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Showing posts with label 1906 U.S. Pure Foods and Drugs Act. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1906 U.S. Pure Foods and Drugs Act. Show all posts

Monday, November 30, 2015

Cocaine Content of Some Early 20th Century Products


and USDA prosecutions with zero showing of any actual harms from the cocaine content


https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_OQycfkoasC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=cocaine+content+soft+drinks&source=bl&ots=mhN0XhP7t2&sig=Pv8LlyLyhd-tG5pQV_jTyJ-V6Tw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-J4HVeXXMqm_sQSE5ID4CA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=cocaine%20content%20soft%20drinks&f=false

Cocaine content of beverages in milligrams per fluid ounce
Wiseola        under 1 mg

Celery Cola        under 1 mg

Koca Nola        under 1 mg

Kola Coca        5 mg

Vin Mariani        6-8 mg

Kola Cardinette    9 mg

Maltine with Coca    9 mg

Coca Cordial        30 mg

Metcalf Coca Wine    32 mg

Wiseola- under 1 mg per fluid ounce

Celery Cola - under 1 mg per fluid ounce


http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2015/06/20th-century-pharmacratic-inquisition.html

Simply declare cocaine unsafe, without any mention of dilution-concentration factor whatsoever.

Koca Nola

This was a syrup for flavoring soda water and similar "soft drinks" put up by a company of the same name at Atlanta, Ga. This "Delicious Dopeless Koca Nola"—as the label had it —was found to contain cocain. Cocain being deleterious to health, was declared an adulteration under the act so that the Koca Nola Company was found guilty on two points: (1) failing to declare the presence of cocain and (2) adulteration. The Government made two seizures and the company was found guilty in each case and a fine of $25 on each count was imposed, making the total $100.—[Notice of Judgment, No. 202.]
Celery Cola

Celery-Cola, marketed by the Birmingham Celery Cola Company of Birmingham, Ala., was another soft drink found to contain cocain and caffeine. The government contended that as cocain was a poisonous and deleterious ingredient, the product was adulterated and as the proportion or quantity of cocain was not declared on the label it was also misbranded.— [Notice of Judgment, No. 326.]

Such prosecutions did not involve excessive dosing.

Koca Nola and Celery Cola for instance each contained under 1 milligram of cocaine per fluid ounce.

Since cocaine was an ingredient required to be listed- how could it be declared an illegal ingredient, its presence automatically constituting "adulteration"?!   Should not the prosecutions as those against Coca Nola and Celery Cola have then been only for "misbranding"?

Whether or not a product even labeled its cocaine content apparently would not shield it from prosecution by Wiley's USDA Bureau of Chemistry- at least for such in food products as beverages, as with the prosecution of the manufacturers of a product named"Dr. Don's Kola":
Dr. Don's Kola

This product, which was sold as a flavoring extract for "soft drinks," was shipped by the Warner-Jcnkinson Company of St. Louis from Missouri to Michigan. When analyzed by the Government chemists, the product was found to be a syrupy liquid consisting essentially of cocain, caffein, phosphoric acid, sugar, flavoring and coloring agents, and water. It contained no substance derived from the cola nut or cola plant. In view of the fact that it contained cocain, a dangerous drug, the stuff was declared adulterated and, inasmuch as it contained no product of the cola nut. it was further declared misbranded. The defendant entered a plea of guilty and a fine was imposed.—[Notice of Judgment, No. 724.]
That prosecution apparently made no mention of any failure to label the cocaine content, being cited for "mislabeling" only insofar as failing to contain its labeled Kola nut.



USDA Prosecutions of Cocaine Containing Products
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-dark-ages-usda-crusade-against-coca.html

Friday, November 27, 2015

Vin Mariani- The Latter Years




Historical accounts of Vin Mariani focus perhaps exclusively upon the years prior to the prohibition era.

Here is a bit of the history following the 1906 U.S. Food and Drug Act that effectively blacklisted cocaine via including it on a list of ingredients that had to be labeled, though not including the other popularly used stimulants of caffeine and nicotine.

1907: Vin Mariani for the U.S. market deleted the cocaine, adding a rear side label- see below.  I don't yet have information if they continued to provide the regular version as an alternative.



