The strategy was to advertise these medications as safe for white middle class reliable you know the imagery was grandparents soccer moms. As time went on they began to say listen prescribers you need to start screening people. So this idea of pharmaceutical splitting I think is also useful for understanding the complexities of this kind of strategy and pivoting around diagnosis and treatment that pharma companies play. It has been a very tricky business in the pharma industry to market drugs that are a treatment for addiction.
Featuring Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg on how American capitalism and its illusions of whiteness both created the opioid crisis and shaped the response to it. We are discussing their book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America.
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