Tinfoil hat theory or not, the wealthy upper class in the States gets away with some shady practices, no small thanks to their deep pockets. And while asking Reddit about the secret from your job that others should know, one commenter from Massachusetts revealed quite the shocker about their employer in their particular field. “It’s common practice in the Pharma industry to pay daily fines instead of following the law. Fines cap out way below the cost to fix some stuff, so they just budget for an extra $100k per day,” the pharmacy employee explained.
As the post’s top and highly upvoted comment, the pharmacy worker’s “secret” got quite the attention and engagement. “This is a tremendously common strategy in many businesses. The fines are often shockingly low,” one person said in their reply. Another claims that the government’s fine system with some industries is actually designed to work via this shady practice as well.
Once something becomes illegal enough to warrant a fine, you’d imagine that people wouldn’t break the law to avoid paying. However, it more or less becomes a “bribe” for people with the money to continuously break it whenever and however many times they please. As one person puts it, “When the punishment for a crime is a fine, the crime is ‘legal’ for the rich.” As to what illegal practices a pharmacy business would prefer to pay off rather than bother to fix things, many commenters claiming to have experience in pharma have chimed in that it’s “EPA fines for waste management/treatment.”
For those unaware, EPA refers to the Environmental Protection Agency in the US. In other words, there are many ways that pharmaceutical companies deal with biohazardous and possibly dangerous substances unlawfully, and simply pay the fines. Another user added that, besides the EPA regulations, some employers could also break the law regarding how a drug is produced by paying fines. However, this is most definitely quite the tinfoil hat theory, yet it’s more than possible that such things have been practiced.
It’s the sad state of the world we live in, but more often than not, if you’ve got the money, you can get away with quite a lot, minus a few irredeemable crimes.
