Thesis
The misuse of and addiction to opioids is a serious national crisis that affects public health and has claimed the lives of many Americans each year, and yet people still pretend this isn’t an issue.
Background and Evidence
A coalition fighting drug addiction has been calling for the pharmaceutical companies that aggressively marketed opioids to be held responsible for the epidemic that has killed over 400,000 people in the US.
Four major drug companies agreed to pay $260 million to two Ohio counties in a last-minute bid to stave off the first federal opioid trial. Penalizing pharmaceutical companies is justified but misguided. The crisis originated in the overprescribing of painkillers in the 1990s. Most opioid deaths are now caused by illegal drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
Sources I Have Found
These Mothers Saw the Opioid Epidemic Before Anyone Else. No One Listened.
Drug companies and some specialists pushed the notion that opioids were not addictive when used to treat pain. Out of that flowed a policy treating pain as a “fifth vital sign” that corralled hospitals and doctors into mass prescribing opioids. Deaths from opioid overdoses quadrupled recently; ninety-one Americans die from opioid overdoses every day.
In 2017, President Trump declared opioid abuse a public health emergency. Only about a fifth of people who need treatment for opioid addiction get it and far fewer receive the most effective medications for long enough. The surge in prescription drug abuse was followed by a wave of heroin addiction. Now more than half of opioid deaths are caused by synthetic versions such as fentanyl. Beyond the death toll, at least 2 million Americans have become addicted.
Sources I Haven’t Found
I would like to find and learn more about the court cases about this opioid crisis involving pharmaceutical companies and individual doctors.
Other reasons that could have or may have caused this opioid crisis.
Counterarguments I Need To Refute
The opioid crisis is not at the fault of doctors overly prescribing these medications
Opioid treatment is used only for medical treatment
ahntkd99
carahall
andrewbecharaa
athenapup4
bane1900
bestbaker123
bmdpiano
comp0327
compclass8
cynicalwordsmith22
doglover441
drippydoughnut
drpaleontology
gcatt310
givemeclouttokens
hershey515
iamsleepy01
imagination4421
influenza123
jackso23
Jayv23
kraemercali
lazybear8
lelebxby
lg102015
lovericeandnoodles
lucbe219
morra2024
mpsj13
roses0102
Sub2MigzFilms
smellycat23
tenere84
thefrontbottom
voxpopuli75
whosyourcookie22
yankeefan25
Newspaperlessness 
I’m getting mixed messages from your Thesis and Background, Imagination.
It’s hard to understand what you mean by “people still pretend this isn’t an issue,” or why you would want to argue that, especially when your evidence points in the direction of an indisputable crisis that lots of people are actively engaged in trying to address.
Maybe your thesis is that we’re scrambling to find the right way to address the problem. Your “coalition,” whoever that is, want to hold the pharmaceutical companies responsible—economically responsible—to spend whatever it takes to treat the addiction their products have caused, which certainly doesn’t sound like “pretending it isn’t an issue.”
More interesting is your claim that holding them responsible is “justified but misguided.” I see no explanation of how you think either of those claims is true. “Justified” indicates a moral claim that the companies did something wrong. “Misguided” is most likely a process judgment that fining the companies is bad policy, not unfair, but also not effective.
That nuanced opinion would be worthy of an OpEd, but I don’t see how you’re pursuing it.
Does this help you understand the reaction of one interested reader to your draft so far?
We can do another round of feedback if you want to pursue these questions.
As for your desire to find details on individual court cases, that’s easy:
A simple google search for: new york times court cases opioid
LikeLike
May I have feedback please
LikeLike