Artist arrested, placing 800-lb heroin spoon sculpture in front of Purdue Pharma HQ

[LucidSDreamr]

i can't get the picture in here right now because im too lazy and its too much work to do how BL is set up. but click on link for picture:

If purdue was deceiving doctors and the government, why did the gov schedule oxycontin as schedule II - high potential for abuse and addiction. Seem like the government knew perfectly well on giving the greenlight to mass prescribing of schedule II drugs for minor aches and pains. Purdue did not deceive anyone, the government agencies knew it was highly addictive and let it slide becuase of the bribes. If anyone should be getting sued its congress that recieved the bribes from purdue....but now they are currently at lobbying firms making 3M a year salaries bribing for some other harmful policy that they will get away with. This country is in need of a very violent revolution against its government. This is just one example but its happening in every aspect of policy you can think of.

http://www.wtnh.com/news/connecticu...ced-outside-drugmaker-headquarters/1256403000

STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) - An 800-pound, nearly 11-foot-long steel sculpture of a bent and burned drug spoon was placed Friday in front of the Connecticut headquarters of drugmaker Purdue Pharma as part of an art protest against the opioid crisis

addicts proceeded to come buy and dump an entire bottle of 80s into the spoon and shoot up

i also read that the Purdue fired a bunch of sales people because of the drama they are going through with oxycontin. These sales people were doing this shit like 20 years ago, its hard to imagine any of them were even still at the company, probably just fired a bunch of innocent sales people that had nothing to do with trying to help doctors care for their CP patients.

 

[SheWasLvL18]

LOL thanks for sharing this

 

[ro4eva]

That is one epic spoon!

Full marks to the artist.

Edit: And perfectly positioned too.

 

[spacejunk]

That's fucking awesome.

 

[neversickanymore]

That is right the fuck on!!!

 

[LucidSDreamr]

the artist is an asshole. he was doing this in protest against purdue because his brother was a oxy/h user. Purdue did not tell anyone to crush up oxy and inject it...that was his brothers idea. He should put a big spoon in his brothers front lawn

 

[greg-zamboni]

the artist is an asshole. he was doing this in protest against purdue because his brother was a oxy/h user. Purdue did not tell anyone to crush up oxy and inject it...that was his brothers idea. He should put a big spoon in his brothers front lawn

The critique is that the mass availability and unnecessary usage of oxy being orchestrated by this company and others like it is causing a great deal of people to become addicted to opiates. This in turn causes them to turn to heroin when the pills become too expensive.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

The critique is that the mass availability and unnecessary usage of oxy being orchestrated by this company and others like it is causing a great deal of people to become addicted to opiates. This in turn causes them to turn to heroin when the pills become too expensive.

i get the critique but i believe its misguided and just a deflection of the govs and dea's failure

why did the pills become more expensive and make people turn to heroin? because the government took everyone dependent off of the medication without offering any treatment options and also failing to stop mass amounts of heroin and fent flooding into america.


Purdue gave accurraate clinical trial data that warrented the drug being schedule II. Thus politicians allowed a schedule II drug to be given to any one for anything as long as purdue kept lining the pockets of lawmakers.

The goal of private companies is to make profit but not lie. They didn't lie, the US gov. allowed the drug to mass distributed as long as the bribes kept coming in. The job of the government is to protect people, they failed...and now they blame it on purdue which provided the clinical data that disclosed the abususive potential of the drug.

If it was legal to get "synthetic heroin" for a knee ache, purdue is going to sell it.

Its purdue's job to make sales, its the governments job to protect people, they failed to protect people even they admitted the drug was highly addictive (by making it schedule II). the Government made this miss and now they are blaming purdue, which did not lie to anyone.

what about the other dozens of highly addictive dangerous schedule II opiates out there also? ...again silence from legislators taking bribes from those companies while now suddly scapegoating purdue.

just because a drug has high abuse potential, doesn't mean you have ot start injecting it, blame lies on the users themselves also for not following doctor's orders...unless the dr said to inject oxy tablets, the patient has responsibility.


also when you become a felon from getting caught with an oxy, and can never have a job again. what do you do then? more oxy and H eventually is about all you are qualified to do.

policy policy policy is the real problem that caused this. Not purdue (or any of the other companies which seem to be sliding by without being scapegoated)

 

[greg-zamboni]

They didn't lie, the US gov. allowed the drug to mass distributed as long as the bribes kept coming in.

While they might not have lied, what they're doing by bribing the government knowing full well the addictions that dosing the masses with highly addictive drugs will cause is fucked up. I agree that the government is much more at fault here than Purdue, but that doesn't absolve them of blame.

 

[ro4eva]

the artist is an asshole. he was doing this in protest against purdue because his brother was a oxy/h user. Purdue did not tell anyone to crush up oxy and inject it...that was his brothers idea. He should put a big spoon in his brothers front lawn

Yeah I hear ya but... that's an awesome spoon.

 

[spacejunk]

I understand the argument that the company isn't to blame for people "abusing" their product, i think the people who cite purdue's aggressive marketing of oxycontin, and the way it

Pretty good article about it here;

How one sentence helped set off the opioid crisis

OxyContin went to market in 1996 with a campaign by Purdue Pharma that suggested a less abusable drug, one that doctors could prescribe for moderate pain, in addition to severe pain.

At the center of the company’s marketing aimed at physicians was a single sentence in OxyContin’s original label:

“Delayed absorption as provided by OxyContin tablets, is believed to reduce the abuse liability of a drug.”

