The Opioid Documents
A Report on the Politics of the Public Record
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12970937 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Antoine Lentacker |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 137-165 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Social History of Alcohol Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0887-2783 • E-ISSN: 2640-7329 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/713409 |
| OpenAlex | W3154442773 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 11 |
Lawyers in the ongoing opioid litigation have obtained millions of documents from the drug manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies blamed for the ravages of the opioid crisis. What will happen to these documents if the suits are settled? Will they form a public archive of one of the worst man-made public health disasters in memory? Or will they remain locked away, perhaps permanently? In search for answers, this piece traces a longer history of the role of the courts in shaping the public record on drugs. It discusses what the recent scholarship on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical knowledge owes to past litigation against the drug industry, but also highlights some of the forces that have eroded the public record in both the scientific and legal arenas over the last few decades. These forces, I argue, have converged in the case of opioids, raising urgent questions about the implications of litigating public health issues in secret
Opioid · Opioid epidemic · Political science · Politics · Public health · Public relations · Scholarship · Law · Medicine · Opioid Use Disorder Treatment · Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare · Pharmaceutical Practices and Patient Outcomes · Public Administration
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2024 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |