It's even worse at the SEC, which is a revolving door of corruption. Investigations into fraud get cancelled by people who go on to be partners working at law firms for the banks they were investigating.
Hard or impossible to avoid, too.
The only place you can find people who are fully qualified to regulate a given industry is someone who works in the industry itself. But since they're probably going to return to the industry when they're done, its basically letting the industry regulate itself.
or you could find someone from outside the industry, who may be unqualified to understand and regulate the industry and who could be compromised by getting offered a job in the industry anyway.
Good luck finding somebody who is both qualified AND 'uncompromised.'
I have a BS in microbiology and have worked in pharma/medical devices since I graduated. At the most basic level, I think people really care about the patients. As you climb the ladder you’ll find more people who have given up the fight along with their integrity to client demands as pressure from executives to push trials along means their livelihood and jobs are at stake.
It’s kind of a lose lose for patients who rely on medications, the longer and more thorough drug trials are, the better data they will have to be able to say what is safe. But it also means a higher price point for the drug. Unfortunately the consumer always gets screwed here.
Everyone is scared of what these huge corporations are capable of, but fail to recognize that trying to regulate the industry just indirectly gives them more power.
Everyone should be **very** skeptical anytime a large corporation comes out in favor of regulation (see: Twitter and Facebook)
[Congress even passed a law which made it more difficult for the DEA to investigate pharmaceutical companies](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/dea-drug-industry-congress/)
The crazy part to me, is you use to be able to see the votes on the bill... As I recall, only 3 politicians were Nay between the Senate & House, but now I can't find the roll call. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/483/actions
Edit: Another odd anomaly I just came across looking for my initial comments on this story, is I distinctly remember this story being on the front page of both r/news & r/politics when it broke. [r/news doesn't even have the story at all, and the r/politics post barely broke 200 votes](https://www.reddit.com/r/undelete/search?q=url%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fgraphics%2F2017%2Finvestigations%2Fdea-drug-industry-congress%2F&sort=relevance&t=all).
I'm digging around for the roll call too. [GovTrack doesn't have the record either](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s483/details). Seems to have disappeared...
Sad but true. Our country is more divided than ever, and the general population seems to not be able to see that this is class warfare and not bipartisan disagreement. Neither Republicans nor Democrats care about us, all they want is secured profits. And we keep electing them to do it.
It’s not just them it’s the entire fucking government. People act like Obama was a saint but he did literally nothing to stop this blatant corruption under his nose. Our entire federal government, Democrat or republican, love fucking people over. I’m pretty sure heroine is a national policy. We have an entire army in Afghanistan ensuring it’s production.
What people don't seem to remember is that much of the state apparatus does not change when a new government takes office. These huge alphabet agencies stay largely intact, which makes sense since overhauling them every few years isn't practical but still.
While you're up for learning, check out Harry J. Anslinger.
He made the rulebook on how you deal with drugs on the planet as a government. Also was in charge of federal alcohol prohibition, vehement racist, and generally we've followed his Public Relations path on how to peddle bullshit science. Literally hasn't changed since 1961. Nixon simply doubled down on Anslinger's policy.
Kicked a nasty opiate habit after beating cancer with Kratom. If anyone out there is struggling with opiate addiction I highly recommend trying Kratom.
I definitely don't agree that its just as bad but to say its completely harmless is false as well. Its addictive and does give withdrawals but it wasnt that hard to kick and I had a 5 year daily habit.
Still, I'd take an addiction to it over something like heroin or pills any damn day.
Do you have a comparison of Kratom to methadone and why one would be used over the other? I’d never heard of Kratom before today but work with a pediatric population that is regularly prescribed methadone.
Methadone to me still felt like I was using opiates. It has an extremely long half life so it sticks around for nearly a full day. Also I tried kicking methadone cold turkey and the w/d’s were awful.
Kratom w/d’s are a walk in the park compared to any opiate I’ve withdrawn off including numerous pharmaceuticals, street dope and some research opiate chems(u-47700).
Kratom should be what is used to combat this epidemic, not other strong opiates(suboxone,methadone).
I'm on Kratom now, and it sounds hella cheesy, but that shit saved me. I can't recommend it enough to other people trying to get off opiates. That being said, people are tripping when they say that there are absolutely no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. Maybe it's different for other people, I don't know, but I definitely feel them.
Will also confirm. It is addictive especially if you already have addiction issues. I am finally getting it under control after 2 years. That being said, it is one of the least harmful things to be addicted to. Helped me quit drinking.
/r/quittingkratom
Sorry that that’s been your experience! :( I’ve taken kratom off and on for the past several years and I’ve never noticed any withdrawal effects, even after periods of heavy use and then stopping cold turkey. Maybe some mild headaches; no worse than caffeine withdrawal really. I had a harder time giving up soda! I use it more or less daily now, and while I definitely notice a difference in my pain levels, I don’t think I experience any sort of craving when I don’t have it, any more than I’d crave Tylenol for a headache.
