Analysis: There’s nothing funny about an addiction crisis
By Eric Eyre, Senior Investigative Reporter at Mountain State Spotlight
When I read the email, it made me cringe.
A lawyer representing a county in West Virginia that’s suing the nation’s largest drug distributors for their role in the opioid crisis grilled a senior executive with AmerisourceBergen about the decade-old email message in federal court Thursday.
The email reveals that while drug overdoses were surging in West Virginia, top executives at AmerisourceBergen, ranked number 10 in the Fortune 500, were having a laugh at our expense. The internal company email features the lyrics to a parody song sung to the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies” theme that ridicules “pillbillies” addicted to OxyContin.
Top officials at AmerisourceBergen sent emails disparaging those who have gotten hooked off of their products, court documents show. It is being sued by West Virginia officials.
SOPA ImagesGetty Images
In June of 2004, the Department of Justice released to the Snohomish Public Utility District in Washington state some tapes from the Enron energy company regarding an energy crisis that had hit up and down the west coast. The tapes were obtained because various victimized localities were trying to claw back the money that Enron had gouged out of them through its criminal manipulation of the energy markets. If there were four people in the country who still didn’t believe that Enron was a pack of thieving bastards, these tapes were the final railroad spikes in the company’s coffin. From CBS News: