Drug Companies Benefit from Crime and Addiction

                                                                                         

Generally speaking, when someone spends time and money developing a product, they want to keep the distribution and price of that product under their control to make sure they get a return on their investment. A big exception to this is the prescription drug industry. In fact, the more people there are involved in drug abuse – i.e. using it illegally, without a doctor’s prescription – the more money Big Pharma makes.

Drug dealers get their supplies by doctor-shopping (going to multiple doctors faking symptoms so they can get several prescriptions), buying them on the Internet (with or without a prescription, but never having seen a doctor), or by robbing pharmacies or the drug supplies in hospitals and medical clinics. They then re-sell them, at a very nice profit.

Does it upset the drug companies that their products are being sold on the black market? Absolutely not: unlike pirated software, every pill that’s stolen or otherwise illegally obtained by drug dealers has to be replaced by the manufacturer so the pharmacies, hospitals, and so on, have adequate supplies for legal use.

With some drugs (like OxyContin or Xanax - just two of the many drugs that are broadly used without a doctor’s prescription), the drug companies may even make more money, indirectly, from drug dealers than from doctors.

A friend wrote a blog a while ago depicting a scenario in which drug companies actually have departments that monitor how much money they’re making from such activities and figure out what they can do to get them under their control. Any company that’s worth its salt does that – they evaluate their profit centers, take control of them, and do whatever they can to give them a boost.

It’s unlikely that drug companies do have such a department (although not totally out of the question - God knows they’ve resorted to some other grossly unethical tactics to boost sales), but they do have another ace up their sleeve – manufacturing drugs that people get easily addicted to and, if they do try to stop taking them, suffer such painful side effects that they’re unlikely to be able to do it without the professional help offered by a drug detox or drug rehab center.

What a racket. You’d think there’d be a law against it.

About the author:
Gloria MacTaggart is a freelance writer that contributes articles on health.

info@drugrehabreferral.com

http://www.drugrehabreferral.com


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