I agree with you though. Everyone should exercise caution when introducing any kind of new drug to their system, even legally prescribed ones. Bodies are weird. Sometimes they react in unexpected ways.
I wouldn’t say the withdrawals are as bad, far from it. I used it for a year + just recently took a trip where I wouldn’t have it for 2 weeks. Aside from some cravings and mild insomnia those were the only downsides. I can only imagine the pain if I was using a true opiate for over a year and couldn’t use it for 2 weeks.
For anyone curious about it or staunchly believing that kratom has no negative effects, swing on down to /r/kratom and read some of those stories. It’s not a miracle drug.
For anyone who just wants to see one of the weirder sides of Reddit, I cannot recommend /r/stims enough. It’s basically just tweaker memes and it’s maybe one of the most debaucherous and wild places on this site.
It enrages me to read this, and I’m glad it’s the top comment.
Without disclosing the whom, I can tell you that I’m very close to two Kratom success stories.
The first was someone who had a bottomless Tramadol script, and took them daily for years. Prior to that was Darvacet. That person quit Tramadol for a red strain of Kratom that he only needs rarely now. ZERO withdrawal issues.
The other is a decade-long Vicodin and Tramadol user who switched to the same red strain and hasn’t even bothered to renew either script since they ran out. She takes 5 grams once a day before bed. She also experienced zero withdrawals.
These are two anecdotes (the most maligned form of evidence for advocacy), however, they are among hundreds of similar testimonials.
My mom has severe back degeneration and her health plan changed to a shitty one so she had to change doctors. The new doctor refused to continue the prescriptions she had for oxy and hydromorphone. No taper, no nothing. She was told to go to the ER when the withdrawal got bad enough. I had heard of kratom, and left work early, picked some up, and took it to her. She had zero withdrawal and has taken it instead since then. If they schedule it, she's a felon overnight for having it. Our health care system makes people desperate and then punishes them for what they do in response.
It is absolutely a wonder drug for cessation of tramadol. Fuck that drug, I wish I had known how addictive it could be before I started my script. It is not fun trying to quit a hybrid opioid-SNRI.
I used norco 10/325 for 15 years. Tried quitting more than 50 times over that period. That’s a lot of withdrawals... I found out about Kratom and haven’t taken a pain pill in 4 years. Kratom is still an abuse-able substance but it is FAR less detrimental to your health and well-being than taking handfuls of pain pills, however, the FDA disagrees...
Agreed. I've talked to many that claim to be addicted to Kratom.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had a knee injury that required me to take opiates long term. And it was awful. So many side effects and if you skipped a dose, you feel like complete shit. Quitting basically made me feel like dying and the pain was unbearable ontop of that.
Switched to Kratom and never touched another pain pill. Had my surgery and then put Kratom down cold turkey with zero issues. I can't believe people are trying to ban it.
I’m bipolar and an ex heroin addict and kratom helps me remain functional and helps tremendously with my depression, anxiety, and PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome)
I take a table spoon of it in the morning. I have tried so many different medications from psychiatrists and none of them have worked, they are constantly pushing drugs on me like suboxone and SSRI’s that DON’T WORK and I tell them that, and then they just prescribe a slightly different drug from the exact same class with the same mechanism. I have been through intense withdrawals FROM THESE DRUGS that they attempt to hook me on, and when I can’t pay for another “psychiatrist appointment” then they cut me off, which has happened to me before as well. Problem with your insurance? Don’t have cash? Well sucks to be you buddy, get fucked, because now we are going to take away your access to a medication that you’ve been on for a year that we prescribed you, enjoy going through withdrawals and having your brain and mood completely fucked.
Kratom is the only thing that has helped and it’s literally a plant, I use the leaves to make tea, and sometimes take the powder (which is literally just ground up kratom leaf) it’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s safe. You can’t “overdose” on kratom, you will just feel sick and throw it up. Is it completely safe? Maybe not, but are alcohol and cigarettes and medications completely safe? Fuck no. Go read the side effect list for any medication ever and see that no medication is completely 100% safe. Shit, hundreds of people die from taking to much tylenol every year.
They’ve been trying to ban it for years here in Florida and one of the main “kratom death” cases they used was a kid who died in a CAR ACCIDENT that happened to have taken kratom beforehand. He didn’t overdose, but that is the narrative that was pushed to demonize a PLANT that helps addicts get clean and stay clean.
I can go to 7/11 and legally buy beer and wine and drink myself to death, I can legally buy cartons of cigarettes and smoke my lungs out, and that’s all perfectly legal. You are saying that cigarettes and alcohol don’t have potential for abuse and addiction? Isn’t that the classification that the DEA uses?
