This Week's News in Substance Use: 2/8/19

McKinsey Advised Purdue Pharma How to ‘Turbocharge’ Opioid Sales, Lawsuit Says, The New York Times

The world’s most prestigious management-consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, has been drawn into a national reckoning over who bears responsibility for the opioid crisis that has devastated families and communities across America.

In legal papers released in unredacted form on Thursday, the Massachusetts attorney general said McKinsey had helped the maker of OxyContin fan the flames of the opioid epidemic. McKinsey’s consultants, the attorney general revealed, had instructed the drug company, Purdue Pharma, on how to “turbocharge” sales of OxyContin, how to counter efforts by drug enforcement agents to reduce opioid use, and were part of a team that looked at how “to counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed” on the drug.

U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia Sues to Stop First-In-Nation Supervised Drug Injection Site, NBC News

The top federal prosecutor in Philadelphia has filed suit to stop a nonprofit from opening a first-in-the-nation supervised drug injection site to address the city's opioid problem.

The lawsuit pits U.S. Attorney William McSwain's stance on safe injection sites against those of Philadelphia's mayor, district attorney and a former Pennsylvania governor. McSwain said he believes supporters should try to change the laws, not break them.

"Normalizing the use of deadly drugs like heroin and fentanyl is not the answer to solving the epidemic," McSwain said at a Wednesday news conference, while protesters gathered outside his Independence Mall office.

They said thousands of people could die of overdoses in Philadelphia in the time it might take to change the law.

Even in Best-Case Scenario, Opioid Overdose Deaths Will Keep Rising Until 2022, Los Angeles Times

In the nation’s opioid epidemic, the carnage is far from over.

A new projection of opioid overdose death rates suggests that even if there is steady progress in reducing prescription narcotic [misuse] across the country, the number of fatal overdoses — which reached 70,237 in 2017 — will rise sharply in the coming years.

By 2022, these deaths would peak at around 75,400, and begin to level off thereafter, according to the new forecast.

And that’s the rosiest scenario. Under conditions that are only slightly less optimistic, the U.S. could see 81,700 opioid overdose deaths per year by 2025.

'It's Corporate Greed': Activists Turn to Art to Protest Big Pharma and Opioid Epidemic, WBUR

Big Pharma is under pressure from hundreds of lawsuits attempting to bring those allegedly responsible for the nationwide opioid crisis to justice. Every day in the U.S., more than 130 people die from an opioid overdose.

As legal action brews, activists and artists are energized. One of them is Domenic Esposito, the artist behind an 800-pound steel spoon — an art installation in protest of Big Pharma. His art is aimed at drawing more attention to the opioid crisis.

"I think there really is culpability here with Big Pharma. At the end of the day, really what it is, it's corporate greed," Esposito tells Here & Now's Robin Young.