CONTACT: Jerry McGlothlin 919-437-0001 jerry@specialguests.com
Intro: Whistleblower against Big Pharma Bruce Boise, having worked as a top pharmaceuticals sales manager for 24 years, did not intend to become a whistleblower nor did he fully understand what he was getting himself into when he encouraged his company to stop illegally marketing off-label use of prescription drugs.
He ended up losing his job, getting black-balled by the industry, and even becoming homeless after going through a million dollars in assets and savings. He feared all of his sacrifices and efforts would lead to nothing being done to the company that contributed to our nation’s deadly opioid overdose epidemic.
Bruce Boise tells his story in an explosive new book, Cold Comfort: One Man’s Struggle to Stop the Illegal Marketing of Powerful Opioid Drugs and Save Lives (June 15, 2020), serving as inspiration to all future whistleblowers while warning the nation of the dangerous practices of the pharmaceutical and medical industries and the shortcomings of the FDA to adequately protect the American public. We welcome our guest, Bruce Boise.
Q&A:
- Bruce, how is it that a huge pharmaceutical company would put themselves at risk by illegally marketing off-use of prescription drugs?
Answer: Big Pharma all too willingly accepts fines, even ones in the hundreds of millions of dollars, as merely the price of doing business when it knows it can make tens of billions from illegally marketing its products.
- Even if it means people die in the process?
Answer: Even if people die. It’s too often profits before people with some companies.
- Tell us about what you believe are inappropriate relationships and interactions between Big Pharma, the legal system and medical community, and how this whole thing blew into a huge opioid crisis.
Answer: A ‘perfect storm’ grew out of a pharmaceutical company, its aggressive leadership, its enthusiastic employees, soaring profits, and its well-meaning customers – the doctors who followed bad advice and wrote prescriptions that put some of their patients at unnecessary risk.
- Tell us about your life as a whistleblower. Did you actually wear a wire while undercover?
Answer: Yes. It included wearing a wire to help the United State Justice Department settle a $425 million case against the big pharma company, Cephalon/Teva.
- How did Cephalon/Teva’s marketing of off-label marketing of its drugs lead to the nation’s increase in opioid addiction and overdose deaths?
Answer: Because Cephalon itself became addicted, not to their drugs, but to the ever-increasing sales profits it could not maintain through legal on-label sales of the pharmaceutical drugs it owned. Cephalon was fined $425 million for off-label fraud but the company generated $30 billion in sales from the practice. And it is common knowledge that there is virtually no jail time for white collar crime. Morals aside, from a risk-reward perspective, it was worth the risk.
- What is your advice to would-be whistleblowers of all industries and what needs to be done to better protect them from retaliation?
Answer: Count the cost of the abuse you likely will sustain, examine your moral compass and as the recent lead character in the recent Disney movie, Frozen 2, said, “Do the next right thing.”
- Let’s talk about Covid-19. We hear a lot about off-label drug usage to treat it, such as with hydroxychloroquine. Is this a good idea?
Answer: Off label is a very useful tool in the armamentarium of the physicians, not to be ‘weaponized’ by big pharma or politicians. Hydroxychloroquine has been around some 40 years and so the risks involved in taking the drug are well known based on its package insert (PI). In the case of the opioids such as fentanyl there were few trials based on safety issues such as addiction. Big Pharma promoted the drug off-label knowing there was weak data on the safety of the drug especially for patients who were not terminally ill with cancer. What kind of information on addiction would you gather from a patient population that was dead within months of taking it? Scientific data is needed to support off label medical conditions that are to be treated. The FDA needs to streamline the app process so good drug practices are followed including dosing, side effects and in all manner of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics.
- Your new book is called Cold Comfort: One Man’s Struggle to Stop the Illegal Marketing of Powerful Opioid Drugs and Save Lives. Tell us about your book and where we may find it.
“It turns out we were not just peddling drugs that could hurt a few people if mis-prescribed. No, it turned out that part of what my colleagues and I were doing back then, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was unknowingly, unwittingly, sowing the seeds of what became perhaps America’s biggest health challenge of the era: the opioid epidemic. Some of those feel-good painkillers weren’t just making people feel good and weren’t just killing pain. They were killing people. Looking back, I wonder whether there are things that could have been done – by me but especially by the authorities – back then to cut the head off of the opioid snake just as it was slithering its way into American society and before it caused hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths.” – Excerpted from Cold Comfort
About Bruce Boise…
Bruce Boise worked for nearly 24 years in the pharmaceutical industry, first as a hospital representative, and then as a sales manager in the Great Lakes region. After losing his job as a whistleblower, he spent portions of the next 17 years working with the United states Justice department on two separate False Claims Act cases against his former employer, Cephalon/Teva, a neuro bio-tech company.