Purdue’s marketing campaign relied on that sentence, which claimed OxyContin was believed to be less likely to be abused than other prescription opioids, according to depositions from various sales reps and physicians that were pitched on the drug. But that claim was not backed up by clinical studies.

While i personally don't really have a problem with anyone making drugs that people want and need, it is absolutely true that the company knowingly marketed a highly addictive drug (which is highly sought-after by addicts) as having "reduce(d) the abuse liability".
The company did mislead peolple, at the same time as pushing the product very hard.


And yeah, i think it's a really striking piece of art too. I think it's a really clever protest (whether i agree with him or not) and i hope he doesn't have too many legal hassles from the arrest.

 

[MushroomRyder25]

While i personally don't really have a problem with anyone making drugs that people want and need, it is absolutely true that the company knowingly marketed a highly addictive drug (which is highly sought-after by addicts) as having "reduce(d) the abuse liability"..

I remember reading that oxy was "hillbilly heroin" leading me to think people preferred dope. I'm sure many do but most addicts I've met consider oxy, the old ones, to be gold. I agree with you 100% and I think it's refreshing to read a well established member saying what you did.

They pushed the hell outta that and it had an incredibly high potential for abuse. I'd prefer oxycontin to any pill I've ever used/abused.
I still hear about pharmacies getting robbed but I remember turning on the news (well my parents because I was a kid) and there constantly being robberies covered during the days when oxy was relatively new.
I'm not saying they happen less now (though I do assume that) I'm just saying I don't hear about it nearly as much....and now it's something I actually pay attention to.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

The drug was schedule II. The first sentence of the definition of schedule II is "high potential for abuse" they did not deceive anyone.

a company exists to sell its product and nothing more. The government is the one that failed because they were too busy taking bribes from purdue. 100% the fault of politicians.

 

[SheWasLvL18]

Some people would argue that a company has a social responsibility and that Purdue's actions were irresponsible. Though you've stated you believe otherwise so I can see your point.

 

[neversickanymore]

the artist is an asshole. he was doing this in protest against purdue because his brother was a oxy/h user. Purdue did not tell anyone to crush up oxy and inject it...that was his brothers idea. He should put a big spoon in his brothers front lawn

you need to back this shit up.

 

[ProfessorBananas]

you need to back this shit up.

I believe the article in the op mentions that. I definitely remember reading something along those lines though. It was where he drew the inspiration for the spoon.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I'm not sure it's possible to see the company's actions with the marketing (direct to fucking doctors and consumers?! the US is one of the only developed countries that even allows that crap) and how it was advertised is not a major issue, but even that kind of egregiousness is relatively minor compared to the state of US society, drug policy and law that made this stuff so desirable.

Want to get pissed about something? There's a lot more to get pissed about when it comes to how we've been rolling back programs to help people get enough to eat, access housing, see the doctor or go to college. And I haven't even mentioned drug policy yet... Well, I guess I see drug policy and keeping the poor marginalized is one and the same.

Without meaning to get too far into politics, it all comes back to the dislocation of free market ideology. People have been using drugs to cope with this for a long time now, not to mention other "addictive" behaviors. Opioids just are a bit more effective at killing pain for a lot of people than alcohol or religion.

And if you couldn't tell, that was another of my pitches to encourage you to read Alexander's work of art, "The Globalization of Addiction"

I'd rather get pissed off about socioeconomic and racial disparities that keep getting more extreme than the actions of one company to supply a drug people obviously feel they want/need, even if how they went about it is clearly unethical/illegal. Somehow that kind of thing isn't as horrible to me as the people who created the conditions that kind of drug use is even desirable in the first place.

/rant

 

[LucidSDreamr]

^ i think people would use lots of drugs no matter how "good" society was. Look at famous ppl that have all the money and love anyone could every want, they use just as much if not more than anyone.

I wonder if one day drug users will finally have thier own "civil rights movement" similar to how minority groups do, because its absolutely barbaric to go to prison for using drugs

 

[cj]

I'm not sure it's possible to see the company's actions with the marketing (direct to fucking doctors and consumers?! the US is one of the only developed countries that even allows that crap) and how it was advertised is not a major issue, but even that kind of egregiousness is relatively minor compared to the state of US society, drug policy and law that made this stuff so desirable.

Want to get pissed about something? There's a lot more to get pissed about when it comes to how we've been rolling back programs to help people get enough to eat, access housing, see the doctor or go to college. And I haven't even mentioned drug policy yet... Well, I guess I see drug policy and keeping the poor marginalized is one and the same.

Without meaning to get too far into politics, it all comes back to the dislocation of free market ideology. People have been using drugs to cope with this for a long time now, not to mention other "addictive" behaviors. Opioids just are a bit more effective at killing pain for a lot of people than alcohol or religion.

And if you couldn't tell, that was another of my pitches to encourage you to read Alexander's work of art, "The Globalization of Addiction"

I'd rather get pissed off about socioeconomic and racial disparities that keep getting more extreme than the actions of one company to supply a drug people obviously feel they want/need, even if how they went about it is clearly unethical/illegal. Somehow that kind of thing isn't as horrible to me as the people who created the conditions that kind of drug use is even desirable in the first place.

/rant

Yep +1

 

[ro4eva]

I'd rather get pissed off about socioeconomic and racial disparities that keep getting more extreme than the actions of one company to supply a drug people obviously feel they want/need, even if how they went about it is clearly unethical/illegal. Somehow that kind of thing isn't as horrible to me as the people who created the conditions that kind of drug use is even desirable in the first place.

It's a good argument. You're aiming for the roots (efficient, productive), so, count me in.

I never would have envisioned myself becoming so fascinated by a giant spoon. What's wrong with me?