(Part 3 of an ongoing business ethics series)
As a business ethics speaker, business ethics consultant and book author, one of my favorite quotations (it’s anonymous) about choices and consequences is: “That executive is so clueless he/she doesn’t know what he/she doesn’t want to know.” True, it’s a bit of a tongue twister, but the implication is there all the same.
In the world of business ethics dilemmas, not addressing a potential problem out of indifference or arrogance is as unethical as perpetrating the unethical act itself. It is as true of an executive leader refusing to address workplace sexual harassment, racism, bullying and bribery, as it is of allowing a drug epidemic to sweep the country and cost millions of lives.
CVS and Walgreens
On November 1, 2022, the London Times reported that the two drug chains agreed to an opioid settlement of $10 billion. They were fined that huge amount of money, “linked to their role in the opioids crisis in the US, which has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the country in recent years.”
The money will go to states and it will go to several Indian tribes. Naturally, the companies are adamant that they did nothing wrong. According to National Prescription Opiate Litigation, a group of senior lawyers, the lawsuits “are an important step in our efforts to hold pharmacy defendants accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic.”
As a business ethics speaker, business ethics consultant and book author who has extensively written on the opioid crisis and healthcare in general, this settlement represents an important ethical dilemma in terms of the consequences of not paying attention.
The Times article stated:
“In addition to payments totaling billions of dollars, these companies have committed to making significant improvements to their dispensing practices to help reduce addiction moving forward.”
Indeed, in November 2021, a U.S. federal jury determined that both chains “had created a public nuisance in the way they dispensed opioids and dismissed arguments that doctors and drug manufacturers were primarily to blame for the crisis.”
The opioid national stain
Even in the most basic of all human interactions, when one of us has hurt another in word or deed, we need to look inward, examine our behavior and make amends. It may be something as relatively benign as posting something mean on social media, or as serious as being the president of a company that unintentionally harms others. Even if the apology is not accepted, the admission of guilt begins something of a healing process.
The opioid process to it to another level. The pharmaceutical companies knew how addictive the pain killers were, as did the dispensing physicians who (in many cases) were on the take. The pharmacists who dispensed the opioids also knew the problems. In fact, they were on the front-lines. They saw many of the “patients” again and again and again. And, in dismissing the possibility that doctors and drug manufacturers were primarily to blame, they heaped all of the judgment on those were addicted.
My question as an ethics speaker and ethics consultant, is if, in the minds of pharmacists no professional or pharmaceutical company was responsible, who was? Everyone knew how addictive these painkillers were, didn’t it register with any licensed pharmacist that they were dispensing pills that could ultimately kill people? Did no one raise red flags, did no chain making multi-millions of dollars on opioid dispensing sit down and ask: “How can we help end this problem before it explodes?”
They simply did not want to know what they already knew. “We were only following orders,” has been well proven to be a fallacious defense. The national opioid stain needed to start with an apology, then action, and at least an attempt to repair the damage. Instead, the drug chains hid and shrugged their shoulders. They did no want to kill the Golden Goose, and instead harmed the lives of millions.
There, at least, 10 billion reasons to be grateful that ethical people stood up to the wrong.
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