His story is told in a new book, Cold Comfort: One Man’s Struggle to Stop the Illegal Marketing of Powerful Opioid Drugs and Save Lives. He was featured on CBS-TV’s Whistleblower.
Boise, after exposing how Cephalon was illegally marketing off-label prescription drug usage, waited many years to see justice after wearing a wire, losing his job, becoming homeless, and black-balled by the pharmaceutical industry. At one point, he was flipping burgers for ten bucks an hour just to get by. Cephalon settled the case many years later with the United States for $425 million in fines and damages.
Today he advocates on behalf of whistleblowers and helps educate the public on the importance of supporting all whistleblowers.
Boise began working at Carter-Wallace in 1980. He earned the pharmaceutical company’s highest sales award, President’s Club, several times during his 16-year tenure. He often ranked in the company’s top 20% in sales and trained field and hopeful sales representatives. He developed their first million-dollar territory and ranked as the top salesperson in the nation of Felbatol, an anti-epileptic drug.
In 1996 he went to work for Cephalon, Inc., and within two years he ranked third in the company nationally in sales of all in-line products. He worked with Medtronic to co-market several products.
Among his accomplishments in working seven years with Cephalon, Inc., he developed a team of 11 reports from a six-state region, including Chicago and Detroit; hired extensively throughout the nation during several expansions; spoke at numerous industry conventions to build product awareness; achieved $18 million in sales of a new product launch; and leading his sales region to be ranked No. 1 nationally.
Boise earned a Bachelor of Arts from The Ohio State University and did graduate work in Geo Engineering at Akron Community.
For more information, please consult www.bruceboise.com. He lived in Melbourne and Key West, Florida for a decade but the Ohio native has lived most his life in Columbus, Ohio.
MORE for longer interviews:
1. What inspired you to pen your new book? I wanted to stop illegal marketing of potentially dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and protect the American people. I think it is important to expose just how prevalent and life-threatening off-label marketing is and that this marked the beginning of the opioid crisis. I hope the book also empowers consumers to ask more questions and stand up against fraud of any kind.
2. What was the drug company that you worked for, Cephalon, doing that was so wrong? Cephalon was marketing their products off-label, which is illegal. Doctors can prescribe a medication for an off-label indication, but pharma companies cannot promote a drug for off-label indications. In the package insert the drug has indications that the drug has been tested with controlled studies. Its approval by FDA is based on these extensive studies. Drug A is approved for epilepsy, but not approved for a mood disorder. Drug B is approved for “breakthrough” cancer pain, but not approved for migraines. It’s very dangerous to promote a drug for a medical condition when patients could overdose.
3. And this led to an explosive crisis with opioid addiction in the United States? In the early 2000s, three companies were selling their products off-label that were controlled drugs, (schedule 2). Purdue-Oxycontin/ J&J- Duragesic/ Cephalon-Actiq. Overdoses jumped in America because these drugs were being prescribed to high-risk patient populations or “drug naive patients.” (e.g. migraine patients.)
“Opioid-involved overdose deaths rose from 21,088 in 2010 to 47,600 in 2017 and remained steady in 2018 with 46,802 deaths.” (NIH)
4. Your book takes a look at America’s War Against Drugs and shows who you believe is really culpable: government (legislators, judicial, FDA), big pharma, physicians, and pharmacists. What is the solution to this deadly problem? We need a multi-organizational approach to the opioid crisis (drug addiction). We need more rehab organizations for the mental and physical addiction. We need more family organizations and social services for the family members and their collateral damages.
These key groups play a critical role to fight the drug pandemic:
Government – We need to have laws that force government departments to be more immediately responsive to fraud, not 10 years later. We must limit the big pharma lobbyist and money going to Congress.
Judicial – Limit the judges that are appointed to the bench that have had experience in leading big pharma’s legal teams. Conflict of interest is rampant.
FDA – Appointments to the FDA must stop being influenced by Big Pharma. We need to draw from the science side or research side of the medical community.