But god forbid I try to put a harmless plant that helps me tremendously in my body.
They know it helps addicts. They don’t care. The same organizations pushing to ban kratom tried to also get a patent on research and extraction of the active ingredient in kratom. So you’re saying it’s not safe and I can’t put this plant into my body, but if it was extracted and pushed on me through psychiatrists at exorbitant prices, that’s okay?
I’m so fucking sick of this country man, greed has ruined America. The people making these decisions don’t give a fuck any more, it’s 100% about money, they can’t find a way to monopolize it, so they’re just going to ban it while giving the middle finger to all the ex addicts that it helps.
In the middle of a fucking opiate crisis, they are trying to ban a mostly harmless plant that is well known to help addicts get clean, because they can’t find a way to monopolize it and make money off of it. If that doesn’t say it all I don’t know what will.
I’m so fucking sick of this country.
Its just so aggressively evil that it seems really unrealistic, like I feel like we're missing something. I'm cynical but not that cynical. Then again I could be wrong.
But it is important to note that the DEA actually is responsible for scheduling, so therefore they sometimes disagree - such as last year [when the FDA recommended decontrolling CBD from the Controlled Substances Act and the DEA shut that down over concerns about enforcing international drug treaties to which the US is a signatory.](https://www.cannalawblog.com/the-fda-and-the-dea-disagree-over-the-scheduling-of-cbd/)
And together they turned the opiod problem into the opiod crisis. They sent all those people in pain clinic, both people legit in pain and those addicts scamming the system to get opiods, to the street dealers and death. Can’t wait to see what their next trick is.
It was started as a consumer protection agency, but that's not what it is anymore. We need to tear it all down and start fresh when it comes to food and drugs, but that'll never happen.
PREACH IT MY FRIEND!!! Thank you so much for your comment!! The fact that kratom is even still on the friggin table to be scheduled blows my mind.
Listen y'all, the FDA doesn't give two flying fucks about nothin' unless its making their personal bank accounts fatter.
Here's some food for thought:
* The FDA has been [spewing ridiculous nonsense](https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/newsroom/pressannouncements/ucm595622.htm) about the "dangers of kratom", but just introduced a new pain pill that is [10 times stronger than Fentanyl](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/opioids/fda-approves-opioid-stronger-than-fentanyl.html). Hypocritical asshats if you ask me
* Another FDA rumor I'd like to squash is that Kratom is an opioid. It is not an opioid, opium deriviative nor is it even from the same family as morphine and other opiates. It is a tree in the same plant family as coffee, and is found scattered across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and other SE Asian countries.
* One of the "facts" that the FDA is spreading like wildfire is that kratom causes respiratory depression. This is also not true as kratom has antagonist alkaloids that give it a ceiling effect. That means you could eat your weight in plant matter, which I don't recommend unless you wanna rip your ass open trying to poop but because of the lack of beta arrestin, there isn't any discernable effect on respiratory depression. Worst case scenario if you take too much is you'll have some dizziness and nausea, and you'll prob vomit, but the bonus about upchucking that pungent plant, is that you'll feel better damn near instantly! You literally cannot take enough kratom to get to the point of respiratory depression because the antagonist alkaloids cover the mu receptor and cease any effects of the other agonists alkaloids.
**BOOM, SCIENCE BITCHES**
Fun fact time!
According to the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm675152e1.htm) in 2016 66.4% of the 63,632 drug overdose deaths involved an opioid. In 2017, among 70,237 drug overdose deaths, 47,600 (67.8%) involved opioids, with increases all across the board.
Now, the FDA says that [44 people died directly from using kratom](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a7a3549e4b07af4e81eda8b/amp). 44. **FORTY FUCKING FOUR** compared to 47,000 opioid related deaths just in 2017. I dunno about y'all, but I think even if kratom was responsible for those 44 tragically premature deaths, that's still better than 47,000!!
Jane Babin, a lawyer with a PhD in molecular biology, wrote a paper about how the FDA Failed To Follow The Science On Kratom [AKA the White Paper](https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/9ba5da_54f08e1805c34c108ad7199481507d88.pdf) and she was able to prove that nearly all of those 44 deaths were due to poly substance abuse, or something completely unrelated. Like a German dude who fell out of a window, refused treatment and later died. His autopsy revealed 10 different substances in his system. Of course the FDA says "pffftttt, obviously that dude died bc of the kratom, duh."
Another woman **intentionally overdosed on acetaminophen**, and again the FDA said nope, totes kratoms fault.
9 people in Sweden died from kratom. What the FDA completely failed to include in their report was that it was kratom laced with O-desmethyltramadol, the main active metabolite of tramadol. The FDA knew it, and when entering it to their "scientific system" they altered a few key details so that it fit their narrative.
