Harvard Study: US Govt & Big Pharma Root Cause of Overdose Epidemic

The Opioid Epidemic: Fixing a Broken Pharmaceutical Market

source
The numbers are astronomical.

• $80 Billion annually on misuse and abuse
• 300 million prescriptions were written in 2015 in the U.S.
• 80% of global opioids consumed by US (5% of global pop.)

Everyone I know has someone who is addicted. Two of my platoon mates from Operation Iraqi Freedom II died from overdose. Since I met my wife 4 years ago, two of her friends from high school have overdosed. Her best friends brother is in prison for crimes committed while high on opioids. My aunt passed away leaving my cousin her house, which he promptly sold for cash, spending every penny on heroin. The money was gone in a mere two months. Our lives are being dramatically affected by this and it just goes on and on.

You all know I am an advocate for access to cannabis as a safe alternative to opioids and other hard drugs, and the study linked in my signature provides evidence that this would be successful. The problem is that dishonest and corrupt government officials refuse to reschedule cannabis which would allow scientific research.

The Harvard study shows collusion between massive pharmaceutical corporations and the federal government. How long will it go on? When will we get the government we believe we have, and not this crony, revolving-door, pay-to-play, ponzi-scheming, lobbyist-controlled, ineffective, poor excuse?

Will we ever see these corporate tycoons held accountable for their unethical business dealings? How are they any better than the drug dealers on the corner of every poor neighborhood in the US? I'll tell you how. They are government approved. That is the only difference. Get government approval and you can sell anything you want, without fear of repercussion.

Maybe we should all be taking a knee when we hear the national anthem. It would seem appropriate.

 

It's funny how the root of all problems can eventually be traced to government.

And the answer (according to our liberal friends) is always MORE government.

 

Only one post to turn this into a political flamebait, congratulations.

 

I have had some friends go, a sister-in-law and a nephew. The Pharmacies are lobbying bit time. For those politicians that oppose legal marijuana, I would not doubt they have deep ties to pharmaceutical.

 

Best you check the title of the site you are participating in
Political Forum.com
how dare him discuss politics on a political forum

 

It is Repulicans that are voting for more govt, but I doubt you can discuss this without flamebait. In fact, Pres Trump has reversed his line from his campaign talk.

http://www.businessinsider.com/republicans-oppose-marijuana-legalization-2016-10
"Most Republicans (55%) oppose marijuana legalization, while 41% favor it," Pew's latest poll found.

Democrats, overwhelmingly, support legalization — 66% of Democratic respondents said they favor legalization, while just 30% oppose.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/opioid-companies-lobby-ag_b_11287182.html
Studies also show that legalizing medical pot, and making it available in dispensaries, reduces by 15-35% admissions for prescription opioid abuse and opioid overdose deaths.

In states that legalize medical marijuana, doctors also write many fewer prescriptions for medications meant to treat pain, depression, anxiety, seizures, and nausea.

The dangerous over-use of prescription opioids has become our national nightmare. Any rational assessment of risks versus benefits would much favor pot over addicting pain pills.

 

Big Pharma's big donations to 2016 presidential candidates

Their biggest recipient? Clinton. She collected $336,416 in donations, over a third of the total contributions during the 2016 presidential campaign. The next biggest recipient was Republican candidate Jeb Bush, who collected less than half the amount of Clinton. Trump received the least in donations: $1,010, enough to buy one Daraprim pill.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/health/big-pharma-presidential-politics/index.html


does anymore need to be said?

 

Of course not, but this is hardly one sided.

https://www.statnews.com/2016/11/02...wave-drug-industry-pouring-money-gop-coffers/
Industry PACs have given at least $4.4 million to Republicans and $2.6 million to Democrats in House races across the primary and general elections, according to figures compiled for STAT by Political Moneyline, which tracks campaign contributions and spending.

In the most competitive House contests — those rated as toss-ups or only leaningtoward either party by the Cook Political Report — pharmaceutical PACs have given more than $435,000 to Republicans, a separate STAT analysis found. By comparison, the committees have given less than $70,000 to Democrats in those races.

 

Don't leave out the fault of gov-med in all this, specifically the degradation of the physician patient relationship that the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex has a huge hand in.

