Thursday, March 5, 2020

The Federal Government’s Corrupt Handling of Pharmaceuticals


The Federal government, which as we know, is highly influenced by the Big Pharma lobbies, has become extremely corrupt in its handling of many pharmaceuticals. Two specific classes are of huge significance to me: Pain medications and psychedelics.

Pain Medications:

On seeing that there were so-called “Pill Mills” handing out too many prescriptions for opiates, for simple things such as broken arms, the Government handled the situation in a very bad manner. Instead of having a planned, reasoned approach which managed the situation, they manufactured the “Opiate Epidemic,” with the result that huge limits were placed on prescribers, and many were prosecuted.

The result of this was that chronic pain patients like myself had significant limitations on what we were allowed to get. I was reduced from 200 mg of Oxycodone a day to 20 mg a day, a 90% reduction!

Many chronic pain patients were cut off cold turkey. So they did the only thing they could. They turned to street sources, and started buying pills and heroin. But since they were opiate tolerant, the normal drugs were not sufficient.

To put this in perspective, for a colonoscopy, the provider typically uses 50 mcg of Fentanyl, which will blitz if not out right sedate a normal patient. For me, even 200 mcg of Fentanyl has little effect, even when administered with Versed, a tranquilizer.

So the drug pushers started adding Fentanyl to the heroin. When that wasn’t enough, they started using Carfentanyl, the elephant version, because some people were so resistant to opiates.

The result of this was a huge spike in overdoses, because the average user couldn’t tolerate these high doses. This created the REAL Opiate Crisis that we now have, and is why medics often have to use as many as eight or more doses of Narcan (Nalaxone) on overdose cases. The single dose that a police officer or citizen carries is grossly insufficient in Fentanyl and Carfentanyl overdoses for people who are not opiate tolerant.

Further, with more people turning to street opiates, there are more drug busts, typically amongst people of color, poor people and other oppressed classes. This just feeds them back into the carceral Prison Industrial Complex, furthering their oppression.
All of this is due to the MANUFACTURED opiate crisis due to the government’s mishandling of a small problem and turning it into a big one!

Psychedelics:

In this class there are four main drugs, two natural ones, psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and cannabis, and two manufactured ones, LSD and MDMA. The two manufactured drugs were created early in the 20th century, and were legal until the 1960s.

These four drugs are currently Category I drugs, which by definition means they have NO POTENTIAL for therapeutic benefit.  This is very ironic, given that there are many research studies done by the National Institutes for Health (NIH) (another branch of the Federal Government) showing the therapeutic benefit of these drugs.

All four drugs have proven benefits in mental health. For example two NIH studies show that a single dose of MDMA will put a combat veteran’s PTSD in remission.

Cannabis also has proven benefits in pain management, cancer therapy, glaucoma therapy and other illnesses as well.

So why do these drugs remain Category I? Because of GREED at the hands of Big Pharma. Since two of these drugs were developed 100 years ago, and two are natural substances, Big Pharma stands to make no profits. So they will not allow CONgress and the FDA to remove these drugs from Category I.

The net result is that the corruption in CONgress is severely harming our people. This MUST stop. 

I urge you to contact your Representatives and Senators and push for changes in legislation on both these issues, to stop hurting, and start actually helping those of us who are suffering, and to stop oppressing those who are suffering the worst.