LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

CRIMINAL CAPITALISM BIG PHARMA OPIOID PUSHERS

Rochester Drug Cooperative fined $20 million in first US criminal case against a major drug distributor over opioids

Jonathan Stempel, Nate Raymond,
Reuters

Laurence Doud III, former CEO of Rochester Drug Co-Operative, exits the Manhattan Federal Courthouse in New York, April 23, 2019. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The US filed its first criminal charges against a major drug distributor and company executives over their alleged roles in fueling the nation's opioid epidemic by putting profits ahead of patients' safety.

Rochester Drug Co-operative, one of the 10 largest US drug distributors, agreed to pay a $20 million fine and enter a five-year deferred prosecution agreement to resolve the charges.

Two former RDC executives were also charged, including Laurence Doud, who had been its CEO for more than 25 years.
Doud was accused of conspiring to distribute illegal narcotics and conspiring to defraud the US.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The US government on Tuesday filed its first criminal charges against a major drug distributor and company executives over their alleged roles in fueling the nation's opioid epidemic by putting profits ahead of patients' safety.

Rochester Drug Co-operative, one of the 10 largest US drug distributors, agreed to pay a $20 million fine and enter a five-year deferred prosecution agreement to resolve charges it turned a blind eye to thousands of suspicious orders for opioids.

"We made mistakes," RDC spokesman Jeff Eller said in a statement. "We accept responsibility for those mistakes."

Two former RDC executives were also charged, including Laurence Doud, who had been its chief executive for more than 25 years. He was accused of conspiring to distribute illegal narcotics, and conspiring to defraud the United States.

Doud, 75, of New Smyrna, Florida, pleaded not guilty at an afternoon hearing in Manhattan federal court and was released on $500,000 bail.

His lawyer, Derrelle Janey, said Doud "is not the culprit here. We intend to fully defend against these charges."

Former compliance chief William Pietruszewski, 53, of Oak Ridge, New Jersey, separately pleaded guilty to three criminal counts and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The case marks a new US effort to curtail the growing number of people addicted to opioids, including oxycodone and other prescription painkillers.

Opioids, including prescription painkillers and heroin, played a role in a record 47,600 US overdose deaths in 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This country is in the midst of a prescription drug abuse epidemic," US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said at a Manhattan news conference. "This epidemic has been driven by greed. As alleged, Doud cared more about profits than the laws intended to protect human life."

OxyContin pills. Associated Press
'Red flags' allegedly ignored

Hundreds of lawsuits by state and local governments accuse drugmakers such as Purdue Pharma of deceptively marketing opioids, and distributors such as AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp of ignoring that they were being diverted for improper uses.

These defendants, as well as RDC, were among those named last month in a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James alleging widespread fraud.

In Tuesday's settlement, RDC admitted to violating narcotics laws from January 2012 to March 2017 by distributing oxycodone, fentanyl and other controlled substances to pharmacy customers despite internal "red flags" that they would be used improperly.

Berman said the red flags included dramatic increases in order sizes, pharmacy customers paying in cash and prescriptions filled by doctors under investigation by law enforcement or on an RDC "watch list."

Prosecutors said RDC identified about 8,300 potentially suspicious "orders of interest," including for oxycodone, from 2012 to 2016, but reported just four to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Berman said this lax oversight enabled RDC to boost sales of oxycodone tablets more than 800 percent and fentanyl dosages roughly 2,000 percent over that period, while Doud's pay more than doubled, to more than $1.5 million.

"RDC was, in Doud's own words, the knight in shining armor for pharmacies that had been cut off by other distributors," Berman said.

The deferred prosecution agreement allows RDC to keep operating, subject to three years of independent compliance monitoring, and avoid prosecution if it complies with the terms.

Doud led RDC from September 1991 through April 2017, according to court papers.

He faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison on the drug conspiracy charge. His next hearing is scheduled for May 8.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Richard Chang, Tom Brown and Cynthia Osterman)

A FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT OF THE

GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1919

PRIMARY DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED 1922

https://archive.org/details/germanrevolution00str/page/4

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. GERMAN SOCIALISM IN THE WORLD WAR 7 The Causes of Voting the War Credits — The Nationalist Policy of the Majority — The Struggle against the War Policy of the Party Majority.

II. THE FALL OF THE OLD REGIME - - 37 The Military Collapse—The Portents of the Revolution—The Naval Rebellion — The 9th November.

III. THE BEGINNING OF INTERNECINE STRIFE 68 The Proletariat in the Seat of Power — Conflicting Conceptions of the Revolutionary Tasks—Early Inter-revolutionary Struggles—The Independents Leave the Government.

IV. THE FIRST PHASE OF THE CIVIL WAR - I05 The Left Prepares for Action—The Crushing of Spartacist—The Murder of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

V. BLOODY WEEKS IN BERLIN AND MUNICH I31 Growing Resentment among the Working Class—The March Massacres in Berlin — The Munich Soviet Republic.

VI. THE DIFFICULTIES OF HOME POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY - - - 167 The Yoke of the Entente Peace—The New Constitution—Financial Policy and Socialization. vi

VII. THE REVOLUTIONIZING OF THE PROLETARIAN MASSES - - - - ig6 Dictatorship or Democracy—The Soviet System—The Struggle for the Works Councils.

VIII. THE CRISIS IN THE REPUBLIC - - 217 The Massacre before the Reichstag—The Kapp Putsch—Rocks Ahead.

IX. TWO YEARS LATER - - - - 246 Fresh Socialist Disagreements—Two Years of Compromise—Reparations and Taxes.

X. THE LATEST PHASE - - - - 289 The Economic Disintegration—The Strengthening of Reaction—German Finances and the Reparation Problem.

SOCIALISATION IN THEORY AN PRACTICE

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The author of this book occupies a peculiar position in the German Socialist movement. As a representative of the Independent Social Democratic Party, he was appointed Finance Minister in the Prussian Revolutionary Government, which came into existence in November 1918. Subsequently, he was alienated from the Independent Socialists by reason of their fanaticism, and the partiality they exhibited towards Bolshevist doctrines. On the other hand, Herr Strobel was unable to sympathise with the wartime policy of the German Majority Socialists, and found much to condemn in their methods of handling the internal troubles which broke out in Germany soon after the Revolution.
This Revolution had brought political power to German Socialism, with a suddenness and completeness which took many Social Democrats by surprise, and this fact largely accounts for their moral inadequacy and practical unreadiness when confronted with the problem of Socialisation.
Herr Strobel's candid temperament and detachment enabled him to write the most satisfactory and in- formative account of the German Revolution, as a whole, that has yet been published, and the same qualities were even more necessary in the writing of Sozialisierung-Ihre Wege und Voraussetzungen, of which an English translation is now submitted to the public with the title Socialisation in Theory and Practice.
As the Socialist Parties in Western Europe approach nearer to the goal of political power, the question of Socialisation will be forced more and more into the arena of political contention. The British Labour Party, which has made significant progress within recent months, draws its inspiration from the economic doctrines of Socialism.
Alike to friend and opponent of Socialist developments, it is of urgent importance to be conscious of the full meaning and the various social implications of a policy directed to the socialisation of vital industries. The Russian experiment in the application of Communistic principles has passed through strange vicissitudes during the past four years, and the section devoted to this subject by Herr Strobel emphasises the salient features of Communist policy, and describes the social and economic consequences which have flowed from it.
The political and economic history of Germany during the two years which followed the Armistice, comprising a protracted civil war and violent political agitations all clustering round the question of the economic transformation of society, has not received from the members of the British Labour Movement a quarter of the attention that has been bestowed upon the Russian experiment. Yet the experiences of industrial Germany are more relevant to the immediate aspirations of British Socialism than the dissimilar economic structure of Russia. Herr Strobel has described the scope and the con- sequences of the recent experiments in Socialisation undertaken in three European countries, and has related the practical details of these endeavours to the general principles of Socialism.