Big Pharma's Role in the Opioid Crisis

John Abramson is a Harvard Medical School lecturer and health policy expert who has spent decades investigating the pharmaceutical industry's deceptive marketing practices and their role in fueling the opioid epidemic. He appeared on JRE episode 1756 to discuss how major drug companies deliberately misled doctors and the public about the addictive nature of opioids while prioritizing profits over public health. Abramson breaks down the intersection of corporate crime, regulatory capture, and the systemic failures that allowed one of America's deadliest health crises to unfold unchecked. His work challenges the narrative that Big Pharma operates in good faith and exposes the political and business mechanisms that enabled mass addiction and suffering.