Radium, Tobacco, Asbestos - now Opioids and Sex Slaves?

I recently read The Radium Girls - so am especially attuned to how corporate profits can cause management to  turn a blind eye to the long-term damage their products can cause. In that account, young girls from working-class families used their tongues to sharpen paint brushes  in applying radium numbers on watch dials.  Horrible disfigurements and deaths resulted; the radium poisoned them from the inside-out.  At the time, radium was touted as a miracle substance that made you positively 'glow' with health!  The companies denied, changed locations, obstructed justice.  Very dark period in our manufacturing history.

The glamour of smoking during the WWII era enticed many young people to get addicted, resulting in bladder, lung, and other cancers -- often decades later.  The tobacco industry followed the radium example - including shifting their markets to vulnerable populations in other countries.  Many lawsuits wound their way through our legal system.

Same for asbestos, which my Dad was exposed to, in great quantity, working in the trades.  I've received some paltry settlements - token sums for shortening a loved-one's life.  Again, settlements resulted from class action suits.

Now, Ohio is looking to sue big Pharm for actively  promoting the use of opioids to docs - resulting in a national crisis that is tearing families and communities apart.  So the denials and delays and high-priced tactics unfold.

I also was horrified after watching a documentary - "I Am Jane Doe" - about how Backpage ads allow pimping of teen-aged girls.  As one young victim said, 'It was as easy to buy me as ordering a pizza.'  Porn is a mega business, and our laws have inadvertently allowed the internet to protect the third-party platforms.  Many people are fighting to change the laws and hold complicit parties responsible - it often takes a long time for goodness to prevail.  Too long for the radium girls, the guys breathing in asbestos, the smokers -- and now the opioid addicts and our American sex slaves.