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Friday, April 10, 2015

Hoffman LaRoche Supports Pharma Protectionism At The Expense of Human Rights

the manufactures of anti depressants and sleeping pills want a "drug free" society to have people arrested and incarcerated for having cannabis




How Big Pharma Lobbyists Are Bringing Mandated Drug Tests To A State Near You

Posted on  

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/08/1833421/how-big-pharma-lobbyists-are-bringing-mandated-drug-tests-to-a-state-near-you/

In the Nation, Isabel Macdonald has an excellent long read on the history of U.S. drug testing, beginning with a government program to test returning Vietnam War veterans and the drug-testing provisions in President Ronald Reagan’s Drug Free Workplace Act as part of the misdirected War on Drugs. Even then, the medical community dismissed the Act’s provisions requiring all federal grantees to test employees as “chemical McCarthyism,” as well as unscientific and discriminatory, since it was more likely to capture days-old marijuana use than frequent consumption of cocaine or alcohol. But the movement nonetheless grew from an anti-drug campaign into an industry with its own trade association, after several moneyed interests like Hoffman-La Roche, the maker of Valium and sleeping pills, got into the business:
The company established one of the first major drug-testing labs in America and won an early urine-testing contract with the Pentagon, leading to $300 million in annual sales by 1987. The following year, Hoffmann-La Roche stepped up its sales efforts with the launch of a major PR and lobbying campaign to “mobilize corporate America to confront the illicit drug problem in their workplaces.” The drug manufacturer called its new campaign “Corporate Initiatives for a Drug-Free Workplace.”
Before long, with the help of a New Jersey–based lawyer named David Evans, Hoffmann-La Roche was organizing workshops around the country to convince employers to set up drug-testing programs. In an interview with The Nation, Evans likened his role to that of “a doctor coming in to talk about how to set up a medical device.” During that first campaign, 1,000 employers signed up.[…]
The drug-testing industry took aim at lawmakers as much as employers. Hoffmann-La Roche, for instance, worked “with federal and state government officials,” according to a press release issued by the PR company hired to market the campaign. Lerner told the press that the drug company also envisioned a “grassroots strategy” to prevent states from passing laws to decriminalize marijuana.
By 2006, 84 percent of American employers were reporting that they drug-tested their workers. Today, drug testing is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry. DATIA [Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association] represents more than 1,200 companies and employs a DC-based lobbying firm, Washington Policy Associates. Hoffmann-La Roche’s former consultant, David Evans, now runs his own lobbying firm and has ghostwritten several state laws to expand drug testing. Most significant, in the 1990s Evans crafted the Workplace Drug Testing Act for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), of which Hoffmann-La Roche was a paying member. Laying out protocols for workplace drug testing, the bill—which has been enacted into law in several states—upheld the rights of employers to fire employees who do not comply with their companies’ drug-free workplace program.
Over the past decade, lobbyists like Evans have focused on what a DATIA newsletter recently dubbed “the next frontier”—schoolchildren. In 2002, a representative from the influential drug-testing management firm Besinger, DuPont & Associates heralded schools as “potentially a much bigger market than the workplace.”
Because this drug testing tends to capture marijuana more than other drugs, proponents of the movement have increasingly demonized marijuana use most of all. Robert Dupont, who served as drug policy director under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, had advocated decriminalizing marijuana and its use a “minor problem” before he became a “drug-testing management” consultant. Then in 1978, he declared marijuana “in many ways” the “worst drug of all the illegal drugs,” later explaining in a PBS special that, “I realized that these public policies were symbolic—all that really mattered was you were for [the decriminalization of marijuana] or you were against it…. I think about it as a litmus test.”

Now, with fewer and fewer employers implementing drug tests because they have shown “no demonstrable return on investment,” the industry has turned to another lucrative market: those receiving public assistance and unemployment benefits. Several recently passed state laws that require public benefits applicants to take drug tests have been struck down by courts, but that hasn’t stopped other states from moving forward with random drug-testing provisions. In South Carolina in 2012, with unemployment still above 9 percent, state legislators pushed three different bills to drug-test the unemployed. And several other states have done the same in the wake of a federal provision that authorizes the tests. Of course, these laws propose testing for drugs consumed illegally without a prescription. So if those consuming marijuana for stress or trouble sleeping happen to turn instead to prescription use of another federally legal drug, such as Valium or sleeping pills, Hoffman-La Roche just happens to have profited twice over from the process.

