O P I N I O N
THE SOAPBOX
Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.
I don’t buy what Cinde Warmington is saying about her lobbying work for Purdue Pharma. Cinde had to know OxyContin was causing harm in New Hampshire. It’s clear that state legislators did, which is why they were proposing restrictions on prescribing OxyContin in the first place. By the early 2000s, New Hampshire was seeing a rash of robberies at pharmacies across the state from people desperate to get more of the highly addictive painkiller. This information was included at the hearing that Cinde Warmington was paid to attend.
It’s disturbing that someone running for Governor has made a career out of helping opioid companies harm our state, but it’s even more disturbing that Cinde Warmington is so willing to lie through her teeth to be elected.
As a firefighter in Manchester, I’ve been on the frontlines of this crisis working to help people while Cinde Warmington has been on the other side of this fight making money. It’s time she took some accountability for her actions.
The truth is, the U.S. Attorney General had already called OxyContin a “very, very dangerous drug” and the United States House of Representatives and Senate had held hearings about the harm of OxyContin and the deceptive marketing practices of Purdue Pharma when Cinde gave her paid testimony. The FDA had already forced Purdue Pharma to change the label for OxyContin, and the Department of Justice was publicly monitoring the abuse and diversion of the drug.
Despite all of this, Cinde still showed up to protect Purdue Pharma’s most profitable drug.
You don’t just have to take my word for it. A number of journalists have reported these details. The Union Leader, HuffPost, Keene Sentinel, WMUR, Daily Beast, Concord Monitor have all reported that what Cinde Warmington is saying isn’t true and that we knew a lot more than she is saying. Her lobbying for Purdue Pharma and her insistence that we had no idea should be disqualifying to voters alone, but Cinde Warmington hasn’t stopped profiting from the opioid crisis.
For the last two decades, Cinde Warmington has entangled herself with some of the worst doctors and companies in our state. Behind the scenes she was making it easier to prescribe OxyContin and by 2011 she was helping one of the worst doctors in the state operate his pill mill.
Cinde Warmington represented Dr. Michael O’Connell and his company PainCare as their lobbyist, business agent, and legal counsel for over a decade. She can’t claim to have not known this guy was a scumbag. One of the first things she did for O’Connell was help him negotiate a settlement agreement with the New Hampshire Board of Medicine so that he could continue operating his pain clinics after being credibly accused of sexually assaulting his patients.
PainCare was making millions of dollars a year in the mid-2010s and was one of the most prolific prescribers of opioids through the state’s Medicaid program. Somersworth and Rochester were hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic and many attribute this to the practices of PainCare. They even became embroiled in one of the largest prescription opioid kickback schemes in the country, and Cinde Warmington was there to protect the company and doctors implicated in the scandal from facing repercussions.
When it was time to run for political office, Cinde Warmington once again found a way to profit from opioid interests. Cinde has taken nearly $70,000 from O’Connell and associates to fund her political career, including $30,000 for her campaign for Governor.
Now that her real record is being exposed, instead of apologizing for her decades of putting profits first, Cinde Warmington is attacking Joyce Craig for her work in Manchester. This is sort of like an arsonist blaming the fire department for not being able to put out her fire fast enough. Joyce Craig has always run towards the fires and taken on the tough fights in her community. I’ll go with a person like that every time over someone who saw a tragedy unfolding in our state and kept finding more ways to make money from it.
I hope you’ll join me and vote for Joyce Craig on September 10.
Beg to differ? Agree to disagree? Your thoughtful prose on topics of general interest are welcome. Send to publisher@inklink.news, subject line, The Soapbox.
Chad Gamache is Manchester Fire Captain and Manchester IAFF Local 856 President