Doctors' offices have always been something of an assembly line affair admittedly, but centralized medicine, specifically Medicare, has added ever new dimensions to the "med union" machine. Faced with ever more regulatory, insurance, litigation expense due to COMPLEX factors, NOT free market ones, medicine has become a cynical business like any other, revolving around the prescription pad and splitting up medical care into "govt funded chunks," the services are NOT for the patient, who is left going to endless specialists they don't need over and over for months, while treatment is dispensed in gov approved pieces.

It's like a rotten TV show that you have to travel to and sit around for a couple of hours to see in 30 minute increments for weeks and weeks to see how the show turns out. It's like if car mechanics told you, "I don't turn this kind of screw, the guy down the street does, here's a referral. Once he turns his screw, come back here and I'll turn another one and send you to someone else."

In essence, if you could spend 5 seconds scribbling out a "customer retention plan" that ALWAYS works, and it was quasi-legal, wouldn't you do it?

For a callous mixed gov-med industry, opioids and other abused meds are marketing gold. IT'S NO DIFFERENT THAN THE MARKETING MODEL FOR HEROIN!

 

This is a new study from Harvard. It is a current event. Why was the thread moved?

 

Cannabis Treats Heroin Addiction Successfully
October 3, 2016

Not trying to derail my own thread, but this is relevant to the point. Pain pills are killing people all over. There is a way to slow it down, but it is illegal. Why?

It's illegal because we have a government that is controlled by lobbyists and ran by cowards who are afraid to go against the grain.

Not only that, but the drug laws are steeped in racism.

US History: Cannibas Laws Steeped in Racism

 

Facts of decriminalization of drugs in Portugal

• deaths caused by drug overdose decreased from about 80 in 2001 to just 16 in 2012
• per capita social cost of drug misuse decreased by 18 percent.
• Between 1998 and 2011, the number of people in drug treatment increased by more than 60 percent (from approximately 23,600 to roughly 38,000)
• new HIV cases among people who use drugs declined from 1,575 to 78
• new AIDS cases declined from 626 to 74
  source

So, here is what actual help looks like. When compared to the US punitive system of dealing with drug addiction, the Portugal approach of dealing with drug abuse as a medical condition works much better.

 

Just a little bit more government force, and we'll all be much better off, lol.

 

Been legal here in WA for a few years. No social collapse, folks still go to work, no noticeable increase in 'hippies'... Its time to legalize (or decriminalize). Im talking to YOU Cons/Pubs/Evangelicals. Take it from a fellow gun toting, truck driving, God fearing American- weed isnt a problem, but the taxes we waste on trying (and failing) to restrict it definitely are, as well as the folks suffering from the many ailments it eases or cures.

 

The real root cause is progressive intolerence for any kind of pain, emotional or physical. Opioids are a kind of "safe space".

 

Not more government in my mind, better government, efficient government, PLANNED government. Right now, government is the worst ran organization in history. You've got charities who'd run zebras around the government. We need to elect people who have the right combination of mentality and skills, to make this organization a success.

Like any other.

 

Not saying we don't have a problem, but that particular statistic may be misleading. Pain management is crap in a lot of the rest of the world. I chatted with someone online who went overseas for their gender reassignment surgery and extra strength Tylenol was all they got post-op for pain--something they did not realize would be the case until they were ready to blow their brains out the day after.

 

Government is what is is. Expecting it to get better isn't realistic.

 

Yeah, the government colluding with private industry to ravage people and the environment for short-term profit is the entire history of capitalism. It's not going to get better until we change the incentive structures that reward this behavior.

 

Found this interesting. I guess that is somewhere in Kentucky and some Indian Reservation in the two red blobs

https://www.brookings.edu/research/pinpointing-opioid-in-most-impacted-communities/

 

What makes you so convinced that research on pot is the answer to anything? I don't disagree the US has a drug problem, but I don't see how we can act like cannabis is somehow a subset of better drugs than any others. All have impacts to health and behavior, all can be fatal. Yes, some in lower doses than others, but what good is addicting people to one drug over another?

 

Are you certain our elites want to fix it? If they are determined to destroy the middle class, what better way?

 

Smaller is better. By smaller, I mean at the federal and state level. Local govt is best.

 

What reforms do you propose will prevent corruption? can you point to another system run by man that is not corrupt?

 

Because methadone and suboxone are what we use now. Read up on them, and you will see how much safer and equally as effective, if not more so, is cannabis.