Lessons from Corporate Influence in the Opioid Epidemic: Toward a Norm of Separation

There is overwhelming evidence, writes Jonathan Marks in Bioethical Inquiry,  that the opioid crisis—which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars (and counting)—has been created or exacerbated by webs of influence woven by several pharmaceutical companies. Opioid companies built these webs of health professionals, patient advocacy groups, medical professional societies, research universities, and others as part of corporate strategies of influence that were designed to expand the opioid market from cancer patients to larger groups of patients with acute or chronic pain. Governments, the academy, and civil society need to develop counterstrategies to insulate themselves from corporate influence and to preserve their integrity and public trust. These strategies require a paradigm shift—from partnerships with the private sector, which are ordinarily vehicles for corporate influence, to a norm of separation.