Physicians/Pharmacists – Just make it uncomfortable professionally for them to practice on the wrong side of fraud-like activities.
5. Do they each have blood on their hands? Yes, in some measure they all do, and each of them will have to answer for their own misdeeds. There are many physicians/pharmacists that are doing the right thing and have objected to this fraudulent activity, but there has to be more than objection. People need to go to jail for this. Paying large fines to the government is not enough and is often just a cost of doing business.
6. So what did you do about this problem? I wanted to fix it, stop the illegal marketing so patients wouldn’t be harmed (or overdose), and save my job, which I loved. I went to my boss and boss’s boss to report the fraud. Once I realized that the company was okay with this fraud I had to decide to go outside the company. At first I did not know how or whom to contact about fraud in my company. It was a phone call from a nurse that had a contact in the FBI that got everything started. That’s how I finally wore a wire.
7. Were you afraid to wear a wire and testify in court? Did you fear for your life? Yes to all of those. I was told if I do a really good job with helping the government, I may not have to testify in court. My biggest fear was losing everything that I had worked for me. I knew I was going to take a big hit and had written about it in my journals, but I did not realize how bad it really was going to be for me and my family. My losses were horrendous…I also worried if physical harm would come to me for what I did, or worse to my family. Even when the settlement came, I then worried about someone retaliating against me or my family for what I did.
8. Did you really know what you were getting yourself into? Wouldn’t it be easier to just look away, or more lucrative to join in? Not really what I set out to do. It’s not like you think it through, “Oh I am going to be a whistleblower.” At the time I got the call from the nurse friend that had the FBI contact, I was just going to dust off my resume and go find another job after helping them with their case. I reported it because it was just the right thing to do. Patients were being put at risk for bigger profits.
9. Your book also reveals what actually happens to someone who becomes a whistleblower and the toll it takes on them and their family life. What happened to you once you stepped forward to cooperate with the federal government? Once I agreed to wear a wire my life changed. Little do you know that you are going to lose your job and career. You will be black-balled from the industry you loved for decades. You are going to lose everything and never work in the industry that you have trained and developed in. It is going to hurt you emotionally (being out of society, not a functioning part) and financially (I was worth over a million before wearing the wire and lost everything to the point that I had no assets, and was flipping burgers for $10 an hour at a carnival). I was out of society with little chance of a future. The toll on my kids was just as devastating. I worked with the FDA/DOJ for too long in some ways, that I didn’t even know I needed to find legal representation in the case (I was third to file though I built the case).
10. Where did you work and live after you couldn’t land another job and lost your savings of over a million dollars, and was essentially homeless? I first lived with my mom and then my brother. I was with a friend or two for short periods but most of the time I was with my brother. In the first four years of the case, I lived in five different addresses. I did odd jobs: flipping burgers at fairs and carnivals and painting houses. I also tried selling medical devices and siding. I was very depressed, trying to just get by or back on my feet.
11. Were you fearful that nothing would be done to the company you worked for and risked everything to expose? Yes, many times I thought that this was so stupid on my part. The company was not going to be punished at all. At this time I had no idea that a whistleblower could receive a reward for a successful qui tam case (False Claims Act case). There’s less than a 10% chance of success in a False Claims Act case, and of those, less than 10% win a multimillion-dollar settlement. You’re talking about 1% actually succeed and with a fine as big as we had.
12. You did it because it was the right thing to do. Then you discovered you might be compensated for this heroic act. Once your case was settled five years after you were forced out – after taxes and legal fees – you walked away with six million dollars. Was it worth it? It was worth it but not because of the money. The chances of success are so slim most people don’t do a fraud case. One out of 10 are successful in bringing the case to the DOJ. Those that are, do not get millions, most are around a million. The reason you do it is because patients are going to die. It is not about the money. The statutes are written in a way that favors relators of pure of heart, not the greedy.
13. Your story is also about the pharmaceutical industry’s illegal and unethical practices, not just the grossly negligent behavior of one company. Why are these drug companies allowed to keep operating this way? The current laws aren’t sending people to jail for this whitecollar crime. The rewards of selling off-label are far greater than the fines. For example, Cephalon was fined $425 M for off-label fraud but the company generated $30B in sales from the practice. Also, the industry utilizes Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Association (PMA) lobbyists who protect Big Pharma’s interests in Washington, which in turn, prevents stronger laws from being legislated to stop this kind of fraud. Many times what occurs in a False Claims Act case, companies are able to separate the civil (brought by whistleblower) from the criminal (brought by DOJ) investigations and in doing so delay or eliminate the criminal charges. And in doing so, the civil charges also become minimal. It equates to a slap on the wrist really. Or, just a part of doing business.
