Big Pharma Final Post

Social Movement Theory

Where the Big Pharma Movement Fits In:

In the layers of the Social Movement rainbow that Dr. Vrooman showed us that we have the first layer of the how social movements progress. It starts with a public issue, which in my case are the high prices of medications that people need to live. The issue then turned into a trend, which I saw on twitter. The hash tags associated with the movement are #BigPharma, #DrugPrices, #health, and #PharmaGreed. Those are only a few of the hashtags of the movement but were the ones I saw the most on Twitter. Now it is in the stage as a campaign. They are having a conference on lowering the price of drugs to make them more affordable and to try and tell lawmakers to resist the temptation of supporting Big Pharma. People are also sharing their stories of how big pharma has affected them negatively in not being able to get medicines or the medications being pushed onto them because of big pharma pushing meds like opioids onto people and they overdose and die from it. As a result of these stories there are humanitarian organizations like, “A Fair Shot” and “Affordable Medicines Now.” People are also protesting it, which is peaceful protest. They have displays of signs and works of art that protest the high prices of medicines.

            In the organization area it is pretty organized with conferences on it and organized protests on the hill. Their demands are pretty clear and they have achieved some of those demands in some of the humanitarian organizations. Also the demands are purposeful. The stage of the movement is just trying to get more people involved and sharing there stories. It is a continuous fight with big pharma to get the prices of drugs down.