April 1, 2015 Confessions of Herbert Kleber
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2015/04/confessions-of-herbert-kleber.html

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Confessions of Herbert Kleber


Herbert Kleber under the influence of buprenorphine?

I have to get this off my chest.

I have been a total shill for the status quo.

I twist science in order to make it fit just as those would do in the old USSR to conform to that state's failed economic policies.

Consider this.  I make a living bashing Cannabis, in order to support massive human rights violations required for keeping it illegal.

Yet when have I ever called for such prohibitionist polices towards alcohol?

I am as bad as all of these police unions.  They know how any times they are called to deal with alcohol related violence, and how rarely if ever anything related to Marijuana, asides perhaps from that which has been adulterated with something like PCP.  yet all they care about is their police overtime, busting, excuse me, kidnapping and stealing hapless drug dealers, excuse me, non officially approved pharmacist merchants, and being able to get away with shooting the family pet to death.

And I also make a living serving as a consultant for large pharmaceutical corporations, specifically regarding opioid pain medications- pills.  In particular, Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, Reckitt Benckiser, which makes Nurofen), and Alkermes, which makes Zohydro. Sure we can coat the pills and add binders etc to control the rate of absorption, which is key to thwarting abuse.  But let's face it, a pill is intrinsically abusable because it so easy to take more then the recommended number of pills.

Back in the old days, rate of absorption was controlled by, amongst other things, dilution.  In other word by not presenting an opioid or cocaine as a pill but by a bulky dilute tonic- aka beverage.

But the medical establishment does not like that.

Bulky tonic beverages cost more to ship.

Cost more to stock in terms of shelve space.

Why use laudanum when we can distill that into morphine, heroin or something even more potent, and then attempt to mitigate that by using tiny amounts within pills with all sorts of binders and fillers to control the absorption?

But yes of course it's so easy to simply abuse such 'compact' medications by taking way more than the recommended amount.

That's why I have lacked the chutzpah to recommend moving away from Opioids as pills and to some bulky beverage format.

Likewise muchly with cocaine.  We love to bash cocaine, never-mind that it is no more dangerous when used exactly as caffeine and nicotine- that is in DILUTE form.   It's the concentration of cocaine dosage that radically multiplies its reinforcement-attractiveness; and it's the concentrated forms of dosing that bypass its anesthetic inhibitor effect that it has in dilute oral doses- IOW its numbing effect serves to slow the rate of drinking which is partially why oral preparations as Vin Mariani had a good reputation even amongst those wary of regular alcoholic beverages.  Perhaps we should not only move cocaine use back to this oral - dilute model, but even apply that to Opioids via bulky oral solutions, perhaps even with small amounts of Coca-cocaine or even Novocaine to give a feeling of drinking fullness and serve to discourage excessive drinking.

The bashing of cocaine started in the 1880s following the 1884 introduction of the drug in its most concentrated forms.  Because it is also an anesthetic, cocaine was experimented with by anesthesiologists as a nerve bloc- that is INJECTED directly into a nerve, thusly producing extreme levels of intoxication far greater than even injecting it subcutaneously, let along simply sniffed or taken infinitely more diluted in a coca product.   Within that field of medicine, certain anesthesiologists developed a strong bias against cocaine resulting from such attempts at cocaine injections as a nerve block.

This was partially due to them being unfamiliar with cocaine in normal dilute form as a delightful alternative to caffeine and nicotine, and hence introduced to cocaine as a drug to be injected.  A bad idea.  For cocaine or any stimulant.  When was the last time that you heard of someone injecting caffeine or nicotine?  Or amphetamine?  Remember JFK?  He had that beautiful wife, yet had to have all those other women.

And partially because some had become too detached from reality largely by their own experimentation with anesthetic drugs- those designed to numb one from reality, resulting in anesthesiologist with an exceptionally poor understanding of the human condition tending to view everything within a simplistic disease model while poo pooing spirituality as mere fable, and expressions of such to be belittled.

Or both sloppy and too prideful.  Look at Sigmund Freud.  He starts out by suggesting "coca" or "cocaine" - he used the terms loosely and interchangeably  though he was suggesting oral dilute cocaine, namely 50 mg of the hydrochloride in a 8 ounce glass of water.