GUARANTEED BY MARIANI & Co. UNDER THE FOOD AND DRUGS ACT JUNE 30, 1906; SERIAL No. 448
VIN MARIANI
[MARIANI WINE]
17 PER CENT ALCOHOL BY VOLUME
AN IMPORTED FRENCH BORDEAUX WINE WITH A SPECIAL 
PROCESSING OF LEAVES OF ERYTHROXYLON COCA
PREPARED AND BOTTLED AT OUR NEW YORK FACILITY 

MARIANI AND COMPANY

PARIS, FRANCE: 41 Boulevard Haussman.   NEW YORK: 52 West 15th Street

  "THE STANDARD OF MARIANI PREPARATIONS, established by us in France nearly half a century, ago is based upon the adaptation of Coca as employed by the Andeans during hundreds of years as a force sustainer.  WE HAVE ALWAYS emphasized our use of Coca leaves chosen for AROMATIC and MEDICINAL qualities and, as we have never considered the negligible amount of alkaloid in such leaves essential to our formula, our processing completely eliminates it from our preparation”

That was actually a bad move for it implied that cocaine was something that did not belong in dilute amounts, never-mind that the real problems with cocaine came with it in concentrated forms, and that there was never any showing that cocaine in dilute form was any more "dangerous" than such other naturally occurring stimulant alkaloids as caffeine and nicotine,, both used in dilute form and both likewise poisonous in concentrated forms.

The 1906 Act neither banned cocaine as an ingredient in food or drug products.  It simply required labeling the cocaine content- itself a reasonable requirement, though actually misleading - by not likewise require the labeling of caffeine and nicotine it created a false assumption of cocaine being somehow more dangerous in likewise dilute form.

However the 1906 Act would serve as a means to bring about the deletion of dilute cocaine, via its un-fetted delegation of regulatory power to declare an ingredient unsafe to the Bureau of Chemistry of the U.S.D.A.

That started happening in 1907 with U.S.D.A. prosecutions not only against manufacturers for 'mislabeling' for failing to label the cocaine content, but others for adulteration for containing cocaine- even if properly label, with the U.S.D.A. declaring without basis that such cocaine content was dangerous.  For instance, though Wiley was well known for his "poison squad" experimentations upon food containing various substances used as preservatives, he apparently never conducted any such researching upon beverages that contained cocaine.


Such 'adulteration' prosecutions by the U.S.D.A. were done with products sold as foods.  Never-mind that the 1906 Act's inclusion of cocaine as an ingredient that had to be labeled in food and drug products implicitly meant that it remained legal.

Perhaps as a way of bolstering his authority to ban substances by declaring them unsafe Harvey Wiley initiated a famous prosecution against the Coca Cola Company for containing added caffeine- that is caffeine in pure form as a dilute ingredient- for he not only never targeted Coffee or Tea but actually praised them.

Such prosecutions would only go after products sold as foods, and hence could conceivably be sold as drugs.  However the political campaign being carried out by the U.S.D.A. Chemistry Bureau Chief Harvey Wiley - who was also prominent in the American Medical Association and its allied American Pharmaceutical Association - also targeted cocaine containing medicinal preparations via a massive lobbying effort of 'model legislation' for the individual U.S. States to ban the sale of such outside of a physicians prescription, with such prescriptions being mandated a s"non-refillable".

Political machinations in the 1908 to 1914 period would work upon amending the 1906 Act to outright ban products containing any amount of cocaine and to severely restrict those containing at least above a certain amount of opiates- efforts that culminated in 1914 with the U.S. Harrison Act.  While the particular political fear of cocaine was sold in newspapers as a fear of Negroes in the south, a 1910 U.S.D.A. Farmer Bulletin article more honestly presented the U.S.D.A.'s fear of Coca being sold and used as a "Tobacco Habit Cure".

That Act would exempt products containing below a certain amount of opiates though not of cocaine from over the counter -- that is without a physician's prescription -- from a deceptively innocuous appearing to some tax requirement, to be administered by a U.S. Department of Treasury that was not actually required to honor requests for market participation thus effectively empowering that entity to enact a virtually blanket prohibition.  This delegation of regulatory authority would be upheld by a U.S. Judge who had served in the U.S. Congress from 1909 until his resignation in 1914, and who was present in deliberations regarding amending the 1906 Food and Drug Act leading to the crafting of the 1914 Harrison Act: James Harry Covington.

