Buh-bye, Johnson & Johnson.
Aesop has a fine rant about this and you should go right now and read it. I particularly like this part:
It will start with J&J ceasing all opiate sales to Oklahoma, in perpetuity.
(Hint: they should institute that policy tomorrow. Then refer the howling from hundreds of thousands of agonized senior citizens to Judge Fucktard, and post his home phone number and that of the OK AG on the J&J website for complaints.)
Then every other drug company should follow suit, and will.
His point that this will end up driving firearms manufacturers out of business hits center mass as well.
The one thing that I would add is that this is the modus operandi we should expect from the government: they are incompetent to do their assigned task (win the stupid War On Drugs; sure, it's unwinable but they're the ones who want to fight that battle so this is on them). Rather than get better at their job, they look for someone innocent to blame while they shake down cash and prizes that is fed right back into their patronage mill.
Pretty sweet scam, right there. It would have a medieval robber baron taking notes. Of course, the problem is the same as that faced by the robber baron: you steal half of the merchant goods passing by your castle and soon there won't be any merchant goods passing by your castle. It's killing the goose that lays golden eggs.
The price of prescription opioids is fixin' to skyrocket, just like the price of cigarettes skyrocketed after the tobacco settlement of the 1990s. Poorpeople will have to choose whether to eat or to live in pain. Some will decide to go to the local dealer for the street fare because it will be a penny on the dollar compared with the script their Doc writes. Some of these will OD.
Nice going, Oklahoma. You've just about fucked up the situation in every possible way imaginable.
So Aesop, can we now declare victory on the stupid War On Drugs and bring the troops home? Or should we keep burning the village down to save it?
The one thing that I would add is that this is the modus operandi we should expect from the government: they are incompetent to do their assigned task (win the stupid War On Drugs; sure, it's unwinable but they're the ones who want to fight that battle so this is on them). Rather than get better at their job, they look for someone innocent to blame while they shake down cash and prizes that is fed right back into their patronage mill.
Pretty sweet scam, right there. It would have a medieval robber baron taking notes. Of course, the problem is the same as that faced by the robber baron: you steal half of the merchant goods passing by your castle and soon there won't be any merchant goods passing by your castle. It's killing the goose that lays golden eggs.
The price of prescription opioids is fixin' to skyrocket, just like the price of cigarettes skyrocketed after the tobacco settlement of the 1990s. Poorpeople will have to choose whether to eat or to live in pain. Some will decide to go to the local dealer for the street fare because it will be a penny on the dollar compared with the script their Doc writes. Some of these will OD.
Nice going, Oklahoma. You've just about fucked up the situation in every possible way imaginable.
So Aesop, can we now declare victory on the stupid War On Drugs and bring the troops home? Or should we keep burning the village down to save it?
8 comments:
Aesop's rant is center-target perfect.
BP, the price of prescription opioids isn't gonna skyrocket. J&J will just stop making them. It'll be easier to find unobtainium. It's far easier to stop making a troublesome product than to try to use the courts to fight for the legal ability to make one.
J&J has vowed to appeal. If they do, and a judge with more than 1 operating brain cell reviews the case and the evidence in a less politically-charged venue (is there such a thing?), the decision may be reversed.
But I won't hold my breath... molon labe...
Not so fast, BP. You’re cheating. Let’s have a little honesty around here.
If you look at this, it’s a problem with the judiciary, not the war. The judge in this case, needs to be fired off a catapult. That is an entirely separate issue from the war on drugs.
No.
This isn't the War On Drugs, nor any part of it, and you bloody well know better.
This is a fucktard state AG going after the product that didn't do it, and punishing the people not responsible. Exactly like going after my rifles and yours every time some fucktard loses his mind.
Which does not, therefore, prove that laws against mass murder are bad for society.
That's a War on Sanity, in both cases.
It has as much to do with fighting a drug war as disappearing socks has to do with the Underpants Gnome.
This isn't intended to make drugs less available, though as I said, it will shoot legal Rx availability right in the ass.
(It will do Jack and Shit for heroin and carfentanil OD deaths, in Okiehoma or anywhere else.)
Watch and see if Merck, Bayer, et al don't cut off the Okie state's legal opiates overnight. They should, and it would be hilarious to behold.
The only reason this was pursued at all was because they tried it with tobacco, and it worked.
But the end game here will undo all products, if it's allowed to stand. If it is, were I a resident of OK, I'd put the AG at the top of my short list of People Who Need A Rope & A Lamppost Come The Sportiness, and not metaphorically. he's a menace to civilization, and should be impeached, prosecuted, and jailed for life, for a host of reasons, just based on pursuing this case.
(Side note, to anyone thereabouts: What in hell goes on in Oklahoma? Are people there too busy doinking their cousins to pay attention, or all they all high on heroin, or is it something else?