14. You say that all too often doctors are getting compensated to in essence write prescriptions or recommend others to do so, for drugs that may not be safe for off-label prescription. Can’t this be stopped? That is where the FDA needs to do a better job. After the case, the FDA added black box warnings for the drugs but doctors should lose licenses for malpractice if patients are overdosing. Money should not go from pharma companies to doctors for honorariums because all they are doing is buying influence. That money should be sent to NIH for research instead. Cephalon paid doctors to do post review studies for drugs without double blind controls and then used these materials as if they were legitimate research. These company sponsored studies were then given to doctors to promote the off-label sales.
15. Off-label drug usage is big money for pharmaceutical companies. When it comes to curing or treating Covid-19, we hear a lot about off-label drug usage. Is this a good idea? Off label is a very useful tool in the armamentarium of the physicians. But you have to have scientific data to support off label medical conditions that are to be treated. FDA needs to streamline the app process so good drug practices are followed. New Drug Applications (NDAs) for a medical condition (new indications) should have good clinical trials that are conducted that are placebo controlled double blind crossover studies. From these studies comes most of the packet insert information like: dosing, side effects–all manner of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. Hydroxicholriquine has been around some 40 years and so the risks involved in taking the drug are well known based on its package insert (PI). In the case of the opioids, (fentanyl), there were few trials based on safety issues (such as addiction). They promoted the drug off-label knowing there was weak data on the safety of the drug especially for patients who were not terminally ill with cancer. What kind of information on addiction would you gather from a patient population that was dead within months of taking it?
16. Does the FDA follow good science or is it controlled by powerful political and financial interests? For the most part it does but for whatever reason it failed at controlling companies selling controlled products to drug-naive consumers. It’s a problem with white collar crime or a too big to fail mentality. Because of the PMA lobbyists in Washington, yes, you could say pharma has their interests protected over that of the consumer. There needs to be more teeth in the laws but also there could be better monitoring or follow-up with the drug companies. A letter of follow-up doesn’t cut it.
17. You ended up being an informant on not one case, but two cases against the same drug company, years apart from each other. How often does that happen? I don’t think that has ever happened. I filed a second case when the company continued to promote off-label after being fined in the first and asked to stop off-label promotion. In the second case, The Justice Department decided to go after the CEO for criminal charges because of these actions.
18. Can you give advice to others who may want to be whistleblowers at their company, whether it is in pharma or some other industry? Please seek legal advice and not just a friend that is a lawyer. Find legal counsel that is familiar with the False Claim Act and has tried qui tam law cases. Next, make sure you have a better exit strategy than I had. Work on the case but then work on you actively getting a new job. Be in the new job during the trial on the first company, if that is possible.
19. What does it take, as a person, to rise up and be an advocate for truth, safety, and justice?
It takes a strong moral compass and an even stronger constitution. If you have anxieties or if you worry a lot, I wouldn’t recommend taking something like this on. You can and often do risk everything like your career, economic stability and social standing. So you have to be prepared for that. But anybody can do this—speak the truth to power. We need more people in society to stand up against fraud, no matter the cost though, because it is what changes behaviors and protects the more vulnerable in our society.
20. What do consumers need to understand about how vulnerable they are to shameful practices by corporations? You as a consumer have to understand that you need to take greater responsibility by asking questions of your doctors/nurses as to your health. Educate yourself and know why meds are being prescribed for you. Ask questions if it does not make sense to you, and have these questions written down so you save time.
21. How was the writing of Cold Comfort a cathartic process? It finally puts this part of my life to rest. I can let it go now in some ways. It does help to think that this book could be a roadmap for other whistleblowers and encourage them to be courageous and report wrongdoing. Before these cases, I was defined by Corporate America with a great salary and bonus, and after I went against the grain, I was defined by issues that were bigger than that. In essence I became a better citizen, more conscientious, and a real advocate for patients and those at risk, the ones without a voice.