As requiring non refillable prescriptions for products containing any amount of cocaine effectively made their sale and use impractical -- e.g. by requiring a separate physicians visit for each non refillable prescription -- cocaine containing preparations dissipated from OTC sales, with any such prescriptions effectively confined to a far narrower spectrum of uses, such as the use of the more concentrated  preparations in surgical anesthesia.  Any physician considering prescriptions outside of such a narrow range of uses would likewise soon be effectively cowed by the U.S. Treasury Department's abuse of its delegated regulatory authority to essentially practice medicine without a license.

Other nations would adopt such polices, though for a time some exempted dilute cocaine products as Vin Mariani.  Conceivably, Vin Mariani was produced in different versions for different market jurisdictions, though such information so far remains elusive.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/us-state-departments-opium-convention.html





1938
1938


1946- this shows the classic Vin Mariani bottle



1938

According to an article by Walter Helfland, Vin Mariani was sold in some form until 1963.



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.




Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Radley Balko on CATO & REASON

Via Facebook:
Radley Balko You're onto them, Douglas. Obviously, the most pressing issue with current drug war is who is responsible for for its inception at the beginning of the 20th century. And Reason and Cato have ignored this because are firmly ensconced in the pockets of the 1906 tobacco companies. And they would've gotten away with it if it weren't for your detective skills!
Thursday at 8:15pm · · 14



Alas they are STILL getting away with it- at least as I am the ONLY person writing about it...

Sunday, February 19, 2012

The 'Elephant in the Living Room' of anti Coca pro Tobacco Protectionism

Licit & Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and Consumers Reports at page 230 showing upturns in cigarette use following the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 U.S. 'drug control laws'

Just look at that graph of cigarette production on page 230 of Licit & Illicit Drugs; EACH upturn in production -- note that it was relatively flat from the 1880s introduction of industrialized cigarette rolling machines -- until what we can call the 1906 Tobacco Market Protection Act, officially known as the 1906 'Pure' Foods and Drugs Act, and subsequently the continuations of such represented by the 1914 Harrison "Narcotics" Tax Act, and the 1937

This represented utterly unconstitutional usurpation for high level organized crime, and an enormous crime against humanity health wise, and human rights wise.

A usurpation of powers into the hands of a federal agency -- the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- set up to promote US domestic agriculture and hence establish a conflict of interest to ban foreign yet safer natural substances, to wit Coca Leaf- and doing so after expressing a clear interest in ascertaining whether Coca and other "drug" crops including Opium, and Indian Hemp were commercially feasible as U.S. domestic crops.





It was a clear abuse of the congress's constitutionally granted power to "regulate" interstate commerce. Yet its sly exemption of tobacco indicates it was an unconstitutional, a denial of equal protection and as an establishment of a religion of Tobacco Tea and Coffee, with severe costs.

The last bottle of Vin Mariani in the U.S.?

It banned the safest and most beneficial agricultural stimulant -- Coca Leaf -- for the sake of protecting and promoting the most dangerous -- Tobacco, particularly that agribusiness creation of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco for a smoother smoke for deep and repeated inhalation, resulting in countless billions in added costs attributed separately to the drug war and to cigarettes that together represent a major 'elephant in the living room' of the anti-Coca Tobacco Mercantilism.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Ignore Harm Reduction of Highlighting Agricultural Mercantilism- Drug Policy Alliance

of the enormous continuing mega boondoggle of Tobacco Mercantilism Against Coca







We're not going to move forward with your proposal below on agricultural policy because I believe it's still not a clear connection for many of our attendees, and doesn't touch on their main work areas. As for the topic of coca, we won't be having an entire panel, but if you come to the conference I think you'll find that it's addressed on a couple of them, primarily panels with a South / Latin America focus.

Drug Policy Alliance- August 15, 2011
Coca is the stimulant described as the safest natural stimulant plant, whereas Tobacco the most dangerous- taking some 100 million plus lives during the first century of mass manufactured Virginia Bright Leaf cigarettes.

Coca was what the U.S. government via its United States Department of Agriculture targeted for its sale and use as a "Tobacco habit cure" and its growing popularity particularly through the southeastern U.S. where Tobacco predominates politically and agriculturally.