Then he figures, if dilute cocaine works good, than injected cocaine must be great.  So following Bentley's lead with oral Coca extract for treating Opium addiction, he advises his friend Fleischl to inject cocaine to break his addiction to injected morphine.

Then he gets all embarrassed and never writes about coca or cocaine again.

It's unclear if he ever used commercially available coca products such as Vin Mariani, or was strictly using the hydrochloride, though he ultimately quits using cocaine.  Yet he foolishly consumed cigars of Tobacco, refusing to quit those, and gets this horrific mouth cancer.

All of this ties into the larger phenomenon, namely the confusing of the dangers of a natural drug made into an ultra concentrated chemical by modern science, and the coming rejection of herbs and herbal based preparations in favor of the products of modern science of all new molecules synthesized from petro chemical black tars ultimately as FDA approved synthetic chemical.  You then got people who would have this disdain for Opium, Coca leaves etc as horrible, yet fall hook line and sinker for all sorts of 20th century chemical creations.

We see the first part of this with the confusion of dilute and ultra concentrated forms of natural drugs.  Various historians love to bash the use of "cocaine" to treat Opiate addicts, though what they overlook is that was with dilute cocaine via Coca, and not concentrated cocaine via sniffing or way worse injecting.  We even have those who claimed that the physicians who pioneered this use of combating addiction, Bentley used concentrated cocaine for treating opium addiction during the late 1870s, a few years BEFORE its introduction- go figure.  However the value of Coca to get people through withdrawal from other substances, with withdrawal from Coca itself non existent is quite real.  Try going without Coffee.  One will likely have severe headaches by late afternoon.  Then try drinking Coca tea, and no withdrawal.  And then after a few days, try drinking only water, and no withdrawal.

In any event, cocaine bashing was soon picked up due to its market threat to nicotine- IOW the market threat of Coca to Tobacco.  What a better way to distract from the addictiveness of nicotine by harping on the so-called 'addiction' to cocaine, which is actually not physically addictive by confusing at is properly called the toxic-mania of extreme dosing as pioneered by anesthesiologist during the 1880s.  Tobacco is a long established crop in Europe and the U.S.  Coca is a tropical plant that can't stand frost.  Taking Coca safely alleviates Tobacco withdrawal as it does Coffee withdrawal.  But big Tobacco can't stand for that bit of information to get wide circulation.  Think of the millions or billions in market share that would be lost!

Meanwhile, cocaine provided an excellent scapegoating for 'modern' medicine.  Sure cocaine is a dangerous drug for being quite likely to abuse in concentrated form.  But are not many modern medicines in fact concentrated drugs?  If people knew the whole story of cocaine they might look at modern medicine more suspiciously.  they might insist upon whole herbs and bulky preparations made form such.

So we got this tobacco-medical alliance.

Anyone researching the history of organized medicine in this country can see for themselves the great harms created by the infamous AMA-APhA-USDA political alliance, with officials in those private organizations likewise holding high level positions in that government entity.  To it: Harvey Washington Wiley, who headed the USDA Bureau of Chemistry starting in 1883, and was also a member of the AMA-APhA who founded their "Council on Pharmacy" in 1905 to establish what was supposedly legitimate medicine, and what was supposedly not.

It was and is all about ripping off the general public.

Just go back to the very beginnings of the AMA.

The American Medical Association was founded in 1847.  It's purpose?  To serve the interests of its members- over everyone else.

It worked to undermine competitive pricing in medicine and even had it made illegal to advertise medical rates despite there being a 1st Amendment.

It worked to restrict the supply of physicians making a permanent shortage in order to inflate rates.

It worked to rid the profession of relatively inexpensive herbal based medicines, by going after proprietary medicines which were falsely labeled "patent medicines when in fact that was which they ere working to protect PATENT medicines which are that because they are patentable.

We created a whole propaganda empire against the natural herbs- smearing them with code words and phrases as 'snake oil', nostrums, and of course 'quackery'.

And we did it via the emerging 20th century 'Progressive' political movement- of granting more government centralization in the name of serving the public interest.

Some of what was accomplished legitimately did that.

But much of what was done didn't, and in fact caused tremendous harms

Yet guess what - we are the quacks.  Yes that's right, the AMA!

The anti proprietary medicine/fraudulent anti patent medicine campaign against herbs lead to intrinsically more dangerous drugs, as anyone can see with all of the side effects of actual patent drugs/modern pharmaceuticals..