Advice To A Potential Whistleblower
by Bruce Boise
Why is it important for people to know about whistleblowing? First, it’s against human
nature. Most people would not—and do not—become whistleblowers. They don’t want to rock
the boat or take the risk of reprisals and retaliation. We go along to get along.
I was just one person who stepped up. But maybe my story will encourage one other
person to step up someday, somewhere: maybe in the pharmaceutical industry, some other
corporation, government, law enforcement, or neighborhood nonprofit.
If one is considering becoming a whistleblower, I would advise them to:
- Get the right lawyers early in the process—if possible, before you blow the
whistle. If you think it may lead to a False Claims Act action, seek out a good qui tam
lawyer.
- Understand the evidence. Just because someone is doing something wrong doesn’t
mean that person can be stopped or punished. You need evidence related to the fraud.
You need to know what proof is needed, and whether you can produce it, in order to
build a whistleblower case.
- Think hard about getting that evidence and gathering it most effectively without
exposing yourself.
- Know, perhaps with the help of your lawyer, what you are going to do with the
evidence. Whom are you going to give it to? What will they do with it? I turned my
informant evidence over to the federal agents handling me. I turned more evidence over
to any lawyers for the qu tam case. But you might also consider ombudspeople or
internal investigators or journalists. Keep copies of everything you pass along, and write
a journal with names, dates, and places.
The money was not why I became a whistleblower. I was trying to do the right thing. That’s still what is most important to me.
How many innocent patients might have been injured or killed by off label drugs that were prescribed to them because a sales rep misled a trusting physician? How many more drugs would Cephalon have abused through off-label sales? How many other drug companies ‘ off-label sales took place – with lots of collateral damage to patients – after seeing Cephalon’s example of securing greater profits?
I can’t help but wonder what more could have been done to stop Cephalon and its off-label marketing and the spread of not just fentanyl but also the entire opioid crisis. As sales reps, corporate executives, doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturing executives, government investigators and prosecutors, public policy makers and members of Congress, how could we have done more to slow the tidal wave of
opioid use? In the wake of tragedy and loss of life. the False Claims cases are cold comfort to the American people affected by the opioid crisis.
If you want to sleep well at night, without regrets, become a whistleblower, but understand you may face a hard road ahead. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Selected Excerpts
Big Pharma, Bad Pharma
Off-label marketing is unethical and illegal and potentially dangerous for patients. My company seemed to be ignoring both the potential dangers to patients and legal issues. This was the second drug company
I had worked for as a sales rep and manager, and there had been ethical, potential legal problems at my first employer, too. Those issues drove me away from my first company to take a better job at what I thought was a better company. But here I was, in my second company, facing another ethical dilemma.
The Challenges of Whistle Blowing
When I stumbled into whistleblowing, it was more by accident than on purpose. I didn’t go looking for the authorities. Someone else saw what was happening and confronted me and challenged me to step up.
I had no idea what it would cost me. If I had known then what I know now, things might have been different. If I had known what my life would be like as a whistleblower—the rest of my life, actually—I might have thought more carefully about that first meeting with two federal agents in a nondescript franchise hotel lobby.
How Pharma and Doctors Operate
It is illegal for sales reps to recommend to doctors that any drug be prescribed off-label. But there are ways around the rules. Sometimes, one-on-one in the doctors’ offices, with no witnesses, a doctor and sales rep will have a conversation that is very direct about using a certain drug off-label. They both know that conversation is forbidden, and they both understand they can never admit to having that conversation. But it can serve both of them. For the doctor, the recommendation of a trusted pharmaceutical company rep—and many doctors trust their longtime reps implicitly saves hours of time and researching medications and smooths the way for better treatment of patients. That’s everyone’s goal, of course: better treatment of patients. But relying on a sales rep for smart, effective recommendations can also make a doctor’s job easier, freeing up the doctor’s time for other medical or office duties. Or it can free up more personal time for the doctor. For the sales rep, a good off-label medication recommendation that gains a doctor’s trust can mean it is easier for that sales rep to persuade the doctor to try something else the rep’s pharmaceutical company is offering, especially new drugs that a doctor might otherwise be reluctant to try.
