Opioids: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

I would like to talk to you about drugs and I know I know I already sound like a middle school health teacher about to show you a video like this the pattern is generally the same take a lack of responsibility the inability to make right choices add to an ignorant and indifference and top it off with a desire for escapism and kicks the sum total is then conceivably found in the Benny's the Reaper the pop needle yes the pot needle now you may laugh but that film worked think about it when was the last time that you saw a pot neither exactly exactly but unfortunately America is now in the midst of a new drug crisis and it seems that no one is safe from it Laura Charlie's owner who asked us not to use her last name says Charlie had to be rushed to the vet you can't see the suspect throw the drugs over the fence in the video but that's Charlie and what she's eating is a full bag of heroin you can't process the fact that your dog ate heroin yeah and if she can't process it imagine how it must have felt for her dog when it kicked in who's a good boy I'm a good boy I'm a really good boy I'm the best boy even that like hotties local news story had some chilling context Garrett Bishop runs the bar can play where it happened he says it highlights a much bigger problem this whole heroin problem around here is is ridiculous you know we find needles we find everything around here and it's it's getting to the point to where I can't let my employees go outside okay that is terrifying although honestly rampant heroin abuse near a doggy daycare center is the first case that McGruff the Crime Dog is actually qualified to solve well the thing is that that is symptomatic of the fact that America is facing an epidemic of addiction to opioids like heroin and prescription painkillers as of 2015 an estimated 2.6 million Americans were addicted to them and they're now involved in almost 30,000 overdose deaths a year in the US and the prevalence of this problem astonishes some people just listen to Donald Trump up in New Hampshire they said the biggest single problem they have up here is heroin and I said how does heroin work with these beautiful lakes and trees and all of the beautiful it doesn't yeah it does no it does heroin works basically everywhere because it's heroin it's not a cellphone heroin has full coverage so so tonight we're going to look at one of the major causes of this crisis prescription painkillers which are chemical cousins of heroin around 75 percent of heroin users started with a prescription opioids drugs like oxycontin vicodin and percocet which some take recreationally and others takers prescribed by a doctor but however it starts it can get out of hand fast so how many if we start from this side have moved from prescription drugs to heroin everybody enjoy so much more cheaper once people became dependent on painkillers they said they do almost anything to get them one time I I was hurting so bad that I ended up punching a 4x4 and breaking all three of these fingers and this bone to get pain meds from my doctor I did that several times so you'd hug yourself in order to go that's like he pulled out in my head for descriptions at the time that's how I get a prescription I live like loops of people where they take away that to their wrists protons I mean how many people do know someone has died of overdose from everybody this is happening everywhere the odds are right now you probably know someone who is struggling or who has died from an opioid addiction some towns have been devastated just two months ago in and around Huntington West Virginia 28 overdoses occurred in one five-hour span and given their risks it's kind of amazing how freely doctors have prescribed them because there are a lot in circulation we have currently nearly 250 million prescriptions for opiates written every year that's enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of pills and then some holy and those bottles aren't necessarily sitting on a shelf unused like that bottle of wine that you are saving for a special occasion but now serves as a reminder that you haven't had a single event in four years that was deserving you're getting fancy drunk these these pills are getting used or falling into the hands of others from from those who are already addicted to just bored teenagers so how has this happened because interestingly as recently as the early 90s doctors were excessively wary of prescribing opioids back then there was a thing called OPA phobia a lot of health care professionals did not want to prescribe opiates at all because they thought you give the slightest amount you turn your patients into addicts and so even people with stage four cancer weren't being giving obvious they were left to suffer yes OPA phobia which is not to be confused with Oprah phobia which is the irrational fear of screaming talk-show hosts giving you a brand new Pontiac sedan Oprah I can't afford the taxes on this yeah haven't thought it through obviously that level of undertreating pain was a huge problem in itself and to their credit pain care advocates work to dispel some dangerous myths but in doing so they made a key mistake as you will see right at the end of this clip today the federal government said in a report that about half of all surgery patients suffer needlessly because doctors and hospitals don't pay enough attention to painkiller health secretary Louis Sullivan talked about myths the pain builds character myth he said that infants don't feel pain another myth that elderly patients have a higher tolerance for pain or that painkillers are addictive all myths ok ok ok first of course babies feel pain how the did we ever think otherwise but more importantly the fact that painkillers are addictive was not a myth it's like a book of Greek mythology featuring the stories of Zeus Sisyphus Oedipus and Yanni come on that last one is very real and it cannot be dismissed and look a nuanced discussion between the medical community about the complexities of pain treatment is clearly important the problem is that discussion became dominated by the pharmaceutical industry who started amplifying the message that opioids should not just be used for acute pain like that from cancer or surgery but for all sorts of pain like arthritis and back aches which makes sense as a motive coming from the pharma industry end-of-life pain care is a narrow business it's hard to make a lot of money off of a product exclusively marketed to people who are close to death honestly I don't know how Fox News even does it I have no idea it's a mystery poly like but I don't know and within the pharma industry the loudest voice was Purdue in 1996 they released the blockbuster drug oxycontin and they marketed it to doctors aggressively giving out swag like a fishing hats swing music CDs bearing a slogan swing in the right direction with oxycontin and oxytocin if you think we didn't get hold of one of those you have clearly never watched this show before because yes here he is and yes he is my new best friend and yes his name is Harold and I've gotta say Purdue this is the perfect choice of mascots because much like a gorilla oxycontin might seem appealing but if you're not careful it will tear your life apart what your Harold yes he will Purdue also distributed inspirational videos like I got my life back featuring seven patients whose lives were turned around by the magic of oxycontin since I've been on this new pain medication I have not missed one day of work and my boss really appreciates that Lauren is there every day so I'm able to be very productive and one of the things that's really dear to my heart and which I'm especially excited about is just the fact that I'm able to spend time with my grandchildren it's amazing just to be able to keep up with them and not have to always constantly tell them grandma can't bring no do their screams hurt and grimace back hurts that's genuinely sweet and is also a powerful message although I will note it makes time with your grandkids more fun could apply to literally any drug hey kids grandpa's gonna take you to the park okay I'm gonna take on the swings I'm gonna push you real high and then we're gonna stay up all night I'm gonna come up with inventions and you're gonna write them down you can write them down fast we're having quality time through stories other platoon video sought to reassure patients who might have been nervous about taking such a strong drug less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted less than 1% and I know