The lying through their teeth campaign about the supposed dangers of soft drinks combination cocaine or caffeine, while slyly saying nothing about nicotine likewise would be a cover for making the world safe for smokable Tobacco products!

They got all bent out of shape over Coca's market threat to Tobacco.  Both the AMA and of course the USDA were especially concerned over the use of Coca as a Tobacco habit cure.  Calling it a 'habit forming menace'.

Yet the same officials were OK with Tobacco laced with arsenic?

And they have that attitude right at the time that Tobacco cigarette sales began their big upturn in popularity right after the enactment of the 1906 U.S. 'Pure' Foods and Drug Act.

Was that any wonder?

The 1906 Act was a scam.

It established the idea of bureaucrats deciding what supposedly constituted legitimate medicine and diet.

Drug and particularly food products could be banned from interstate commerce if containing dangerous or deleterious ingredients.

Sounded OK.  Yet was not because it lacked any requirement for any scientific basis.  Something was simply dangerous or deleterious because the Bureau of Chemistry of the USDA merely said so.  That Bureau of course being headed by Harvey Wiley

Wiley clearly abused the 1906 Act with prosecutions for "adulteration" against products sold as foods for containing supposedly dangerous or deleterious ingredients that the Act hardly banned, as it required such ingredients as Opium and cocaine to be labeled.   Of course a manufacturer of a beverage sold as food could have labeled the cocaine content, but that hardly would guarantee that Wiley's USDA would not bring about a prosecution for "adulteration.  The labeling requirement was somewhat reasonable- should not the public know the presence and proportion of ingredients, particularly those that are classifiable as drugs?  But it was inconsistent.  If Opium and cocaine had to be labeled than so should caffeine and of course nicotine.  Requiring only the labeling of the former but not the latter would present the idea that the former were of concern but not he latter, and hence that the former were more dangerous then the latter.  So many manufacturers opened themselves up to mislabeling prosecutions for failing to label the opium or cocaine content, while others got scared and eliminated such from their formulations- all serving to fuel the false idea that such drugs were somehow unacceptably dangerous as dilute ingredients.

But Wiley primarily or entirely had reserved such "adulteration" prosecutions against products sold as foods rather than as drugs.  Thus for the latter, the American Medical Association and the American Pharmaceutical Association addressed such drug products via 'model legislation for the various States to make such available by a physician's prescription only, and as well requiring such prescriptions to be non-refillable- thus over riding medical independence.

Marking their particular "concern" over Coca's market threat to Tobacco were a pair of AMA and USDA articles in 1910  that cited Coca's use as a Tobacco Habit Cure.

The former, published that January 1, 1910 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 'Pharmacology' review (at pp 63-64 of Volume LIV, Number 1), was “Coca Bola and Oxy-Tonic: Two Nostrums Exposed by the Chemists of the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station” by E.F. Ladd, a chemist at the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station, attempted to discredit such a use.

The latter, published April 20, 1910 in the USDA's Farmer's Journal, was, "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare" by L.F. Kebler:

Both included baseless statements against cocaine in any amount.  The latter even argued against de-cocainated coca or the mere use of the word coca as if somehow triggering drug addicts to resume their former distributive habits.

Though both articles, particularly the AMA article targeted coca as a Tobacco habit Cure, they contained no acknowledgment of what the AMA's L.F. Kebler, the author of that AMA article had acknowledged before a US Congressional Committee, that Tobacco often contained dangerous levels of arsenic.

Now that's an ironic name "Kebler" when my name is "Kleber".

So the AMA and its hack L.F. Kebler was OK with arsenic laced Tobacco being protected from Coca leaf.  How nice.  Arsenic laced Tobacco not even mentioned as a 'habit forming menace' despite the enormous loss of life and monetary costs of Tobacco induced illnesses.

How can anyone have blind faith in such a medical 'professions'.

Coca as a Tobacco Cure was a major but hardly the only labeled claim that incensed Wiley's market control clique.

So to further increase his drug market control clique's power, Wiley then further abused the 1906 Act with 'mislabeling' prosecutions for products that made therapeutic claims, never-mind the long established histories of such product's ingredients for such therapeutic uses.  Wiley was establishing the idea of a government bureaucracy monopolization upon what supposedly constituted acceptable medical practices, and doing so with the full collusion of the American Medical Association and the American Pharmaceutical Association.  He would lose on this misuse of the 1906 Act in a 1911 U.S. Supreme Court case, as he was simply inventing 'law'.

