur, sold its share of Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue before OxyContin was developed.

Several speakers noted the lack of an apology, and some called for prosecutors to pursue criminal investigations.

“When you created OxyContin, you created so much loss for so many people,” said Kay Scarpone, who lost her son Joseph, a former Marine, to addiction a month before his 26th birthday. “I’m outraged that you haven’t owned up to the crisis that you’ve created.”

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Drug Company Founder Convicted of Bribing Doctors with Money, Strippers to Sell More Fentanyl

Corruption is Everywhere - Certainly in Big Pharma

Case exposed kick-backs in the millions, lap dances as incentives

The Associated Press 

Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor leaves federal court in Boston in January. Kapoor was found guilty

Thursday in a scheme to bribe doctors to boost sales of a highly addictive fentanyl spray meant for cancer

patients with severe pain. (Steven Senne/Associated Press)

A pharmaceutical company founder accused of paying doctors millions of dollars in bribes to prescribe a highly addictive fentanyl spray was convicted Thursday in a case that exposed such marketing tactics as using a stripper-turned-sales-rep to give a physician a lap dance.

John Kapoor, the 76-year-old former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, was found guilty of racketeering conspiracy after 15 days of jury deliberations. Four former employees of the Arizona-based company, including the former exotic dancer, were also convicted.

Some of the most sensational evidence in the months-long federal trial included a video of employees dancing and rapping around an executive dressed as a giant bottle of the powerful spray Subsys, and testimony about how the company made a habit of hiring attractive women as sales representatives.

Federal prosecutors portrayed the case as part of the government's effort to go after those it views as responsible for fuelling the nation's deadly opioid crisis.

"This is a landmark prosecution that vindicated the public's interest in staunching the flow of opioids into our homes and streets," Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said in a statement.

The convictions could embolden federal authorities to bring more cases against top executives of opioid manufactures, said Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

One of Kapoor's lawyers, Brian T. Kelly. Kapoor's defence team say they will continue to fight to clear their client's name.

(Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press)

"Paying a fine or even civil litigation is inadequate if we want to deter corporations from killing people in their pursuit of profit," Kolodny said.

Opioid overdoses claimed nearly 400,000 lives in the U.S. between 1999 and 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 2 million people are addicted to the drugs, which include both prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and illegal drugs such as heroin.

The Public Health Agency of Canada says there were more than 10,300 deaths in Canada from apparent opioid-related overdose between January 2016 and September 2018. 

Packets of fentanyl mostly in powder form and methamphetamine. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Reuters)

Kapoor and the others were accused of scheming to bribe doctors across the U.S. to boost sales of Subsys and misleading insurers to get payment approved for the drug, which is meant for cancer patients in severe pain and can cost as much as $19,000 US a month, according to prosecutors. The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking engagements that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors.

The charges carry up to 20 years in prison.

"We will continue the fight to clear Dr. Kapoor's name," defence attorney Beth Wilkinson said in a statement. She said the long deliberations prove it was "far from an open-and-shut case."

A former sales representative testified that regional sales manager Sunrise Lee once gave a lap dance at a Chicago nightclub to a doctor whom Insys was pushing to write more prescriptions. Lee's lawyer said she will challenge the verdict.

Jurors also watched the rap video, which was shown at a national meeting in 2015 to motivate sales reps to push doctors to prescribe higher doses of the drug. At the end of the video, the person dressed up as the bottle takes off his costume and is revealed to be then-vice president of sales, Alec Burlakoff.

Burlakoff pleaded guilty and testified against Kapoor. Burlakoff told the jury that he met Lee at the strip club where she worked and recruited her to join the company despite her lack of pharmaceutical industry experience because he believed she would be willing to help carry out the plan to pay off doctors.

A former CEO of the company, Michael Babich, also pleaded guilty and testified against his colleagues. He said Insys recruited sales reps who were "easy on the eyes" because doctors didn't want an "unattractive person to walk in their door."

Fake oxycodone pills seized by the Manitoba RCMP in February containing fentanyl. (Manitoba RCMP/Twitter)

Kapoor's attorney sought to shift the blame onto Burlakoff, who she said was cutting side deals with doctors. Wilkinson argued that Burlakoff and Babich were lying about Kapoor in an attempt to save themselves.

Kapoor's lawyers also argued that prosecutors were unfairly blaming Insys for fuelling the drug crisis, noting that the drug makes up a tiny fraction of the prescription opioid market.

Several doctors have been convicted in other cases of participating in a kickback scheme. A number of states have sued the Insys, which also agreed last year to pay $150 million US to settle a federal investigation into inappropriate sales.

Insys said in an emailed statement that the "the actions of a select few former employees" are not indicative of the company's work today.

Trump’s Drug Control Pick Abdicates After Opioid Scandal

Corruption is Everywhere

President Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Tom Marino, has withdrawn his name from consideration following whistleblower claims that he pushed a law that protects opioid drug distributors

“Rep. Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar. Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!” President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, two days after CBS’ 60 Minutes program featured several former employees of the Drug Enforcement Administration saying that the legislation that Marino (R-Pennsylvania) championed last year made it all but “impossible” for the government to go after unscrupulous distributors of addictive opioid pills.

The Justice Department, under which the DEA operates, said Tuesday it will review the law’s impact on the government’s enforcement powers.

The bill, called Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, was signed into law by president Obama last year, after it was passed by both chambers of Congress. Critics say it effectively stripped the DEA of its authority to investigate suspicious transactions as the government is now required to meet a higher standard before taking enforcement actions.

