http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2015/06/covington-burling-and-drug-policy.html
Drug Policy Alliance
131 West 33rd St., 15th Floor
New York, NY 10001
June
30, 2015
Dear Drug Policy Alliance:
Enclosed is a suggested panel proposal for our Drug Policy Alliance International Drug Policy Conference
this November 18-21, 2015 at the Crystal
Gateway Marriott at 1700 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202 “Covington
& Burling And Drug Policy Reform”.
Covington & Burling has a long and fascinating involvement in policy regarding drugs and
other consumables. The firms’ founder
James Harry Covington was present as a congressman in deliberations regarding
amendments to the 1906 Pure Foods and Drugs Act that lead to the crafting of
the 1914 Harrison ‘Narcotics’ Act. He
subsequently became a judge who upheld the Harrison Act’s regulatory
delegation of power to the U.S Department of Treasury regarding the supposed
limits of ‘professional medical practice’ – a set of actions betraying
medical freedom of choice. He co-founded this firm in 1919, with its
first client being the Grocery Manufacturers Association; since, Covington
& Burling has been perhaps the single largest legal representative of
pharmaceutical and tobacco interests.
As such, Covington & Burling’s involvement with the drug policy
movement naturally raises eyebrows.
Proposed invited speakers include the Covington &
Burling pro bono program’s Marialuisa S.
Gallozzi, in 1988 “assigned primary
responsibility for advising the [drug policy] foundation”, a partner in the
insurance coverage and food and drug practices. ... [who]… provides food and
drug advice to manufacturers of medical devices, over-the-counter drugs, and
dietary supplement, and author of a landmark paper on ‘“The (U.S.) Food Industry’s View About the Development of Plant-made
Pharmaceuticals and Industrials” (GMO tobacco plants for growing patentable
molecule pharmaceuticals) presented at the 2004 USDA conference panel “Perils
and Pitfalls of GMOs”; and Joshua
Greenburg , formerly with Covington & Burling and now with Womble
Carlyle, also of Washington, D.C., who worked on Gonzales v Raich while he was
working at Covington & Burling.
A panel as this would be invaluable opportunity for an
exchange hopefully leading to an improvement with new and different initiatives
to end the drug war.
I suggest holding this panel about the Covington &
Burling involvement in drug policy/reform, along with my other longstanding
panel proposals for such upon Coca; Tinctures of Opium, Wines Of
Coca, Natural Plant Based Drugs Perverted by Prohibition; and the History
of the Drug War.
I also suggest a panel to be held on the Therapeutic
Benefits of Cannabis Oil and Ibogaine.
Such panels would go far to provide a fuller
understanding of the general context of the drug war, specifically how it
creates its very problems that its supporters use as its justification. Such would go beyond the lamentable trend to
simply focus upon such problems as somehow intrinsic with the drugs themselves
(without regard to forms and the dynamics of pharmacokinetics), for the sake of
more and more of the same narrow medicalization and bureaucratization being
presented as somehow the only ‘solutions’ worthy of discussion.
As if we can always hold panels on methadone, and
crack, but neither Ibogaine, Opium, nor Coca.
Douglas
A. Willinger
Freedom
of Medicine and Diet
Cc: Marialuisa S. Gallozzi Esq. Covington & Burling
Joshua Greenburg, Esq. Womble
Carlyle
