It’s the largest online retailer in the world and has revolutionised the way we shop. It offers everything from best-selling books to children’s toy, and a third of all online purchases in Britain now go through Amazon. Dispatches: The Secrets of Amazon, Channel 4 2019
We ask whether the company is putting profit before other priorities, revealing the dangerous toys for sale on the site, uncovering the enormous amount of money the company makes with our personal data … What is the hidden cost behind Amazon’s unstoppable growth? ibid.
An incredibly tough place to work. We’re going undercover … Even going to the loo can land staff in trouble. ibid.
Amazon’s revenue in the UK is approximately eleven billion. Yet it paid two hundred and twenty million in tax last year. That’s about 2%. ibid.
It’s a job, a business opportunity. We go door to door. We sell magazines door to door being friendly. You know you seem friendly. You make $300 a day if you’re good. American Honey 2016 starring Sasha Lane & Shia LaBeouf & Arielle Holmes & Riley Keough & McCaul Lombardi & Crystal B & Chad Mckenzie Cox & Garry Howell & Kenneth Kory Tucker et al, director Andrea Arnold, him to her
So you’re a Southern girl. A real American honey like me. ibid.
God can go fuck himself. God is a cunt. ibid. Star
I feel like I’m fucking America. ibid.
American consumer culture: It’s [US] perfected the art of creating the kind of theatre of capitalism, a vast and tantalising spectacle where even your strangest and most forbidden desires are commercialised and turned into a saleable product. Louis Theroux, Life on the Edge II: The Dark Side of Pleasure, BBC 2020
Since 2000, more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone, or Oxycontin, would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.
Blinn was taking the equivalent of 200 hits of heroin a day. He kept the prescription bottle for 20 years because he felt something was not right. ibid.
A nationwide criminal conspiracy that included Fraud, Pills Mills, doctors trading drugs for sex, false statements to Congress, and attempts to target key officials of the Bush administration … The FDA was used to falsely and fraudulently market Oxycontin. ibid.
None of them would spend a day in prison. ibid.
Lifetree Pain Clinic prescription: 60 x Amitriptyline 50mg; 30 x Celexa 40mg; 224 x Oxycodone 30mg; 112 Percocet 10/325mg; 60 x Requip 1mg; 60 x Xanax 1mg; 60 x Zanaflex 4mg. ibid.
Starting in 2013 a powerful synthetic opioid surged in popularity: Fentanyl. It’s a 100 times more powerful than morphine. Rather than reckoning with its dangers, companies sold it as aggressively as drug cartels. But instead of gun-toting dealers on street corners, men and women in suits and lab coats pushed opioids and cash bonuses and power-point presentations at pain management jamborees. Flush with campaign cash from Big Pharma, Congress would look the other way. ibid.
‘40 people every day die from Prescription overdoses.’ Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century II ***** news
‘The opioid crisis started with prescriptions, prescriptions and patient care. This idea that we weren’t adequately treating pain. Drugs like Oxycontin … began to preach the gospel of the opioid … They developed new medical terms like pseudo-addiction … As you get stronger drugs, it’s more expensive. ibid. Joe Rannazzisi, insider whistleblower gives evidence
Fentanyl byproducts is killing a lot of people … It was a natural progression … Overdose deaths is under-reported, we know that for sure so we don’t know really how many people died. We started seeing massive amounts of death … prescriptions: 250 million. ibid.
An onslaught of pills, hundreds of thousands of deaths. Who is accountable? ibid. The Washington Post online article 20 July 2019
Some of America’s biggest pharmaceuticals were not only profiting from the opioid crisis, they may have been manufacturing it. ibid.
We have had many run-ins with the Sacklers lately. The crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Their man point of contention is that they did not ignore the opioid crisis single-handedly. Whether you believe that or don’t believe that, there is voluminous evidence the crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Purdue [Pharma] led the charge. ibid. Bernstein, Washington Post
Generic versions … sending massive amounts of these drugs downstream because there were corrupt doctors all over the country. It became like the Wild West. This was a new drug cartel that was being established in the United States. But instead of coming in from a foreign country, they were drug dealers who were wearing suits and lab-coats. ibid.
