"persusasion schemes" aren't illegal, thankfully^. malicious intent is somewhat illegal, but of course their intent wasn't malice it was profit. this lawsuit will not stick, and that's not the point of it. the point is getting into npr, and scoring with the base. (and yeah, i'm sure they're utopianists who think that suing the big bad company will get people to stop taking opiates. dunno whether that's a positive trait or not, because it's pretty stupid. but it's well-meant.)

anyway. america has a pain problem. i think lifestyles are a major cause, as well as the expectation that pain is abnormal. for most of human history, pain was normal. teeth, bones, stomach, etc. i think a) we have more sources of pain than we used to because no one gets any exercise and diets are shot to hell blah blah.... and b) it is finally possible to live a fair bit of your life without any pain at all. this is brand new. 70 years, max. however, unless you want to become addicted to opiates OR you want to live extremely healthily, there will come a point when you have to deal with pain. surprise, most people choose opiates over living healthily. are they to blame? yeah partially. but in their defense, i'm sure most of them were essentially informed that what they were taking was a miracle drug. as a population we are used to ignoring the side effects list on the bottle, but it's always there.

the end.

^the same people who bitch constantly about police states want to make basically everything illegal. i'm certainly not the first person to mention that irony, but, you know, it's worth calling out periodically