Posts tagged - opioid

Trump’s Drug Czar Candidate Withdraws Amid Conflict of Interest Allegations

Posted on: October 17, 2017, in: , , , , , , , , ,

Rep. Tom Marino

Rep. Tom Marino

A Tweet this morning from President Trump said Rep. Tom Marino, Trump’s candidate for Drug Czar, is withdrawing from consideration.

The withdrawal came on the heels of a Washington Post article that said Marino received $100,000 from a pharmaceutical lobby and was chief advocate of a bill – the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act – that weakened the DEA’s efforts to stop opioid prescription abuse. According to the Post, “The drug industry spent $106 million lobbying Congress on the bill and other legislation between 2014 and 2016.” The law weakens the ability of the DEA, said the Post, to require the distributors of legal prescription pharmaceuticals to report suspicious shipments from manufacturers to retailers – shipments that could be destined for the black market through corrupt physicians, pain clinics and pharmacies.

An investigation last year by the Post  unearthed 13 companies the publication believed were ignoring potentially illegal diversion of opioids. They included McKesson, Cardinal Health, Amerisource­Bergen, Miami-Luken, KeySource Medical, and Walgreens.

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Opioid Manufacturers Under Investigation, Pharmaceutical Executives Charged With Racketeering

Posted on: September 18, 2017, in: , , , , , , ,

Several pharmaceutical executives and managers, formerly employed by Insys Therapeutics, Inc., were arrested last December on charges that they led a nationwide conspiracy to bribe medical practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe a fentanyl-based pain medication and defraud healthcare insurers, according to a release from the Department of Justice.

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri –  a senior member of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — announced an investigation into the business practices of the manufacturers of America’s top-five prescription opioid products. One report from the investigation titled  “Fueling an Epidemic: Insys Therapeutics and the Systemic Manipulation of Prior Authorization,” was released earlier this month. Other manufacturers under investigation include Purdue, Johnson & Johnson, Mylan, and Depomed.

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Study: Regular Marijuana Use Boosts Psychosis

Posted on: September 13, 2017, in: , , , ,

A recent study   at Montreal University says that regular use of marijuana by adolescents increases the incidence of “psychotic-like experiences” by 159 percent. And according to a 2013 study by the University, the perception of marijuana as harmless is scientifically inaccurate.

Now that jurisdictions are legalizing marijuana for recreational use, one might expect such research to impel a rollback of legalization. However, the financial incentive of new state and local tax revenues from marijuana sales may instead hold sway. For example, Colorado dealers sold $1 billion worth of marijuana in 2016 and the state raked in $200 million in taxes, As the Colorado population is converted to potheads, the state is projecting $20.2 billion in sales by 2021.

And now that the opioid crisis is in full swing, pharmaceutical companies are raking in millions selling “Medication Assisted Treatment” drugs for a crisis that Ohio and other sources think that the pharmaceutical industry started. If marijuana legalization is just another pharmaceutical marketing scheme, expect to hear soon about new drugs to treat “reefer madness,” or “pot rot.”

 

 

 

 

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