A patient survey form. You say, I got back pain. The problem is that no-one ever saw the patient. As long as they have any kind of credit card they were fine. You’d have a doctor on the east coast, a patient and drug seeker on the west coast, the pharmacy was in the mid-west. It was just a trafficking organisation that was hiding behind the veil of the internet. ibid.
Broward County has more pill-mills (142) than McDonald’s. ibid.
Superior Injury Centre 870-6370. ibid.
There was one store in particular that was known by drug dealers as the go-to: CVS Pharmacy. ibid.
In 2011 there was a crack-down by the DEA. Operation Pill Nation involved more than 500 law-enforcement officers resulting in seizures of 7 vehicles, $19 million in cash and 105 arrests. ibid.
But the real problem wasn’t on the street. It was in the executive suites of pharmaceutical companies which had become addicted to the profits opioids could deliver. ibid.
Workers disciplined in Prozac mailings: At least one Lilly’s employee fired; seven face various other measures. ibid.
The product was Act-Tiv. It was a lolly-pop made of Fentanyl whose potency carried the enormous risk of overdose. ibid.
They start paying exorbitantly, a huge number of speaker programs, and they use the speaker program basically as a way of cover for the bribes they are paying. ibid. whistleblower
Clearly we’re breaking the law. ibid.
CVS Pharmacy: on the edge of a highway, so people would cruise in, get their drugs, and be out in no time at all. ibid.
I know they’re sick like me. Gotta be number one. ibid.
These changes are good to one way of thinking in the sense that they make it harder to buy and abuse pharmaceutical opioids. But what that does is it drives all these people who are already addicted on to the black market. ibid.
International drug cartels catered to those who had become addicted to prescription pills. As their need for narcotics increased and doctors were more reluctant to prescribe an increasing dose, users turned to heroin, and a synthetic opioid fifty times more powerful: Fentanyl. ibid.
Since 2015 Fentanyl overdoses have been rising dramatically. Rates have soared by 2000% in San Diego. ibid.
The company told me nothing ever. ibid. whistleblower
Late in 2020 the Trump administration rushed to make an announcement for the presidential election. Pleading guilty to three felony counts. The Sackler family would pay a $225 million fine. Purdue Pharma would plead guilt to kickbacks and fraud. And promise to pay fines totalling $8.3 billion. ibid.
Purdue is in bankruptcy and only has about $1 billion which a whole bunch of creditors are already fighting over. That money is never going to be paid by the company or anybody else. ibid.
A cruel irony: the only way the company could pay damages was to increase its sales of drugs, including Oxycontin. ibid.
Britain’s biggest supermarket retailer has 3,627 stores nationwide, with almost 50 million shopping trips a week, and a turnover of £57 billion a year. It’s a company that’s been part of British life for over a century. But the tale of this retail giant is one of high stake risks, game-changing innovations and fierce rivalries. And it all began with a barrow boy. Inside Tesco: 24/7 I, Channel 4 2020
Key workers in retail kept going throughout lockdown. But with up to 50,000 employees or isolating, the business was short one sixth of their staff … It’s the largest private employer in the country. ibid.
The man behind all things Tesco was Jack Cohen … ‘I started as you know in the street markets of London’ … By 1971 Jack Cohen was a business legend. ibid.
Alistair manages a store with 550 employees … The jobs done by people working with customers are critical. Inside Tesco: 24/7 II
It would take a retail revolution and the birth of the modern supermarket to turn things around at Tesco. ibid.
Tesco is the biggest of the Big Four supermarkets ahead of Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrison’s. ibid.
Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it. Frank Zappa
Special Sale: Defining British Art: ‘No more than thirty lots … A very British sale. So the ask was a big one.’ Sold! Inside the World’s Biggest Auction House II, Jussi