The U.S. Congress would subsequently pass the Shirley Amendment banning fraudulent claims that were made intentionally.   However, the cause of medical monopolization required something more, namely the centralization of the bureaucratization in declaring what constituted legitimate medicine on the Federal- National level.   This lead to a further path of amending the 1906 Act, bringing about that disaster that was enacted in 1914- the Harrison 'Narcotics' Tax Act.

Ostensibly, that was merely a taxing provision for the distribution of certain substances, to wit Opium, Coca leaves and their derivatives, with anyone so involved this requiring a license to do so legally.   Though promoted as a 'narcotics' act, it notably did not even necessarily apply to all Opioids, as it exempted products containing low levels of Opium, morphine or heroin, though notably not for anything containing any amount of cocaine alkaloid, which is a stimulant and anesthetic and not a narcotic.  So anyone seeking any use of any cocaine containing product or a product containing above a certain amount of recognized Opioids would then have to visit a doctor for a prescription.

There was some questioning of this Act as it was being debated in the U.S. Congress, being recognized as a way to require physician visits and prescriptions for what was previously over the counter, and even as weirdly hypocritical for excluding Tobacco, with one Senator then noting its severe toll on health and even its link to cancer- which many pretend was not recognized until later.

But it was a slyly worded Act, designed to bring about this centralization of bureaucratization in declaring what constituted legitimate medicine.  It did this with a pair of provisions, restricting anything containing cocaine and anything containing about a certain amount of Opioids to "professional practice only", while leaving the determination of what that definition to the U.S. Department of Treasury.
 "Nothing contained in this section shall apply . . . to the dispensing or distribution of any of the aforesaid drugs to a patient by a physician, dentist, or veterinary surgeon registered under this Act in the course of his professional practice only." 6

" That the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, shall make all needful rules and regulations for carrying the provisions of this Act into effect."
Notably the 1914 Act continued to allow over the counter preparations containing low amount of opiates, but not those containing any amount of cocaine.
That the provisions of this Act shall not be construed to apply to the sale, distribution, or giving away, dispensing, or possession of preparations and remedies which do not contain more than two grains of opium, or more than one-fourth of a grain of morphine, or more than one-eighth of grain of heroin, or more than one grain of codeine, or any salt or derivative of them in one fluid ounce, or, if a solid or semi-solid preparation, in one avoirdupois ounce, or to liniments, ointments, and other preparations which contain cocaine or any of its salts or alpha or beta eucaine or any of their salts or any synthetic substitute for them: Provided, that such remedies and preparations are sold, distributed, given away, dispensed, or possessed as medicines and not for the purpose of evading the intentions and provisions of this Act. The provisions of this Act shall not apply to decocainized coca leaves or preparations made therefrom, or to other preparations of coca leaves which do not contain cocaine.
That of course was owing to the fear of Coca-dilute cocaine as competition to Tobacco.

And with the power granted to the U.S. Department of Treasury, this drug market clique had its tool to thereby effectively criminalize physicians from prescribing such products by establishing regulations requiring such prescriptions to be non-refillable.

One such regulation was T.D. 2309 disallowing refillable prescriptions.

It would be challenged in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia case United States ex rel George B. Ashley, relator, vs. William H. Osborn and W. G. McAdoo, respondents

That regulation and thus the regulatory power of the Treasury Department would be upheld in that case by the U.S. District Chief Justice, who had served as a U.S. Congressman from 1908 until resigning in 1914 to take that judicial position, and who later became a law professor at Jesuit Georgetown University, and in 1919 co-founded what became perhaps the largest law firm for pharmaceutical, food and Tobacco industries: James Harry Covington.

His firm Covington and Burling would have as its first client the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and for decades was the nexus of the Tobacco-cigarette industry's legal strategies.

The firm would be so involved with food and drug regulatory matters to even be involved in the drug liberalization-legalization movement, with its pro bono division in 1988 taking on the charity of adopting the Drug Policy Foundation as an advisee client, then appointing an attorney known as an insurance, food and pharmaceutical industry specialist the "primary responsibility for advising the Foundation".  And of course, so far the DPF now DPA fails to answer any questions about this relationship, or say bring that attorney to one of their conferences as a panelist to discuss this Covington & Burling pro bono program.