Selling One’s Soul
With the experiment with selling off-Label, l didn’t feel like I was selling my soul. It didn’t seem like the doctors were making a deal with the devil. It seemed like we were all trying to do what was best for everybody. Here was a drug that might help this particular patient—should we not try it because of some arcane fine-print rules in a government agency in Washington, DC? Or should we bust through the red tape and try to help the patient? Wasn’t that what we were supposed to be doing: the doctor as a healer and the sales rep as part of the doctor’s support team? It seemed like selling off-label was good for everybody—doctor, patient, and, oh yeah, the sales rep who would be bringing home a considerably fatter check at the end of the month. I saw my month-end numbers go up during the brief period when I tried going off-label with a few doctors for Provigil. But selling off-label never felt right. I kept thinking back to Cincinnati, when I had not been careful enough and had encouraged neurologists to prescribe Felbatol without knowing exactly what the blood levels should be. I couldn’t forget the way the young doctor spoke to me, or the young woman sitting next to me at grand rounds who had almost died, or the six people who did die. Selling off-label drugs now, knowingly, felt just as bad to me—or worse, since I knew that I was pushing a drug for a treatment that it was not supposed to be used for.
The Opioid Lollipop—ER on a Stick
A third neurology product Cephalon promoted off-label, in addition to Gabitril and Provigil, was Aetiq, a powerful and dangerous drug for very specific, limited pain related to very serious cancer cases. Instead of being limited to use for cancer pain, however, Actiq was being sold off-label by Cephalon for all sorts of pain that it was never intended to treat, especially low-back pain and migraine headaches. Cephalon acquired Actiq after taking over the smaller i~. pharmaceuticals company that had developed it. Aetiq is an opioid—one of the first opioid brands and one of the most powerful. Its active ingredient is fentanyl, an especially dangerous opioid, 100 times as powerful as most. Opioids had been around for years, dating back to the 1960s, but were not widely used or understood. Now, suddenly, a few doctors saw opioids as a new and better and more effective way of managing pain. Little-known fentanyl turned most deadly—of all the opioid drugs. Remember that this off-label and perhaps being in the early 2000s, well before the opioid epidemic ravaged America, before tens of thousands of people died of overdose before school kids were routinely writing term papers about opioids as with the other drugs Cephalon was marketing off-label, doctors were not being warned by sales reps about the side effects of Actiq, including addiction and death. It wasn’t until several years later that the FDA began investigating the dangers of fentanyl.
What About Cancer?
Company documents later indicated that Cephalon told its sales reps not to bother calling in cancer doctors, the ones who were supposed to be prescribing Actiq. Instead, given the early enthusiasm among patients getting off-label prescriptions, Cephalon was ordering its sales reps to concentrate on doctors who might write prescriptions for migraine pain—there were a lot more people complaining about migraine pain than breakthrough cancer pain. Within two years Actiq sales nearly doubled, and within five years sales. By 2005, Actiq’s sales total had jumped to $412 million. By then, only one percent of the prescriptions for Actiq being filled at retail pharmacies had been written by oncologists, according to legal documents, and a survey indicated that four out of five Actiq patients did not have cancer at all. All this, remember, for a drug that the FDA said should be prescribed for only a small group of cancer patients, those with “breakthrough pain.” But Actiq was still an opioid. It was still powerful and still dangerous. Some patients became addicted. Some of them overdosed. It took years for authorities to add up the deaths and blame them on Actiq—including, over time, 56 patient deaths at a single clinic in Kansas from fentanyl overdoses, thanks to Actiq lollipops.
All For Nothing?
What if the 111 were less than certain, no matter what they told me, about whether they were going to bring down Cephalon or even get the company to stop its off-label? What if the government said Cephalon hadn’t done anything wrong and the company’s sales reps were allowed to keep misleading doctors—and endangering patients—because the FDA couldn’t prove they had broken any rules? What if Cephalon had been right all along about off label marketing really being OK? I had to wonder: what if everything I had done—becoming a government informant, blowing the whistle, wearing a wire—was a waste? What if I had turned on my colleagues and lost my job—and maybe my career—all for nothing?
Who is Responsible?
Were the pharmaceutical executives manufacturing and mass marketing opioids any less guilty of damage to society than, say, heroin or meth dealers? Or terrorists? Some would argue that drug abuse, especially of opioids, has had a more harmful impact on more Americans an American families than all the terrorists and acts of terrorism put together in recent years. Did our government agencies, charged with protecting us, miss the opportunity, back in the early 2000s, to stop the opioid epidemic?
CONTACT: Jerry McGlothlin 919-437-0001 jerry@specialguests.com
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