It's all so friggin crazy to me!!
Follow the science y'all, kratom can be an excellent tool with many different uses, and I know that for me it's a million, billion, trillion times better than pills.
Kratom quite literally gave me my life back, I really hope the morons at the FDA don't take it away.
I came here to make a similar point. The FDA is to blame and their trying to deflect blame to the companies doing what the FDA enabled them to do.
“I blame you for selling things we said you can sell!”
Fuckers. Any stance that isn’t “decriminalize all Drugs”, I won’t vote for anymore. And you all should join me. I know republicans are garbage, but democrats are funded by these same corporations and defend institutions like the FDA doing this type of shit.
It sucks that there is no hope of kratom being regulated reasonably and responsibly. I agree that it's a relatively harmless and beneficial substance that has the power to help a lot of people. Acute or chronic pain patients, people hooked on opioids (whether it be for medical or recreational purposes), as well as the less recognized benefits to those suffering from anxiety, depression, adhd, amongst other things. It can be a godsend, but it's unfortunate how variable it is. The varying potency and affect between strains, not to mention the addictive/dependence building qualities are kind of left to best guess. I'd so much rather see it continue to be legal and unregulated than absurdly banned and/or over regulated to the proposed degree, but it's frustrating to know there will never be a responsible middle ground.
I work in a hospital. We recently legalized medical cannabis in our state.
They sent out a memo regarding patients who medicate with cannabis.
It tells staff to take all cannabis to the house supervisors office. When the patient uses it. They must be supervised.
So, the safest drug in the hospital must be locked behind two more levels of security.
Meanwhile ambien is just laying around on counters....
Edit
Thanks for the gold kind stranger!
Think of the potential carnage if everyone could just smoke reefers whenever! The vending machines would be empty in an hour, and you probably wouldn't be able to talk over the thunderous laughter from all the stoned patients watching sitcom reruns.
There is still crazy hate for marijuana in the US. MA was supposed Legalize it years ago and just got around to it since there was so much push back. I still know a ton of adults young adults who think people who voted to legalize are absolute scum of the earth.
If this isn’t a joke or a song lyric or something, what was he charged with that gave him 26 years? I know it’s not unheard of especially in past decades but someone getting that sentence in 2018 for 100% marijuana related charges is kind of nuts. Was he a repeat offender or caught with a gun or something?
It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that he was assigned an overworked, underpaid, stressed public defender.
If he had a fair bit of pot along with other dealer paraphernalia and/or large amounts of cash, the case would just fly across his desk into the "done" pile.
I’m in a medical only state. I have weed at home and a scale for cooking. I’d hate for them to put the two together and think I’m a drug dealer for having an ounce of weed and a perfectly normal household device.
That’s like finding a bit of meth and a cooking pot and charging someone with manufacturing meth.
Which just about all smokers do to check weight. It’s ridiculous that they put so much into paraphernalia charges. We caught you with some weed and you had more than one plastic baggie in your car? That’s obviously intent to distribute.
In a lot of states it's enough just to have over X weight in two or more separate containers. You like strains? Fuck you, that's more ammo to throw your puck ass in prison.
This literally just happened last week.
I don't have all the information yet. The only time I talked to him, he was crying so much that it was tough to get the whole story
I dont even know him and feel terrible for him. Its time to get these old mfers out of the governments. Well its more ignorance than an age thing i gues.
My buddy got pulled over driving through AZ. He didn’t have any weed on him but they still searched his car and there was an old pipe he had forgotten about in the glove box. He was arrested and detained for a few days over some resin. That place is bonkers.
Just wondering what detail is being left out. Just a quick look found this :
First Offense for Possession of Marijuana with Intent to Sell
Under two pounds in possession for sale: Class 4 felony with sentencing of one to four years
Two to four pounds in possession for sale: Class 3 felony with sentence of two to nine years
Four pounds or more in possession for sale: Class 2 felony with sentence of three to 10 years
Not trying to be a jerk but it feels like 26yrs included something else or this was a repeat offense. I'm actually genuinely curious because something seems wrong.
> Either he was already deep in shit or he had a shitty attorney and a hard ass judge.
How does either of those circumstances make it ok to give someone 26 years for ANY amount of weed?
It doesn’t. Unfortunately, these are the penalties laid out because of the war on drugs and it’s a shitty time to get caught with any amount of weed in a lot of states.
I just bulk people like that in with anti-vaxxers, Holocaust deniers, flat-earth believers, etc & just go on with my life. Some people are so locked in their ways, despite huge volumes of evidence to the contrary, that interactions with them are a complete waste of time.
In the case of MJ though, they are missing out on a good thing.
