this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
111 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
59569 readers
3431 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a hard one. I think we can all agree that the people who need it should have it and the people who don’t…don’t…especially if their easy access to the drug pretty much guarantees a shortage of the drug for those who do need it.
I need it. And when there was a shortage just as we were forced to return to the office after Covid wfh, it was a nightmare. I don’t know for sure that this company was handing out prescriptions to whoever would pay or if they were mostly legitimate, but I imagine that it’s somewhere in between the two. And I do know that we will never be able to have a rational discussion about it between health professionals and the DEA/FDA, etc.
So, a lot of people who need it won’t get it either due to shortages or due to not being able to access a prescription for whatever reason.
Some people will continue to access it who don’t need it, but on a level that guarantees sporadic shortages for others.
No one wins other than those profiting either by selling prescriptions or by selling the drugs themselves at a much higher price than they paid for it using said prescriptions.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
It's not complicated to me, just make more. We should have a government funded drug producer for all the generics that the big companies don't think are profitable enough.
We shouldn't punish a population because a minority abuse something, that really only affects themselves.
I read this article a few months ago that I found quite interesting: Original link Unpaywalled link
The manufacturer in this blames the DEA, and whilst I don't trust a pharmaceutical company to do anything other than ruthlessly maximise profits, in this case I'm inclined to believe this depiction of the DEA as the overly persnickety bad guy (because I have even less reason to trust the DEA)