Subsequently the firm has also participated in various law suits on behalf of various victims of the drug war, perhaps most notably Angela Raich, in the landmark case Raich v Gonzales.  That was the case  which upheld the 20th century drug market control scheme over medical freedom under the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause.  That would be in spite of the herbal medicine being grown and consumed upon Raich's private property.  It would rely upon the 1943 Wickard v Filmore case that upheld regulations upon wheat production and consumption upon like localized circumstances, with the Covington legal representation arguably sabotaging the case by at the onset conceding such a regulatory power and without making a strong human rights argument, thus resulting in a decision failing to adopt any balancing of individual freedoms with government interests.

Of course the propaganda campaign to demonify "Marihuana"  to enact and maintain its prohibition was and is without merit.  It is an infinitely safer substance than alcohol, let along Tobacco.  And it was primarily made illegal because in small doses allows people a clearer perspective upon things.  It is as if the Black Pope (Jesuit Superior General) at the time, Wlodimir Ledochowski took a few hits and became terrorized about the general public seeing through his political manipulations on behalf of the Continuing Roman Empire geo politics, particularly the Continuing Counter Reformation wars in Europe.  So he figured it was better to scare people away from Marijuana, and keep them numbed out on alcohol and pharmaceuticals as tranquillizers and anti depressants, even though Opioids would actually be safer.

The 1937 U.S. prohibition of Marijuana would be based upon the taxing power, as were the 1914 effective prohibitions upon Opioids and Coca-cocaine.  That would be the claimed legal basis for these prohibitions, until the 1969 case Leary v United States, which declared such a scheme unconstitutional, for violate the 5th Amendment's prohibition upon self incrimination.  Perhaps such an argument had not been made before Judge Covington, or in any of the subsequent cases that upheld the 1914 Harrison Act.

Subsequently the Commerce Clause would be adopted as the 'legality' for the continuing 20th century established drug market control scheme, under its re-codification under the 1970 U.S. Controlled Substances Act.

Of course this was all bullsh*t, as it was already recognized that the U.S. Congress lacked such a power.  And it was noted most blatantly with the means to which recreational alcoholic beverages were banned- via by a Constitutional Amendment, plus a subsequent one for its repeal. Such a set of amendments would appear to acknowledge a reality that the federal government actually lacks the power to so prohibit substances, making their mere creation and possession wholly on private property into criminal acts punishable by fines and imprisonment.

But what could be expected with a scheme upheld by a Judge who had served as one of the Congressmen who had played a role in concocting such a scheme?

Subsequently, James Harry Covington's decision would be effectively upheld in other cases.

With regulations as TD 2309, refillable and even non refillable prescriptions could be made into criminal acts, with the U.S. Treasury Department regulatory power so unencumbered it could disallow prescriptions for addiction maintenance as such was subsequently declared to not be a disease, and doctors could be arrested for writing prescriptions thus no longer recognized as valid.  Under such a pharmaceutic inquisition, doctors quickly learned not to supply opiates to addicts. In the case United States v. Doremus, 249 U.S. 86 (1919), the Supreme Court ruled the Harrison Act as constitutional, and in Webb v. United States, 249 U.S. 96, 99 (1919) that prescriptions could not be issued for narcotics solely for maintenance.

Of course all of this would be lionized in the major newspapers and magazines as essential for supporting public health.

Never-mind the gross disregard for human rights and that regarding the severe double-standard regarding Tobacco products, particularly cigarettes.  Never-mind the behavior of such AMA self styled "quack-busters" as Morris Fishbein, who advised that industry on how to better advertise their coffin nails in medical publications as The Journal of the American Medical Association.  And that of other publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, which to this day, resorts to historical revisionism lying about the relative effects of 'illicit' drugs.

Opioids had to be banned for being 'habit forming' and supposedly for being debilitating - this at the time of the explosion in the use of cigarettes!  Jheez!

Yet this Quack AMA-USDA pharma-Tobacco market protection scheme would not make the now banned drugs entirely dissappear.

Rather it would shift opioid use from bulkier products to ultra concentrated forms, and while doing so, split users into 'licit' RX and illicit black market camps.  For the former, coming up with more and more powerful new chemical versions of Opioids in order to preserve such for the PATENT MEDICINE aka pharmaceutical markets, and thereby enhancing profits.   For the latter, removing any protections of product consistency and from unwarranted adulteration, while radically driving up market prices to popularize infinitely more efficient and dangerous modes of administration, namely injection.