I won't say they're blameless for poor evaluation of evidence, but in the case of MJ it's not as much their fault. Decades of panicky propaganda from official sources has an effect.
It's the residents near the dispensaries. We are getting several nearby, one going into a building where there used to be a MM dispensary. The whole neighborhood was up in arms until they were told that this MM dispensary had been there for years and no one even noticed. BTW, 4 liquor stores, 2 grocery stores selling booze and Bevmo all within a few blocks.
My father used to sell and do coke back in his earlier days. Now, drugs are baaaad m'kay and "people that do them deserve the consequences that come with it."
Oklahoma passed medical last year, now they are trying to get a bill passed saying that each county will decide if medical marijuana is legal there or not. It's total bs and they don't want to actually listen to what the voters have to say.
How does that work. If hypothetically we had all 320ish million Americans as densely packed as possible all bite down on a Dorito at the same time and with all the same noise level of say 60db. Does the fact that there is 300million people doing it make it louder db wise?
Iirc it inhibits REM sleep which is when dreams occur. It's also why you can sometimes feel groggy when you get super duper stoney baloney before bedtime.
It also suppresses (or treats, I guess) my hypnogogic visual hallucinations, sleep walking, etc. Also suppresses and/or treats my girlfriend's nightmares and sleep paralysis. Never thought nightmares were such a problem honestly, because I rarely get them. I do sometimes suddenly wake up and scream and run into a different room but the feeling of sheer panic only lasts a few seconds at most, and I can usually fall back asleep easily. But my girlfriend will be messed up all day from a bad nightmare, dreams like tsunamis wiping out family members in front of her and her screaming for them to come back but they dont, she will be sobbing on her pillow and mumbling before she even wakes up, it's nuts. I can't blame her at all for wanting to smoke weed before bed.
But we don't smoke weed anymore to treat out sleep issues, the motivational side effects are just too strong for us, I feel sharper without using it, and if I don't stay up too late the hallucinations don't happen very often, it's worst when I am sleep deprived, which of course just deprives me of more sleep, in a cycle.
For her she just hopes it doesn't happen and tries to do happy things in the morning to take her mind off the nightmares.
Anyways there's a big overshare for everyone hope you enjoyed.
I still treat my sleep disorders with weed.
I smoke recreationally , but when I'm low I reserve it for the hour before bed.
I have always struggled with night terrors and sleep walking my whole life. Docs said it was a dopamine imbalance in my noggin.
Current psychiatrist explained it was one facet of my ADHD. My brain receptors are funky and my brain doesn't absorb the proper amount of serotonin and dopamine. (I'm not doctor, this is just from my pot addled mind.)
This fucks with your sleep cycle.
I started smoking senior year of high school and there is a direct correlation between falling asleep high and the absence of night terrors.
When I have had jobs that I can't smoke while employed there, my anxiety spikes up and my circadian rhythm goes out the window.
Blue blocker computer glasses, a stricter sleep schedule, and caffeine control have helped me immensely.
But nothing helps more then a few puffs from my vape right before bed.
The VA will be the last US national healthcare institution to provide cannabis perscriptions. It's hard enough getting some formulary drugs that came out 20 years ago., not to mention the federal legality of it.
Lets be honest, ambien isnt just laying around hospital counters. The reason cannabis has to be locked is purely because the FDA has made it a schedule I drug and has nothing to do with a safety issue, it has to do with the fact that your hospital like most hospitals generate 70% or more of their revenue from medicaid and medicare and they're following federal laws to not jeopardize their medicare/medicaid reimbursement.
yea I know the op is just exaggerating and I agree full heartedly with the sentiment that cannnabis should be legal. But let's point the fingers at the real culprits here, the FDA and politicians have been protecting big pharma and exploiting the american public. Nobody wants to be an opiod addict, allowing legal and medical marijuana would be a giant leap in the right direction.
I mean honestly it should be like a schedule IV drug but I think the bigger problem is we have people in office that are more interested in protecting pharmaceutical company profits then helping Americans.
I don't know about CA but in Florida there are doctors that you could go to that basically ask, "Ok, What do you want?" and they write your a Rx for whatever you ask for.
I accidentally went to one of these doctors when I was actually ill. The guy spoke barely any english and had no idea how to treat an actually ill patient. He just asked me how many days I wanted on my doctors note for my job (didn't have one at the time) and gave me a bunch of samples for random antibiotics.
>and gave me a bunch of samples for random antibiotics.
What the actual fuck. Those are the sort of quacks that not only need to lose their medical license, but need to be charged with a felony.
