Date:

April 11, 2012

The Drugs Racket The government ruled, this week, to take $1.1 billion off of a drug maker and dealer. The reason? Basically, in a power-play, this drug dealer did not comply with the rules the Feds laid down, rules put in place to protect the consumer. Part of the protections required were more testing, more funding of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and protection against fees paid to doctors to prescribe the drug. It all sounds good for public protection except when you realize that this drug maker is a true and trusted partner of the government testing programs for many decades. In fact, several of the government exemployees work for this drug giant. Why havent I named the drug company? There is no point. Every single one of the major drug companies act the same, hire ex-testing supervisors (some the same day they approve a controversial drug), collude to set up field trials in far-off lands that (if they go wrong) can be hushed up, and generally act more as partners than scientific adversaries. In other words, the Governments FDA is effectively in the drug supply and approval business. Sure, every once and a while a whistle-blower brings a misdeed out into the light and some judge or prosecutor gets 15 minutes of fame for stopping the big, bad, drug company. But in reality the FDA tries to approve every drug and simply passes a whole host of dangerous chemicals as safe, but you may have diarrhea, migraines, fainting spells, heart attacks, piles, hives, kidney failure, epilepsy, tumors, seizures... It was Prohibition that taught the government and so-called legitimate businesses how to profit from peoples weaknesses. Using very poor science, the government decided that alcohol was deadly for the country. When they banned all alcohol, including beer (which for many was a cheap part of their calorie intake at a time when hard laborers needed 8,000 calories a day to maintain body weight), they drove the need for beer and harder liquor into the hands of criminals. Given the profitability of nongovernment regulated substance supply it was only a matter of time before states and then the Federal Government realized that all the lost taxation revenue need to be recouped. Today the Feds are adamant again poor science that illegal drugs kill. Like the argument that guns kill (no, they dont, people misusing guns kill), drug use is dependent on the skill and habits of the user. Ask the FBI for the percentage of alcohol related crime? 47.5%. About half! And yet this violent drug is licensed, taxed and fills the government coffers every day. Meantime, and heres a shocker, legal, medically prescribed drugs that are 100 times more potent than booze are being consumed everyday by Americans. These drugs are, of course, taxed, approved by

the FDA as safe and are very profitable for the new booze companies of today the big pharmaceutical companies. Try these statistics on for size: US pharmacies dispensed 69 tons of pure oxycodone (made from opium plants; OxyContin, Percoset, Percodan) and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone (synthetic opium derivative; Vicodin, Norco, Lortab) in 2010 and last year that went up maybe 12%. That is enough dope to give every single adult in America 50 5mg pills of OxyContin and 30 5 mg pills of Vicodin each year. Lets see, thats 80 pills of a narcotic strong enough to knock you down, make you unfit to drive or may make you violent. Thats 80 days for every single adult in America when they are unfit to work and, using the Narc squad definition, under the influence. And why doesnt the FDA approve less dangerous drugs? Because the use of something like marijuana would eat into the profits of OxyContin, Percoset, Percodan, Vicodin, Norco, Lortab, etc. So the FDA (with their bosses in charge about to switch jobs to a fat salary at the major drug companies, like the woman who said Pink Slime is real beef now working for the company that makes Pink Slime), these people continue to proclaim these minor leafy drugs are highly dangerous, all the while they are allowing rampant prescription of opium derivatives. Addictive, dangerous derivatives. Are the misuses of all drugs a public menace? Yes. The FBI and police forces have that right. Should they be restricted somehow, educating the public? Sure. Thats the real job of government. What government should not be doing is abetting the new booze companies. Demeaning the use of minor illegal drugs (fostering more criminal supply) while they unleash approved opium derivatives in massive, unregulated quantities on the public is itself a crime against our safe way of life.