Coca was what the British medical journalist Anita Bennett informed the 1993 'Latin America' where she met myself and Ira Glasser who then expressed an avid interest in her notation of the utility of coca tea to women for easing childbirth (relaxing the muscles of the vagina) and hence reducing the tragic instances of brain damaged newborns.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/it-was-criminal-mercantilism-to-protect.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html

The DPF to its credit approved the COCA ’95 panel proposal that I moderated with speakers Roger Rumrill, Anthony Richard Henman, Dr. Jorge Hurtado (by video) and UCLA’s Dr. Ronald K. Siegel, which was that breakout panel session’s 2nd best attended (including Ethan Nadelman and Jacob Sullum), bested only by a California topic specific panel at a conference held that year in Santa Monica, California. It also deserves credit for publishing Anthony Richard Henman’s paper in its 1989 conference compendium, as well as my papers "The Ever-changing Ever confused Popular Conception of Cocaine"; "Cocaine Prohibition Water or Gasoline [for treating the flames of drug abuse]"; and "Cocaine Conversion- Onwards to Coca!" respectively in 1990, 1991 and 1992 (though strangely in contrast to the 1989 Henman article, don’t appear within the DPA online library). Likewise, I appreciate being placed upon the DPF cocaine panels in 1991 and 1992, plus Ethan Nadelman’s decision placing me upon the Foreign Trade panel that latter year.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/11/17-years-ago-just-say-whoa.html

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKYlQNnzOpX5EBKZe8rlBmduhyphenhyphensOEYkfB0wfBHF-lkm5xuJ1Yqywkh9hiBijKR4KKXIwgf47drcIHL5mOo3KlWu_mJtszuGb3S5IPDHM1MOlIrR8mu_Px7DIVSJExaqPMhO0cOMp4LnKc/s1600-h/City+Paper+JSW+December+18+1992+p26_1280.GIF

Yet ever since the DPF/DPA has seriously stalled out on the Coca issue.

It stopped holding a cocaine panel at each year’s conference (even as continuing otherwise regarding MJ). It has relegated coca to a sub-topic within a generally female ‘Latin America’ panel.

It denied every paper proposal that I have made to them after 1992, and have published or presented precious little regarding coca- a rare exception being an excellent 1st place awarded paper in the DPF’s brief (1996-2000) ‘Student Paper Competition’ – appearing as a presentation hand-written into the schedule at the conference itself and thus not appearing in the printed conference materials.

It denied my 1994 panel proposal- ‘Coca- Turning Over a New Leaf Towards Reducing Health Care Costs’, that had the support of Harvard’s Dr. Lester Grinspoon, who phoned DPF President Arnold S. Trebach, only to be rebuffed.

It denied all of my other proposed panels regarding Coca as well as the broader issue of the drug war’s perversion of drug forms and modes of use, such as that in 1997- ‘Tinctures of Opium, Wines of Coca, etc: Popular, Pre-Prohibition Uses of Natural Plants Perverted by Drug Prohibition into today's "Hard" Drug Plague’.

Should not that alone have qualified Coca as ‘HARM REDUCTION’?

It’s undeniably bad to ban whole Coca- ensuring that cocaine is only available in highly concentrated forms.

It’s undeniably worse to ban Coca- ensuring that the far larger markets in general for stimulants is denied Coca, while the stimulant that is the one that those pushing the early 1900s Coca ban were evidently most concerned with protecting- the one that’s the most politically established in the U.S., and the one most dangerous: Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco.



Yet drug policy reform organizations utterly neglect this broader issue of this Panama Canal construction era Agricultural Mercantilism (the U.S. took over the Canal Project in 1903 and completed and opened it in the year of the Harrison ‘Narcotic’ Act banning ‘Coca, cocaine, etc”- 1914- with the USDA exploring the domestic feasibility of Coca, Opium and other drug crops agricultural potential): the shameful history of the USDA-AMA-APhA Tobacco-Pharma alliance embodied by such figures involved with this trio of special interests described as a ‘knight showing great prowess’ Harvey Washington Wiley, and the subsequent decades many cigarette advertisements in medical journals. Though the DPF/DPA accepted by 1999 ‘History Panel’ proposal, I, along with the Coca-cocaine issue and the early politicking of the AMA-APhA and USDA would be excluded, including at the subsequent such panel in 2003.