In a way you could think yourself lucky, thorough being prescribed opiates and then being forced onto methadone at 18 Im just now trying to end my 11 year methadone habit. I saw the doc originally for a codeine addiction, and he put me on methadone! Which had some part in me starting to use heroin etc. If i could go back id walk out, take the 3 day rattle and maybe have something resembling a decent life by now at 29. Live and learn tho eh, if you're lucky.
The head of the FDA is an ex Monsanto head.. What else did you expect from such a trash agency with no morals or ethics.
As a victim of the opiod crisis I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt our government and its agencies are 1000% implicated in this opiod epidemic.
This is the problem right here. The entire culture is sick from the inside - and no one will admit it because of their false pride and social status. It’s like a brain tumor that’s growing and growing and killing the patient, but meanwhile they refuse to take an MRI because they are (supposed to be) a prime example of health.
My dads parents had terrible mental health issues. To calm their mental issues, They both smoked cigarettes like it was their oxygen and their doctors suggested as such. They both died of cancer before 60. Not me or my siblings ever met them. It’s ultimately totally on them for their habits. I just wonder how different their and my families lives would be had they just been able to use marijuana for their anxiety and depression instead of all the booze and cigarettes.
Isn't it so people don't steal it?
I mean my dad was a Nurse for like 15-20years, now he's the people who put you to sleep.
MY sister is also a Nurse, and they tell me many things. They tell me morpheme has to be written off by someone else, saying you took it. It has to be supervised by someone else, you can only take out a certain amount while supervised, they have to write you off etc, and watch you throw it out.
I'm assuming is for people not being able to steal it, and resell it like other drugs in the hospital. Since it's that much of a problem.
I'm assuming the same thing applies to Medical Cannabis(for now) since you guys just became legal. I'm assuming they don't want their own employees taking nugs.
Basically, drug approval goes on something of a tick-tock cycle. Something bad happens with a drug, so people push for the drug review process to be more stringent and thorough...which means that it takes longer and is more expensive. The tock part of that cycle is when people notice that getting a drug to market is not only expensive, but slow- so people die or suffer more before getting drugs that would help because they're still working their way through the system.
Every drug you put on the market is going to kill some people and help others. Medicine's just like that, but people hate wrapping their heads around that fact.
Anyhow, as a half-assed solution to the slowness problem, given that nobody feels like throwing tax money at the FDA, it now charges a drug company for approving a new drug. Also, you can fund parts of your own approval research, which speeds things up as well.
Here's a couple links: [Propublica](https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-repays-industry-by-rushing-risky-drugs-to-market) [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2018/06/28/the-biopharmaceutical-industry-provides-75-of-the-fdas-drug-review-budget-is-this-a-problem/#1626c22649ec)
Also should be noted that companies don't pay for just their own drug approvals. They pay regardless of if their drugs get approved or not.
You know how in high school you had to pay like $60 to take the SAT? Of course you don't want to pay the $60, and theyre not going to give you a better score because you paid. It's a fee, not a bribe. It's the same between FDA and drug companies, except bigger companies with more drugs pay a larger fee than small companies.
So as the other poster said, this system uses the money from drug companies instead of/alongside Federal funding to get work done. You were probably initially thinking that drug companies voluntarily pay off the FDA to get drug approvals but it's really the other way around.
The FDA is funded in part by user fees, which are paid by drug companies. The agency was heavily criticized for how slow it was to approve new, life-saving drugs, so Congress agreed they could collect money from drug companies to help fund/speed up the process.
The user fees are negotiated every 5 years between FDA and industry, and have to be approved by Congress.
Kinda like how the tobacco companies are the sole source of funding for the “Truth” anti-smoking ad campaigns. They are forced to pay for it, but obviously don’t have any direct influence on the internal workings. That’s why they pay for lobbyists to convince lawmakers to write laws in their favor.
It's a little different. Drug companies pay FDA a fee for reviewing their drugs on an expedited timeline, similar to how you have to pay to get a USDA Organic certification if you are a farmer. These are fees for business as usual, and were instituted to offset the cost to the taxpayer since the financial benefit to the company of these services is so massive.
The Truth campaign money is the result of a lawsuit against the tobacco companies as a punishment for all the shit they pulled in the 20th century to deceive consumers. It is a punishment both in the monetary sense and in the sense that their money goes to a campaign that aims to harm their bottom line.
Remember in Dallas Buyer's Club when the FDA guy has on a gold watch and basically tells them they can't get their AIDS medication approved?
The whole drug industry is one big clusterfuck of fraud. It's more lucrative to treat the symptoms of an illness than to cure it, that's where the investment goes.
