Rhetorical Analysis of Drug Abuse: WRIT1001 Essay on Opioid Crisis

This rhetorical essay analyzes Barry Meier's article "Why Drug Execs Haven’t Seen Justice for Their Role in Opioid Crisis," focusing on the opioid crisis and Purdue Pharma's involvement. The essay examines how the company's actions and the justice system's response, or lack thereof, shaped the crisis. It explores the rhetorical strategies used by Meier, including the use of pathos, and examines the consequences of the company's actions, such as increased addiction and overdoses. The essay highlights the corruption within the legal system and how executives escaped significant punishment, while thousands died from overdoses. The essay also uses supporting claims from the article to further support the main argument, such as the importance of taking opportunities and releasing all negative information that affects consumers everywhere. The essay also cites multiple sources to support the arguments made.

Drug Abuse: A rhetorical Essay
Student’s name
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No matter how big of a crisis has occurred by some company’s failure to address a
problem, the company executives will always go out untouched or very minorly punished. In the
article “Why Drug Execs Haven’t Seen Justice for Their Role in Opioid Crisis,” Barry Meier,
Barry explains how companies such as Purdue Pharma played a significant role in the Opioid
Crisis and didn’t receive a punishment for it. As drug use was on the rise in the United States, so
was opioids (Fox, Oliver, & Ellis, 2013). Purdue Pharma, a big named pain killer/medication
company, played a significant part in aid of America’s opioid crisis with its prescription
painkillers. The company’s involvement had caused a big stir, and her executives hadn’t received
any significant punishment (Fox et al., 2013).
Over time we figured out that the prosecutor on the case was holding back on a lot of
information that was being used to build up another company ending a lawsuit against Purdue
Pharma. Once a meeting behind closed doors occurred, the possibility to even run the example
with better and more substantial evidence was out the window. The court's decision to keep
everything about Purdue Pharma hidden from the public came back to hit them, in the sense that
doctors ramped up dosage info. Which directly correlated with the more people getting addicted
to opioids. The audience mostly consisted of more people from the older generation and people
that we’re interested in reading on the topic in general.
There were many different minor claims that to support the primary contention in this
article such as take an opportunity you get instead of waiting on it “As it turns out, Brownlee
wanted to indict the executives on serious felony charges and the evidence he couldn’t discuss
were records suggesting that Purdue Pharma knew for three years about OxyContin’s growing
abuse and concealed that information” (Meier, 2018). This quote stated how Brownlee didn’t say
anything at the first opportunity he got so he could charge them under a felony, which then led

that case to be closed by the court and the Purdue Pharma executives escaping with
misdemeanors. Another minor claim is to release all negative information that affects consumers
everywhere, “But the Justice Department’s decision to keep that information hidden had the
opposite effect. Doctors, often unaware of how Purdue Pharma had betrayed them, continued to
ramp up their use of opioids by tens of millions of added prescriptions annually” (Meier, 2018).
This quote stated the fact that when the justice department decided to hide the information, all
unaware doctors ramped up dosages to what they saw as acceptable amounts, but it was too
much.
The pathos factor of this article gets deep in the sense that it includes Addiction, Abuse,
and Corruption (Varpio, 2018). The fear the families had to go through when they realized their
loved one was addicted to opioids. The corruption comes back to the system of law and how
once the company’s legal team encountered the judges and prosecutors at a meeting, they got the
in-depth investigation canceled (Allen, 2017). “And in the five years after the case’s settlement,
some 100,000 Americans died from overdoses involving prescription painkillers such as
OxyContin, while thousands of patients became addicted to opioids or suffered ill health
consequences” (Meier, 2018). A Lot of people also passed from overdoses from opioids when
the doctors didn't fully know the capabilities of the medication, and they are prescribing their
patients. The families that had to go through opioid abuse are so changed; it hits them
emotionally and physically.

References
Allen, M. (2017). Rhetoric, Aristotle’s: Pathos. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication
Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483381411.n521
Fox, T. P., Oliver, G., & Ellis, S. M. (2013). The Destructive Capacity of Drug Abuse: An
Overview Exploring the Harmful Potential of Drug Abuse Both to the Individual and to
Society [Review Article]. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/450348
Meier, B. (2018, June 15). Why Drug Company Executives Haven’t Really Seen Justice for
Their Role in the Opioid Crisis. Retrieved March 27, 2020, from Time website:
https://time.com/5311359/purdue-pharma-oxycontin-lawsuit-opioid-crisis/
Varpio, L. (2018). Using rhetorical appeals to credibility, logic, and emotions to increase your
persuasiveness. Perspectives on Medical Education, 7(3), 207–210.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-018-0420-2