it may seem like they are pulling that number out of their ass but they actually pulled it out of the letters to the editor section of the New England Journal of Medicine seriously this is it that paragraph is the whole thing it wasn't peer-reviewed and it was only about short-term use of opioids in hospitals but it became the main source for that 1% claim and letters pages are not a solid source for information just this month a Pennsylvania newspaper published a letter featuring a man's question about Hillary Clinton's fitness for office because and I quote what if that time of the month comes which the obvious answer is one she's 68 and too cute maybe but even if doctors started noticing that a lot more than 1% of their patients were getting addicted Purdue had a ready answer what if they're not because they had doctors on their payroll like Alan Spanos who were happy to explain the helpful new concept of pseudo addiction I'll let him tell you about it pseudo addiction is when a patient is looking like a drug addict because they're pursuing pain relief so pseudo addiction is relief seeking behavior mistaken as drug addiction wow that is so convenient that is like Chipotle going have you heard of this fascinating new thing called pseudo diarrhea it looks a lot like diarrhea but it's not diarrhea and the cure may actually be more tacos and produce overall message of a quick easy cure for pain was very appealing especially for primary care doctors who might only have 15 minutes to treat a patient so it is no wonder that by the year 2000 doctors were writing nearly 6 million oxycontin prescriptions per year and its sales were more than even viagra and remember that was a drug that had the distinct advantage of being sold by Bob Dole the red-hot late 90s it boy however evidence started piling up that it was far riskier than promised with headlines like oxycontin abuse is increasing and oxycontin abuse called a plague or as I'm sure Perdue would call it a pseudo plague and even the stars of Purdue's I got my life back video we're not immune from this trend because a later investigation discovered two out of the seven of them died as active opioid abusers and that grandmother you saw earlier became addicted and nearly lost everything I have lost cause I'd lost I lost a lot a lot I also want to keep behind taking that drug when I did lose my dog mm-hmm and I not lost my medical insurance although as I said if I was to go to the mailbox once a month and I would find a bottle of oxycontin in it I'd probably still be on it and I'd probably be there think about losing her health insurance might have saved her life that is an irony so deep it would vaporize Alanis Morissette into a cloud of King Stephen by now I'm guessing you are pretty angry at Purdue so you may be glad to hear that in 2007 they admitted some responsibility in a lawsuit so big it actually led to the evening news good evening the maker of a hugely popular painkiller has some pain of its own tonight the company and its top officers will pay 634 million dollars in fines for lying to the public Wow you know they up if they had to pay over six hundred million dollars for misleading marketing because you get a lot of leeway on that that's why Dunkin Donuts is not yet being sued for saying America runs on Dunkin when we all know their real slogan should be sometimes you can't find a Starbucks it wasn't just Purdue pushing the envelope Cephalon paid a four hundred and forty four million dollar settlement for over marketing drugs and insist has been investigated for some of its practices surrounding a drug they made containing fentanyl and opioids which can be a hundred times more powerful than morphine their drug is only approved for cancer patients but interest is accused of not just pushing it for non cancer patients but even helping convince insurance companies to pay for it and to do that according to one ex-employee they used a particular shady technique if you don't have cancer and breakthrough cancer pain no insurance company is gonna pay for this medication so if you call up and you tell them that the patient doesn't have cancer it's automatically denied someone said what were you doing they would always ask does the patient have cancer uh-huh that's what we would say so you do uh-huh you're right say yeah but I'm not saying yes right I would just say uh-huh isn't that a yes well that's what they did think but I wasn't blatantly saying yes Oh God except everybody knows aha means yes if you go to thesaurus calm and type in aha literally the first word that comes up is yes followed by options such as absolutely definitely unquestionably and yep look and at this point I should say that Purdue and Cephalon owner told us that those practices were in the past and iNSYS has denied wrongdoing and didn't respond to any of our questions not even with a na r but at a certain point the question has to become less what did we do wrong and more what do we do now because these drugs are still the most effective solution for certain types of pain and many patients need them so we can't get rid of them but we have to be much more careful about how they're prescribed and to their credit the CDC issued voluntary guidelines this year suggesting doctors use non-opioid therapies when possible and if and when one is needed to start patients with a lower dose and a sure to supply a technique that they call start low and go slow which does sound good but also sounds like how your creepiest highschool friends described cunnilingus start low go slow and afterwards take her to friendlies chicks love root beer floats dude they love them dude no slow low and slow dude those two yeah what all that sounds great unfortunately not all areas of the country have access to alternative pain treatments it's easy to say use some non-opioid alternative but in a lot of rural areas patients don't have access to things like physical therapy and mindfulness meditation and insurance companies won't pay for it and that is a big problem because even in a rural area alternative pain treatments should be at least as easy to find as waffle houses which like heroin are both hazardous to your health and dangerously addictive and to put it mildly it does not seem that the pharmaceutical industry is expecting any major reversals in opioid sales any time soon in fact they are now marketing extra drugs to fight one of opioid side-effects constipation [Music] if you need an opioid to manage your chronic pain you may be so constipated it feels like everyone can go except you you know painkillers are powerful if people use them despite the sound of this side effect being jealous of a dog's butthole and that commercial ads during the Super Bowl this year which means alley it is a big business and B I can only assume there was a reverse commercial during the Puppy Bowl featuring a jealous dog and a man but we cannot just work to prevent future addicts we're going to need to do more to help the millions that already exist which means more investments in treatment programs as well as increasing the availability of drugs like the Loch Lomond naloxone are commonly used in a nasal spray to rescue people from overdoses because as this firehouse makes clear it is a tool that they use with depressing frequency so every single firefighter in the Revere Fire Department knows how to use this has been trained on this yes has used it yes from the chief down we tend to have more overdoses than we do fire fires so it's a piece of equipment that we can't go without now just like we have the hose it's true firefighters might be more likely to use a nasal spray than our hose which is really going to cut those hot firefighter calendars because something about an overdose reversing nasal spray isn't quite as sexy it's still sexy but is not quite as sexy it is still sexy though just not quite but still and that's not the point the point is there is no one simple answer here not all opioid addicts will respond to the same treatment and not all people in pain will find relief from alternative therapies this is going to take a massive effort and a significant investment it won't be cheap it won't be quick and it won't be easy and it is hard not to be angry at the drug companies like Purdue whose promised off cheap quick easy pain solutions helped put us in this mess because while they may not be solely responsible if you were to ask me if they bear significant blame for reckless greed II behavior which contributed to this massive public health crisis I might not say yes exactly but I would definitely say aha