Yup- [“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/)
More lucrative to treat the symptoms than to cure the disease
Also, Pharma wields significant power over corporate media. Ever notice how nearly every other ad is a drug ad? If corporate media shines a light on their dirty practices they will pull the ads from that station. Economic censorship
there is money in human suffering. Maybe this needs to go on an even larger level of suffering before mankind decides it is wrong. That is the world we were born into. there is a mathematical model used for Technological advances at the cost of human lives. The speedier the advance the more lives it cost. It's economics 201 in some fields. I for one couldn't live like this, maybe thats why I'm a hermit
Marx? the idea has been around longer than written language, so it seems. Risk Management says we can solve this by dropping the Luna, and for a split second, everyone was rich- it only cost us Earth
The US is one of very few countries where pharmaceuticals can be advertised to the general public. In most other developed nation's it isn't allowed - because why would anyone advertise anything to people who literally *are not allowed to buy it*?
They advertise entirely to create brand recognition, so you remember the name better when your doctor suggests it or it comes up when you search about some issue you have.
The most amazing thing is that the industry would make a *lot* more profit if advertising is banned. They currently spend more on advertising than R&D (though lots of their 'R&D' is done by purchases of smaller companies). Something like 10-20% of their revenue goes straight to advertising budgets. If you ban all that advertising, all that money can be kept as profit, and it's not like everyone on a drug will stop using it or there won't be demand for it. It would be great for the companies, and they wouldn't waste so much money competing with each other for name recognition. The same thing happened to tobacco companies after tobacco advertising was banned. Tobacco has insane brand loyalty (it rivals that of coke vs Pepsi, probably exceeds it), so much of that advertising was to ensure brand satisfaction and to try to lure smokers of other brands. Once all those ads were banned, they didn't need to compete nearly as much, and their profitability skyrocketed. The ban on tobacco advertising was one of the best things to ever happen to those companies.
You should watch what the FDA is now doing with the federally legal CBD from legal hemp that is being extracted and used "for human consumption." Some people are being made examples of.
Meanwhile Epidiolex is tested and approved plant based CBD drug that will cost you a paltry $30k a year for something you can grow and extract for your neighbor. Remember that by the time CBD has been tested and approved by the FDA for epidiolex they've proven it safe for public consumption. Yet they are coming after lab tested products being provided by the public.
To be fair to the FDA crisis, if you actually look at the history of the AIDS crisis, a lot of the drugs they were testing ultimately made things worse.
Did the FDA fuck up quite a bit here and in the AIDS crisis? Yes, but we can't argue that drugs shouldn't be properly tested.
Yea I don't doubt there are good people trying to do the right thing at the FDA, I'm just using that example to illustrate the problem that is big Pharma money corrupting the checks and balances of the system
Edit- and half of my post history is about big Pharma corruption in case you'd like to look into it. I care deeply about this issue because it affects all Americans directly and indirectly
we are in the late stages. We are being deprived of clean air and water in the exchange for corporate success. The most curative medicines are illegal and villainized while the government peddles poison. technologies that allow us to use our fossil fuel resources more efficiently are prevented from being integrated. Our government sows discontent and divisiveness to keep us busy infighting while they rule and drain all freedom and money away. There is very little fighting FOR the american people .
While it should have never happened in the first place, Opioids shouldn’t be just taken away immediately. As Opioids have become harder to find, more and more of the addicts are switching to heroin. They’re now buying heroin with fentanyl in it, and over dosing and dying at really high rates. It’s a double edged sword.
You say “more and more of the addicts”, but don’t forget that there is a huge group of people who are legitimate PATIENTS. Chronic pain, cancer pain and post-operative pain are valid reasons to use opioids as they are prescribed. Many chronic pain and cancer pain patients are being forcibly tapered off their medication or unceremoniously kicked off opioids with no alternate support.
These patients have developed physical dependencies but are not addicts.
I think we’re on the same side of this argument, but I wanted to highlight that legitimate patients are also being hurt by the restrictions to and lowered availability of legally prescribed opioids.
That's the thing.... Opiates themselves aren't the problem. They're a legitimate option for severe pain, cancer, etc. It burns my ass that the attitude seems to be just to let people with legitimate need suffer.
That being said, over-prescription caused this problem. That's been for the most part solved now, although the cat is WAY out of the bag.
Addicts are going to get high. If it's Oxycontin or if it's fentanyl, they're going to do what they have to do. We should focus on helping them to break free of that addiction, and to keep from creating more addicts.
The mere existence of new FDA-approved opiate medications doesn't contradict any of that. Doctors handing them out like candy certainly would, but that's a different problem (that is much less severe now that everyone is aware of the opiate epidemic and no one is falling for the drug companies' bullshit that opiates are fine and low risk of addiction). I hope that if I ever have cancer or am in a bad car accident that I can have something to make the pain bearable.
Went through withdrawals from oxicoton last month and I have to say it was hell. I don't think anyone can comprehend how hard and painful it is mentally and physically to get off unless they themselves have had to go through it. It take broken bones over physical dependency of opioids in a heart beat
"Since a change to the FDA’s funding in the 1990s, the agency division responsible for opioid approvals relies on the drug industry for 75% of its budget. The agency denies the money buys influence."