Califrutopia has an excuse: we have 10M illegals driving the Dumocrat bus here, and nothing but waiting for gravity to work to undo our nonsense when it all falls in a heap here, and we become Calizuela. WTH is OK's excuse here? I'm asking...)
This sort of idiocy undoes civilization like pulling a zipper.
It does not, ergo, show that heroin should be distributed free for the asking at the five and dime.
That's a non-sequitir for the record books.
Glen and Aesop, this is as much a part of the War On Drugs as Civilian Asset Forfeiture is (shady prosecutors shaking folks down for cash and prizes). One of the things I repeatedly point out is the constellation of various infringements on our freedoms from this whole bloody business. This is just another example ("Overdose deaths! Evil corporations!").
The fact that it's used to cover up the utter failure of the Organs Of The State to actually accomplish their stated goals is just the roadmap for what's coming from them next.
Aesop, you're 100% correct - it worked with tobacco and so they're going here. Not sure what will be next, but there absolutely will be something next. There's no winning this war, and the constant escalations end up targeting us. And to your question about what's up with Oklahoma? Nothing - it's the Laboratory Of Democracy figuring out how to screw the population out of more cash. It was random that they were first (IIRC, there are over a thousand lawsuits like this from all over). Okie was first but sure as God made little green apples they won't be the last.
Giving money and power to the Government is like giving booze and car keys to a teenager. Nothing good will come from it, but nothing gives money and power to the Government like the War On Drugs.
Will Rogers used to joke that "The only sure thing is death and taxes but death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." I would say he is mistaken.
Actually, it's not the War On (Some) Drugs.
Hate to break it to you, but this is just government taxing legalized opiates. Which, IIRC, was your idea of how we should handle the whole thing. Remember that when you pay your share of this settlement every time you buy a box of Band-Aids. Forever.
Yet again, if this was a war, they'd have seized J&J in total, frog-marched the CEO into federal court, indicted him for RICO and drug violations, and then executed him.
(Of course, that's assuming they could have actually proven any part of their case. It's much easier when the judge decides settled law, jurisprudential standards, and rules of evidence are just impediments to wealth redistribution decreed by the unelected Nazgul and their minions.)
But they aren't fighting any such war, and never have. That would have involved seizing the assets of every convicted drug dealer forever. Instead, they're taxing J&J to make up for the taxes that heroin dealers and fentanyl smugglers don't pay.
Which is exactly like putting an excise tax on everybody's ammo to pay for the injuries and murders that 99.99% of all legal gun owners never commit. It's the same reason the BATFE never goes after actual criminal gun runners and criminals who use guns during crimes, instead spending 99.9% of their enforcement efforts, time, and budget harassing FFL dealers and ordinary citizens.
In order to call this a war, or anything like it, the Doolittle Raiders would have had to bomb the Boeing plant in Seattle in 1942. Because going after Japan was too hard.
That's why the correct identification of this process is as exactly the "legalize and tax it" solution you favored.
So apparently you're not so sanguine about that approach now, when we see how the government goes about that...
Hate to break it to you, but this is just government taxing legalized opiates.
Bollocks. Name a single Legislature that voted for a tax, or a single Governor who signed it into law. It's extortion by the Government is all it is, and you quite rightly pointed out the "tar and feather" options. Me, I think that horsewhipping them all through the public square would best be described as "a good start".
Oh, and as to my proposals to tax it to fund rehab, I have $100 that says that precisely zero people "hooked on prescription opioids" will get government funded rehab from this. I'll even give you odds.
It won't happen this time - J&J is beholden to lots of stockholders and may have ample resources to fight it - but I bet it'll be a topic of extremely quiet discussion among a very select group at J&J, and a thought experiment for a lot of other business owners: shut it down.
"We've examined ths issue from every vantage point, and with X millions/billions hanging over our heads with these lawsuits and the promise of many more lawsuits to come which will use this one as precedent, the conclusion is inescapable: the company is declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effective immediately, liquidating all assets and ceasing operations as of today. The XYZ Corporation no longer exists, as of this moment. Have a nice day."
I'd think discussions will be held in a lot of board rooms over the next months about just that kind of an exit plan, especially among small and medium size businesses, and it wouldn't surprise me to see the trigger pulled the same day the suit gets filed, or maybe a couple days before if a company's intelligence operation is good enough. The Lefties, and their accomplices in gummint, will treat it as a Big Win, back pats and drinks all around, and not give a moment's thought about a medical market with zero painkillers available, a commodities market with no toilet paper, or an energy outfit with no gasoline to distribute or sell. Weyerhauser is big enough, and diverse enough, that they can dodge a lot of bullets, but Fred & Sally's Corner Market or the local Ford dealership franchisee ain't, once a Michael Mann type "proves" wiping with Smooth & Fluffy causes butt cancer; even an outfit the size of Walmart has demonstrated a strong preference for running & hiding when the wind changes.
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