It would do much similarly with cocaine though less towards outright injection as cocaine by such a route is immensely distracting and brief, and simply with the creation of the illicit market as a licit market for RX controlled dose cocaine would threaten the market for the amphetamine family.

And on the broader picture would shift drug use not only away from Coca and Opium to concentrated cocaine and heroin, but as well to Tobacco-cigarettes, as obvious from a production graph appearing on page 230 of Breecher's Licit and Illicit Drugs, and an outright health disaster.

By any measure the prohibited drugs are as safe or safer than the protected drugs in like contexts.

That is as infusions or other plant perpetuation.

Even caffeine can be deadly when abused as a powder.  So we get the phenomenon of someone unintentionally killing themselves by eating say a few tea spoons of caffeine powder totally oblivious to the danger because caffeine is a legal drug.

Likewise we have the countless overdose deaths by alcoholic beverages, particularly in college fraternities all owing to the popular underestimating of the dangerous of alcohol because it is legal.

The whole idea of illegal drugs really is a mass deception and distraction from the actual relative safeties of different drugs and different forms of drugs.

That is likewise why caffeine powder is sold over the internet WITHOUT poisoning labeling.

And it is why the government recently approved concentrated POWDER alcohol.

Yet meanwhile, outside of perhaps only Bolivia beverages with any amount of cocaine are strictly illegal, with even a country as intelligent in so many ways as Germany getting bent out of shape over some batches of energy drinks with a minute amount of cocaine.

If the drug statutes had any sense they would be based upon actual pharmacokinetics, rather than a criminal Vatican directed market scheme.  Harvey Wiley after all said almost nothing about Coca and cocaine during his first 20 years as head of the USDA Bureau of Chemistry.  It was only by about mid 1904 that he adopted the political campaign at demonifying cocaine without regard to dosage or concentration factors, which was mere months after the 2nd and final time the Vatican summoned Coca wine entrepreneur Angelo Francois Mariani to award him a gold papal medal as a benefactor of humanity for making coca available to the world- the same award seen in the movie Godfather III.  Obviously there was some falling out between Mariani and the Vatican, and the drug war was their response.

And it is not simply a matter of promoting more dangerous recreation drugs over safer one and perverting safer ones into infinity more dangerous forms as with opium and coca, thus driving the need for overpriced 'drug treatment'.

Its a perversion of medicine itself starting by stigmatizing God given herbs as so called quackery, while protecting and promoting synthetic PATENT MEDICINES for bloated pharmaceutical corporation profiteering.

Of course such PATENT MEDICINES have to go through the FDA process as they have no history of use, and are generally far far more toxic.  That's why they have so many side effects.

The side effects can be quite scary and may outnumber and be well more significant that the effect desired by taking the substance.

But that is an important part of the medical-pharmaceutical racket, as such leads to so much added work.

Just think about all of the extra work in surgery for correcting problems brought about by prescription pharma toxicity, such as colon operations to remove precancerous lesions caused by such drugs.   

Or extra work in psychiatry and even face lifts from those dependent upon FDA approved anti-depressants with their side effects of anesthetizing themselves from empathy and vastly prematurely aging faces such as by relaxing their lower facial muscles- practices that become even worse with the off label use of surgical grade pharmaceuticals used as recreational relaxants.


Just take a look at the half century of medical journals following the 1906 and 1914 substance control acts to see how the emerging 20th century medical quackery was all about maximizing profits including by creating new problems..  Full of advertisements for Tobacco cigarettes featuring models dressed as white coated physicians!

That caused a huge spike in cancer.  And the medical-quackery industry loves racking in the money "treating" but not necessarily curing cancer.  It's really a huge money maker.  And they really hate all of these medicinal Marijuana stories, especially those of people indeed children being successfully treated with Cannabis Oil, that FDA approved PATENT MEDICINES fail at doing.

THAT seriously undermines the medical-pharmaceutical money making process, not only with that but potentially with a re popularization of proprietary herbal based medicinal preparations in general.

Such explains the actions of U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford in this regard.

Look at what they did.