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 14,524,103

Rating: 4.8227496 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight, last week tonight with john oliver, john oliver, opioids, john oliver opioids

Id: 5pdPrQFjo2o

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 23 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

The contrast in the interviews with the grandma was particularly sad to me.

[u/Sir_Deimos]

It is an epidemic I've stared in the face. Since 2011 five of my friends have died of opiod addiction. One as recently as 3 months ago.

It was strange watching it grow from something seemingly benign in the community to the point it has reached now. I distinctly remember my first experience with recreational opiods. I was hanging out with 4 of my friends in 2007. I had used Percocet for pain treatment but never anything recreationally.

We were just the kind of dudes in our early twenties who enjoyed harmless drugs and normal partying. That night we smoked a little weed and I drank a few beers and took some oxy. It wasn't for me. I had one of those drug experiences where you realize how shallow your breathing is and are afraid to fall asleep. Mostly paranoia, probably. I just remember thinking at the time, "This is stupid and dangerous." I didn't think in 9 years it would change the face of my hometown.

Two of the friends I hung out with that night are dead. In my hometown of 45,000 people opioid addiction has completely consumed and overwhelmed local authorities. And this is happening in cities across the country.

I do think there is a blessing in disguise in all of this tragedy, though. Opiod adddiction seems to be the first drug epidemic that has left no community untouched. People are ready to have serious discussions about addiction and treatment when 'lacrosse moms' and 'scout leader dads' start overdosing.

[u/Manchiam]

Who the hell is that one person producing that absolutely horrific laugh. It sounds like a god damn siren.

[u/3izwiz]

Holy hell that chick that kept going AAAAHHHH after every joke was annoying as fuck!

[u/MannyalvarezX]

Damn it's very ironic that today I have one year sober from opioids. This video made this day even more special for me :))) Shout out to John Oliver and the Last Week Tonight team for helping raise awareness on this very important topic/issue.

[u/Chocobo_Eater]

I'm disappointed he didn't cover opioid companies investing $ campaigning against legalization of marijuana, or the DEA banning an opioid alternative, kratom.

[u/princesskittyglitter]

You know it's a problem in your town when your town gets shouted out on John Oliver.

[u/awesometuck1559]

Just hearing how they came up with the "Less than one percent" tag line came from sickens me. Think about how many lives were ruined simply because of greed and profit.

[u/jw44]

Everytime I think they've chosen a topic I don't want to watch a 20 minute video about, they prove me wrong.