When Purdue Pharma started marketing OxyContin as safer and less addictive than Percocet and other opiates, the Appalachian states were among the hardest hit. What started as taking painkillers turned into prescription drug addiction and abuse and, now, the annual deaths from prescription drugs in Tennessee equal that of murders. In fact, considering the fraudulent marketing that started the whole thing, it’s hard to think of the prescription drug problem as anything less. Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee citizens and authorities are in an uproar - struggling to provide the education, law enforcement, prescription drug monitoring systems and drug rehab facilities needed to handle the problem.

The former Purdue executives who pled guilty to misleading doctors and the general public and started this epidemic got off easy - they paid millions of dollars, but the salaries for positions like that are very high and, chances are, the fines didn’t make much of a dent in their personal wealth.

But lives are ruined all over the U.S, families are ruined, and lives are lost - and it will continue for some time to come.  Drug rehab is the only solution for those already addicted - let’s hope other efforts pay off to curb the problem in the future.

If this devastation had been carried out by drug dealers, cartels, or terrorists, the country would be all over it like white on rice.  And we’d be jailing the perps as fast as we could find them. But the Purdue execs are right this minute probably sitting in their very nice living rooms while drug rehab specialists, law enforcement officials, community leaders and parents and family members are trying to save the lives of thousands of people.  Justice is often hard to come by.

If you or someone you care about is addicted to or abusing OxyContin or other prescription drugs, get help in a drug rehab program fast. Don’t let the bad guys win.

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