The Schaeffer Commission recommended legalizing Marijuana.  Yet Nixon, a perverse 'puritan' that admired Russia with its vast protectionism of hard alcohol (Vodka) and Tobacco cigarettes,  ignored that.

Ford, that complete tool, attempted to have it proven that Marijuana must cause lung cancer because it is smoked as are cigarettes.  Yet when the clinical studies showed otherwise- not that it simply did not cause cancer but in fact cured it, Ford has the results suppressed.

Think of all the costs in monetary figure and human misery.

Think of all of those pitches for cancer research- about all of it going to big pharma to figure out expensive new patent medicine schemes to bilk the public out of billion for remedies that really don't work.

The last thing they want is a cure for cancer, especially one that is not even a PATENT MEDICINE, but rather a plant that anyone can grow and which can be easily synthesized into a life saving oil taken orally or topically.  They hate that as they can make only a relatively small mount of money on that.

It is all about bilking the public.  Just look at the history of the AMA- dedicated since its 1847 founding to maximize its interest's profits.  It was the AMA that worked against competitive pricing.  Against advertising rates, as if customers should not know what something is going to cost before becoming committed.  And for reducing the number of doctors to drive up rates, all serving to make health care way more expensive.

And it was the AMA and its clique that received the support of the so called 'Progressive' political movement, as if that was a decision made by intelligent people discussing and debating the issues out in the open rather than being manipulated like puppets on a string by the elites?!

So why do you think that we have this great crisis in health care costs?

Just look at the massive over-charging of patients in my own backyard: that very hospital associated with my Columbia University, Columbia Presbyterian, which is that massive complex overlooking the south side of the George Washington Bridge.

Guess what they charge per day for their intensive care unit?   The actual cost is about $6,200 daily.  But we charge, get this, $112,000.00 daily!  Think about that!  A brand new 691 hp Tesla PER DAY, upon a 2000% profit!

People complain about doctor's fees, but those may be by far the most reasonable.  One can spend $35,000 on surgeon fees for an open chest procedure.  Yet Columbia Presbyterian gets $25,000 just for the use of the operating room!

Hospitalization that should cost no more than $100,000.00 total ends up costing nearly $1,000,000,000.00.  ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Hopefully for the patient's sake, he or she does not get a second heart attack from receiving the bill.

Many don't because much of the public is hoodwinked.  As they see it, it's almost entirely paid by Medicare or Medicaid, so who cares?

Never-mind that they can go after you house and other property once you die.

It is as if political figures as Hillary Clinton sold their souls to some sort of brotherhood that protects them and advances their careers with some sort of Black magic to intellectually anesthetize much of the general public.

It is under such a situation that we now have this whole push for health care insurance, whether as Hillarycare, Obamacare or even Romneycare: both the Ds and the Rs are bought and paid for,.

Why after all that such deliberations crafting such held secretly?  Why did not Hillary Clinton INSIST that her meetings with the pharmaceutical and insurance industry representatives be TELEVISED.  God, we could use an excellent pharmaceutical and insurance attorney from somewhere to blow the lid on this charade.

We could sure use a proper use of such intellectual muscle for changing this situation.

We must free all the prisoners of the drug war, and award each monetary compensation for the unjust deprivation of their liberty.

We could sure use a shake up of the U.S. Supreme Court.

FIRE that Papist Pig 'Justice' Scalia.  And if the NSA can offer up some incriminating communications of his, perhaps taking orders from the Vatican or its interest, have him prosecuted.  And if not, deport his ass back to Vatican City to which he owes his loyalty.

And sooner than later, encourage that false Jew as Ruth Bader Ginsberg to retire.  She makes no sense for strongly supporting the drug war with her belief that the total sum of medical liberty is abortion.  Give her a one way ticket to Vatican City, as it's the Roman Catholic Church that gave us this utterly immoral drug war.

Ending the drug war, providing restitution to the victims is essential!

And so is having the U.S. Justice Department throw the book at the American Medical Association.  Never has there been such a harmful organization of quacks imposing their perverted will upon and getting over upon the general public.  That organization is a major economic vampire.

Just imagine a scheme to get people to buy overpriced coal tar rather than natural food- just is the essence of our scare campaign against things as Cannabis in favor of all sorts of synthetic PATENTABLE chemicals from Ritalin to whatever we can come up with that has far greater toxicity, side effects and costs!

Until then there can be no cost effective way of addressing our health care crisis, and fixing our economy.