In the CBS program, former head of the DEA's Office of Diversion Control Joe Rannazzisi also suggested that Marino put pressure on the DEA to get rid of him last year, after Rannazzisi accused Marino and the bill’s co-sponsor Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) of protecting distributors he was investigating.

Marino and Blackburn wrote the DOJ inspector general, demanding that Rannazzisi be investigated for trying to "intimidate the United States Congress." Soon after, Rannazzisi was stripped of his responsibilities. He went from supervising 600 people to supervising none - so he resigned, Rannazzisi told CBS.

Marino and Blackburn should be investigated for possible corruption, and the DOJ Inspector General should be fired for giving in to questionable pressure from Congress. - just my humble opinion!

Last month, Trump nominated Marino to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In August, the president said the opioid epidemic was a “national emergency,” after his Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis reported that the US faces the death toll equal to “September 11th every three weeks” as opioid abuse claims the lives of up to 142 Americans every day.

But Trump has yet to formally declare the emergency status, which would then unlock additional resources to fight the epidemic.

“We are going to be doing that next week... It’s a very important step. And to get to that step, a lot of work has to be done, and it’s time-consuming work,” Trump said at a news conference Monday.

Former DEA officials featured in the CBS program also alleged that their bosses at the agency during the Obama administration ‘shut off’ investigations into large distributors of addictive opioid pills, even when there was ample evidence of suspicious dealings. The drug industry used their money and influence to pressure top lawyers at the DEA, Rannazzisi said.

The ex-employees said one of the reasons for the roadblocks was the “revolving door” between the DEA and the drug industry, as a number of the administration’s top lawyers landed lobbying jobs for the pharmaceutical companies and drug distributors upon leaving the government, including the former DEA attorney who wrote the legislation for which Marino is now in hot water.

It would seem corruption is not confined to 3rd world countries. Who else thinks there needs to be a full-scale investigation into the lobbying of Congress?

Opioids, a Mass Killer We’re Meeting With a Shrug

About as many Americans are expected to die this year of drug overdoses as died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined

Nicholas Kristof

Credit Dominick Reuter/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For more than 100 years, death rates have been dropping for Americans — but now, because of opioids, death rates are rising again. We as a nation are going backward, and drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50.

“There’s no question that there’s an epidemic and that this is a national public health emergency,” Dr. Leana Wen, the health commissioner of Baltimore, told me. “The number of people overdosing is skyrocketing, and we have no indication that we’ve reached the peak.”

Yet our efforts to address this scourge are pathetic.

We responded to World War II with the storming of Normandy, and to Sputnik with our moon shot. Yet we answer this current national menace with … a Republican plan for health care that would deprive millions of insurance and lead to even more deaths!

More on President Trump’s fumbling of this problem in a moment. But it’s bizarre that Republicans should be complacent about opioids, because the toll is disproportionately in red states — and it affects everyone.

Mary Taylor, the Republican lieutenant governor of Ohio and now a candidate for governor, has acknowledged that both her sons, Joe and Michael, have struggled with opioid addiction, resulting in two overdoses at home, urgent calls for ambulances and failed drug rehab efforts. Good for her for speaking up.

It should be a national scandal that only 10 percent of Americans with opioid problems get treatment. This reflects our failed insistence on treating opioids as a criminal justice problem rather than as a public health crisis.

A Times investigation published this month estimated that more than 59,000 Americans died in 2016 of drug overdoses, in the largest annual jump in such deaths ever recorded in the U.S. One reason is the spread of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is cheap and potent, leading to overdoses.

Another bad omen: As a nation, we’re still hooked on prescription painkillers. Last year, there were more than 236 million prescriptions written for opioids in the United States — that’s about one bottle of opioids for every American adult.

Even with all that’s at stake, there are three reasons to doubt that Trump will confront the problem.

First, Trump and Republicans in Congress seem determined to repeal Obamacare, which provides for addiction treatment, and slash Medicaid. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the G.O.P. House plan would result in an additional 23 million Americans being uninsured in a decade — and thus less able to get drug treatment. Other, more technical elements of the G.O.P. plan would also result in less treatment.

Second, Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, last month seemed to belittle the medication treatments for opioid addiction that have the best record, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions still seems to think we can jail our way out of the problem.

Third, Trump’s main step has been to appoint Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey to lead a task force to investigate opioid addiction. But we needn’t waste more time investigating, for we know what to do — and in any case Christie talks a good game but bungled the issue in his home state.

Among experts, there’s overwhelming evidence of what works best: medication in conjunction with counseling. This doesn’t succeed in every case, but it does reduce deaths and improve lives. It also saves public money, because a result is fewer emergency room visits and inpatient hospital stays. So the question isn’t whether we can afford treatment for all people fighting addiction, but whether we can afford not to provide it.

The bottom line is that we need a major national public health initiative to treat as many Americans abusing drugs as possible, with treatment based on science and evidence. We also need to understand that drug overdoses are symptoms of deeper malaise — “deaths of despair,” in the words of Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton University, stemming from economic woes — and seek to address the underlying issues.

Above all, let’s show compassion. Addiction is a disease, like diabetes and high blood pressure. We would never tell diabetics to forget medication and watch their diets and exercise more — and we would be aghast if only 10 percent of diabetics were getting lifesaving treatment.

Innumerable people with addictions whom I’ve interviewed haunt me. One was a nurse who became dependent on prescription painkillers and was fired when she was caught stealing painkillers from a hospital. She became homeless and survived by providing sex to strangers in exchange for money or drugs.

She wept as she told me her story, for she was disgusted with what she had become — but we as a society should be disgusted by our own collective complacency, by our refusal to help hundreds of thousands of neighbors who are sick and desperate for help.