Harvey Wiley Resume
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wiley-resume-1915.html


Given their relative safety this has been an absolute disaster for health care costs:
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/coca-leaf-stands-out-among-all.html

In each major category of intoxicant used by our species, there appear to be one or two drug plants that researchers have noted, are more controllable, hence safer, than all the other plants or synthetics in that category. Coca leaf stands out among all the stimulants, licit and illicit, as the easiest to control and the one least likely to produce toxicity or dependency.
And they would know that in 1914:

... there are tens of thousands of people in the United States who die every year from the excessive use of cigarettes; and yet I find Senators still pulling away at the cigarette as though t were a perfectly harmless thing. I believe the Senator will agree with me that there are many thousands of people who die from what is called tobacco cancer, a cancerous growth affecting the throat from overuse of cigars; and we find perhaps 60 percent of the Senators pulling away at the cigar as unconcerned as though no one were dying as a result of these cigars...

U.S. Congress, Senator Porter James McCumber (R) North Dakota, August 15, 1914
Nonetheless our governments have proven their loyalty to this apostasy from common sense with the descent into and continuation of this criminal mercantilism primarily for the sake of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco that came in the early 1900s.

The United National World Health Organization reports that Tobacco cigarettes have cost some 100 million premature deaths during the 1900s.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/tobaccos-relative-toll.html

How would finally beginning to highlight this suppression of coca/protection of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco not qualify as HARM REDUCTION?


Illustration: 1900s sales chart of cigarette production spikes at the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 drug control statutes.

By banning Coca, and protecting Tobacco- conveniently ‘grandfathered’ by the 1906’s Act’s exclusion of its USDA based jurisdiction [!] over substances not included in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia – allowing its mass sale in a fashion that would otherwise be considered adulterated and misbranded for the unlabeled additives, and reckless for such as burn accelerants to boost sales while increasing house fires, the authorities have not merely created the black market perversion of Coca into concentrated cocaine, rather they have additionally suppressed and denied a highly useful stimulant, for the sake of allowing the rapid spread of the most dangerous and physically addictive stimulant that’s politically established in the U.S. This has undeniably tremendous costs economically in lost productivity, lives and enormously increased medical costs.

The DPA must not pretend that such does not qualify as “HARM REDUCTION”.

Holding this panel proposal “Agricultural Mercantilism” would be excellent as a start.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/agrilcultural-politics-of-drug-policy_27.html

Panel Proposal for 2009 Drug Policy Alliance International Conference

Harvey Wiley

Agricultural policies gave forth the existing drug control regimen; this dates back to its milestone of the 1906 U.S. Pure Foods and Drugs Act granting the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) the power to ban a substance from interstate commerce via declaring an ingredient as deleterious to health, and of limiting its jurisdiction to substances within the U.S. Pharmacopoeia from which Tobacco was conveniently dropped 1 year earlier in 1905.

Since the U.S.D.A. was established to promote agricultural commodities, its empowerment would have severely unappreciated detriments regarding the market protection of the most intrinsically toxic yet domestic agricultural commodity of Tobacco from the foreign 'menace' of least toxic Coca.

With the public health thus beneath mercantilism, the consequences have been thus severe for numerous people, entities and interests.

Potential Speakers:

Sharon Y. Eubanks , former prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, and the lead prosecutor for a R.I.C.O. act suit against the major cigarette companies by the U.S. department of justice, who in 2005 resigned in response to the Bush administration’s commands to reduce the proposed settlement by 90%. She gave interviews to CBS about this.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/06/bush-administration-accused-of-rigging.html


Marialuisa S. Gallozzi is a food, drug and insurance company attorney. Since 1987 she has been with the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington and Burling, long established with food and drug law. In 1988, she was assigned “primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] foundation” according to a letter dated March 1990 appearing in the 1988-1990 Biennial Report of the Drug Policy Foundation (a reform organization) by its Presidents Dr. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin Zeese, crediting her with giving them valuable advice.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-advised-by-c.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html

Her activities include that upon GMO plant made pharmaceuticals, as a panelist of “Perils and Pitfalls of Plant Based Pharmaceuticals” with her paper “The U.S. Food Industry’s View of Plant Based Pharmaceuticals”, viewable here.

Her published papers include "Inactive Ingredients in Over-the-Counter Drug Products," Regulatory Affairs FOCUS magazine (August 2002).

She is prominent within insurance law, so described as:

Rising star Marialuisa Gallozzi enters the tables in recognition of her vast experience in asbestos, silica, pharmaceutical and other coverage claims, in addition to insurer insolvencies. Described as “an expert on London insolvency matters and schemes of arrangement,” she works with US, Bermuda and London market insurers and captive insurers. Peers consider her “an intellectually strong negotiator and adviser with excellent judgment.”



---


About Covington & Burling:
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html


It was initially founded in 1919 by Judge James Harry Covington, a former U.S. Representative from the 4th District of Maryland (1909-1913) who was in office shortly after the enactment of the 1906 Food and Drugs Act, through the time leading to the 1914 Harrison Act, and who was appointed as a Judge by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. It became Covington and Burling with the addition of Chicago lawyer Edward Burling, who was married to Louise Peasley, a daughter of railroad tycoon James C. Peasley of the Burlington Railroad also president of the National State Bank (of whom another daughter Mathilda was married to Frederic A. Delano- uncle of later U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was on the original Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 1914), who moved to Washington, D.C. to become chief counsel of the Shipping Board during World War I, following U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's government’s nationalization of the railroads and seizing control of the shipping industry. (The early 1900s brought a sharp increase in federal law-making, not limited to the 1906 Food and Drug Act and the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act.)

The founders of Covington & Burling foresaw the pervasive effects of the forthcoming era of federal legislation, regulation, and taxation. In 1919, they sought to create a firm in the nation's capital that could advise and represent corporations located anywhere in the nation or the world on a wide range of legal issues. Today our Washington office has over 300 lawyers representing clients according to the highest standards and fulfilling the firm's strong commitment to public service. Our lawyers are supported by nearly 100 paralegals and by information management specialists in the library, and in the litigation and practice support, and technology departments.

http://www.covingtonandburling.com/offices/washington/description.html

This firm’s oldest practices is its presence in food and drug law, with its web-site in 2005 listing 18 attorneys at its Washington, D.C. headquarters – 9 partners including two former Chief Counsels to the Food and Drug Administration (including Marialuisa Gallozzi, ”assigned to take primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] Foundation”), and 9 associates – who devote all or a major portion of their time to this practice, plus 6 additional lawyers at its offices in London and Brussels. According to the firm’s site at

http://www.cov.com/practices/oid52689/description.html

Covington & Burling has a large and comprehensive food and drug law practice. The Firm’s food and drug practice began at the Firm’s founding in 1919 with representation of the National Canners Association (now the National Food Processors Association and still a client). From that time, the Firm’s practice has steadily expanded to include all types of food and drug work and work relating to scientific and technology research. Past and present clients for which the Firm serves as general counsel or principal outside counsel include the Animal Health Institute, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Bakers Association, American Forest & Paper Association, Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology, Corn Refiners Association, Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, Epilepsy Foundation of America, Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, International Dairy Foods Association, National Food Laboratories, National Pharmaceutical Council, Consumer Healthcare Products Association and Toxicology Forum.

This work includes political organization on behalf of its clientèle industries. According to the firm’s site at

http://www.cov.com/practices/oid6266/description.html


The Firm was actively involved on behalf of major clients in connection with each important statutory revision in the federal food and drug laws, including the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and its major amendments, including —

the Pesticide Amendments of 1954,
the Food Additives Amendment of 1958,
the Color Additive Amendments of 1960,
the Drug Amendments of 1962,
the Animal Drug Amendments of 1968,
the Medical Device Amendments of 1976,
the Orphan Drug Act,
the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984,
the Generic Animal Drug and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1988,
the Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1988,
the Safe Medical Devices Act of 1990,
the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990,
the Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 1992,
the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act of 1994,
the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994,
the Animal Drug Availability Act of 1996,
the FDA Export Reform and Enhancement Act of 1996,
the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, and
the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997.

