By: Michael D. Jacobsen
Staff writer at Fighting the Tyranny
It seems to be almost a daily occurrence when you look in the paper or online and read that someone else in your neighborhood has died from an overdose. Usually, you think that it might be a drug like heroin that is involved and in some cases, sadly, it is. However, as is becoming more and more common it is not an illegal drug causing these overdoses. It is a prescription drug that is deemed to be safe and legal.
Yet, while the headlines are dominated by death caused by illegal drugs, you seldom hear about the deaths caused by legal drugs. That is of course unless it involves a celebrity.
Why is that? Why are we so familiar with the scourge of illegal drugs but most of us do not realize the dangers of the pills that might very well be sitting in a medicine cabinet in our very home right now?
The short answer is because the big pharma companies spend around 230 million a year to lobby congressmen. On average there are two lobbyists from big pharma for every one person in Congress. In fact, the money spent lobbying is the most for any industry, a distant second is the burdening cost of insurance, which has gone way up since Obamacare was put into effect.
So what is the big deal? They are bribing our congressmen and making sure their drugs will be pushed on the people. The FDA which is given the task to make sure our prescription drugs are safe is allowing what seems to be anything through as long as it is the highest bidder. The worst part is that they are allowing powerful drugs such as oxycontin to kids as young as eleven. Around 20,000 people overdose on oxycontin each year, yet, we are giving this highly addictive drug to 11-year-olds? It truly goes to show just how much influence money has on what we allow our children to be drugged with.
Further questions can be raised when we look into the incidents of mass shootings and the number of times the shooter was on prescription medication. The list is quite extensive. This is not to say every mass shooter was on some sort of medication, but a sizable percentage has been shown to be on psychotropics. In the case of mass shootings at schools, this seems to be especially prevalent. The omission of this from virtually any conversation by Congressmen or the media is rather alarming. One of the few independent journalists, Ben Swann covers it in-depth in the following video.
So, why does the media ignore the link between mass shootings and prescription medication? Well, it is similar to congressmen in that it is also for money. If they speak out then drug companies do not advertise on their networks, this will lead to the loss of millions in advertising revenue.
There is also the profit motive for doctors to prescribe drugs to patients. This report details bribes that were handed out to doctors to sell more of their opioids which were supposed to be used to treat pain in cancer patients. This program led to doctors prescribing opioids to people who did not have cancer. At best horrible practices like this will only lead to fines. It is very rare for someone from a pharmaceutical company to receive a prison sentence for this. It is however easy for the doctors handing out prescriptions to at least be charged with wrongdoing.
Add to that the case of drug companies sending 20.8 million prescription painkillers to the town of Williamson, West Virginia. These drugs were sent between 2008 -2015 to a town with a total population of 3000. According to the CDC, 884 people died from prescription drug overdoses in West Virginia during 2016, this was the highest overdose rate of any state. The penalty for what happened, a 2.5 million dollar settlement and a 3.5 million dollar settlement, both paid to the state. Not one person received jail time.
While lawsuits against drug companies happen all the time. Often resulting in millions of dollars per year being handed out to settle these lawsuits. Little is done to the executives who run these companies. While millions are being paid out, it is nothing compared to the billions they take in. For most companies paying fines is just considered a matter of doing business.
The main reason why company executives do not get jail time is that like most banks, the pharmaceutical giants are considered too big to fail. In other words, jailing their executives will cause the company to collapse and since people are dependent on their medicine they need to remain free for the good of that company. In my opinion, this has in effect created an “untouchable” class created by our government.
As long as we are willing to give these people a free pass for wrongdoing, as long as we allow congress to put executives ahead of human lives in pursuit of a few more dollars, then this problem will continue. Nothing is too big to fail, and no one should be untouchable. We need to inform our congressmen that this is so and make this an issue come election time.
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