Our lawyers have advised or represented clients in a wide range of legislative matters at both the federal and state levels. We have prepared draft legislation and analyzed legislative proposals, including interaction with Congressional members and staff. We have prepared Congressional testimony and advised clients in connection with committee and subcommittee hearings. Our lawyers have advised clients on compliance with new statutory enactments, and represented trade association clients in rulemaking proceedings to implement new statutes. As the 104th Congress undertook to address the issues of general regulatory reform and more specifically FDA reform, firm lawyers played a major role in conjunction with food, drug and cosmetic industry trade associations and other clients in analyzing and drafting legislative reform proposals, and in preparing testimony for presentation at committee hearings.

http://www.cov.com/practices/oid6266/description.html

Covington & Burling’s clientele amongst pharmaceutical and agriculture related firms includes:

GlaxoSmithKline, Monsanto, Merck, Warner-Lambert (Pfizer), Eli Lilly, The Balli Group

Covington for decades has been a preeminent antitrust advisor, regularly providing U.S. and EU antitrust advice to Rx and OTC pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms around the world in connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, litigation, R&D collaborations, licensing transactions and other strategic transactions. We have been home to four former heads of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and two Chairmen of the ABA Antitrust Law Section - a unique distinction among law firms actively practicing in the antitrust area.

Unmentioned in the firm’s web site is its long established activities as one of, if not unquestionably in every way the world’s largest, legal representative of such agricultural-commodity related industries in one way or another, of pharmaceutical and Tobacco (cigarette) interests.

Covington & Burling also represents every major American tobacco company, including Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co., Philip Morris Inc., and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, as well as the now-defunct industry trade association, the Tobacco Institute. The firm helped develop and coordinate the Whitecoat Project, an attempt to keep controversy alive regarding the dangers of passive smoking by hiring scientists to back up and attempt to give credibility to the tobacco industry's point of view that second-hand smoke is not a health risk.

According to internal tobacco industry documents analyzed in 1999 by Public Citizen and the Center for Justice and Democracy, Covington & Burling was a principle organizer and funding conduit for tort reform efforts on behalf of the tobacco industry. Covington & Burling has acted as a pipeline to direct money from its tobacco industry clients to tort reform groups in the states and across the country. For example, in 1995, the tobacco industry allocated nearly $5.5 million to the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), more than half of ATRA’s $10.2 million budget according to the Associated Press.8

A memo written by a Covington & Burling partner that year reveals the extent to which the law firm helped orchestrate the tobacco industry's tort reform agenda. Written to the industry’s "Tort Reform Policy Committee," the memo called for an expansion of efforts, including a "communications program … intended to enhance our ability to enact favorable legislation at both the federal and state level." The memo noted that "these media activities, to be effective, must not be linked to the tobacco industry."

Covington & Burling is also one of the largest contributors of pro bono work for a wide array of causes from Big Brothers/Sisters to medical marijuana (Therapeutic Cannabis), and has provided valuable legal assistance in a number of such cases, including that by that firm’s Partner Dr. Michael Michelson. This includes work for various tax exempt status Foundations dedicated to some issue or another, including the Drug Policy Foundation. Philanthropic and Grant-Making Organizations.

The Firm’s lawyers are regularly sought out to advise on the creation, reorganization and funding of private foundations (including family and company foundations, as well as foundations affiliated with associations or other tax-exempt entities), supporting organizations and public charities and the use of charitable contributions to accomplish specific client goals. In addition, charitable remainder and charitable lead trusts, which require analysis of the federal and state income, gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer tax consequences of each structure, are used to achieve clients’ charitable, tax and family goals. Our clients include the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, the Packard Humanities Institute, Verizon Foundation and UTC Foundation. In one instance we represent affiliated grant-making organizations worth well in excess of $1 billion.

Covington & Burling’s practice with foundations is a long established connection, with the name Frederic A. Delano (Edward Burling’s bother in law by marriage), appearing amongst the 1909 founders of the Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C. (with Daniel Coit Gilman, Cleveland H. Dodge, Andrew Dickson White, and Elihu Root, Darius Ogden Mills and William E. Morrow), and in 1921 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was incorporated by Frederic A. Delano, Robert S. Brookings, Elihu Root, who became its first president, John W. Davis, Dwight Morrow, James T. Shotwell. Frederic A. Delano’s name appears as the 1924 founder of the influential Washington D.C. planning group “Committee of 100.”

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The Drug Policy Alliance grossly undersells drug policy reform by limiting 'Harm Reduction' more simply towards things as clean needles and safer crack pipes.

Coca Come Back
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/02/coca-come-back.html