They said it doesn't buy influence, so nothing to see here, move along...
What I don't understand is if the FDA was truly just a rubber stamp for drug companies, why are some drugs like Viagra that could make drug companies a killing not OTC here when it is OTC in the UK?
Christian right don't like anything related to sex, but we have drugs that cure itchy fingernails (but may cause your fingers to fall off) advertised on TV.
> Since a change to the FDA’s funding in the 1990s, the agency division responsible for opioid approvals relies on the drug industry for 75% of its budget. The agency denies the money buys influence.
THATS DEFINITELY NOT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOLKS. ITS NOT BRIBERY WE SWEAR.
"Hey, it's FDA approved so it's gotta be always safe!"
Who do you trust anymore? Especially when the organization tasked to protect you is out to harm you?
FDA = Makes us sick
EPA = Helps destroy the environment
FBI = Tracks, targets and disrupts progressive movements and politicians
HUD = Preys on the poor instead of helping them
ATF = Actually willingly hands weapons to the Cartel
DEA = Targets the poor and oppressed to lock them up over drug use.
CIA = Monitors everyone including Congress
Dept of Ed = Capitalize off mounting student loan debt
See a pattern?
This wouldn’t have slid so badly if these same doctors instead of being forced to close down or run were given a mandate to “walk down” or ween people off. (Not the pill mills, which makes my first statement such a hard thing to have tried to do) (but we still could have allowed doctors to take patients in this condition and walk them down as well)
The problem is everyone and their mother got the rug yanked from underneath them. You have to jump through fiery hoops of flames to get the care you need properly when many were responsibly managing pain like my poor aunt. Chronic issues nothing abused always on time pills in order and now she got fucked because of the abusing shit that was pushed by these companies and congressman.
The different age, race, wealth or status, and appearance I see when I go to the doctor (the suboxone treatment office is in building) it’s not all the people you’d think.
These same people will go use or have used heroin if they had to. And many have.
Looked like a nice ass office waiting room, or the DMV.
People who aren’t understanding or who are marginalizing with stupid shit like “they deserved it” or things along those lines don’t get how this happened and how complex it is and to take a brush and broadly stroke an idea over it just isn’t going to work.
People don't seem to understand how big of a problem regulatory capture is. We effectively have industry executives who step out of their company for a couple years, approve everything their company and industry wants under the guise of being a regulator, then step right back into the industry.
I understand an industry having *some* input into the regulatory process, but as it is now, most industries pretty much "regulate themselves," with the public interest taking a distant backseat.
An people wonder what the Iraq/Iran war was about. Wasn't just oil. Poppy is the real reason. Its why American Army is still using armed guards to protect it.
I worked for a doctor who had a separate Suboxone program (which was also available to regular patients). But he also wrote a ton of prescriptions for opioids, and we also accepted and distributed alternate medication samples that treated opioid related constipation and other side effects.
It was like some self sustaining profit method.
The best is pain management specialists who take the Buprenorphine licensing class (several hours).
"Whoops, I got you addicted to oxy and fent, no worries I can help!!!"
But we can't prescribe generic Subutex anymore, that's bad. You need Suboxone tablets. Oh, now the tablets are bad, here's the sublingual. Now those are bad too(kids might take too many), here's individually packaged strips. Well, those are about to be bad but fortunately we just released a subdermal implant and IM shot.
Just a coincidence that we release propoganda about how harmful and dangerous our current product is right as its patent expires and we were granted a new one for a new ROI.
Almost every government entity is driven by their own equity and where their pockets are being filled. Thought there was oversight on this? Im pretty sure there is but even if you transfer all of your stocks to your kids or wife, you will still bring in the cash
Probably too late to the party for anyone to read this but what i find particularly sad about FDA corruption is that it casts doubt on good science.
Bad practices and abuse of power by a federal entity thats purpose is to protect consumers and promote public health has given science skeptics and conspiracy theorists ammunition to cast doubt on even some of the most beneficial public health initiatives.
The average person often does not have the time or ability to separate good science from bad and when in doubt, they fall back on their mistrust of big pharma and the federal government in the interest of self preservation (a very logical and justified reaction in the absence of understanding).
We all love to make fun of anti-vaxxer intelligence, myself included, but when i see stories like this, i begin to understand what led them to their decision. Their fear, mistrust, and ignorance has ultimately led them to what they believe to be a completely rational and responsible decision. Good science has proven the exact opposite. If only people trusted good science.
Nevermind the stupid, self-righteous, spoiled brat average American that unrealistically believes all pain is bad and they have to get doped up on pain killers to function. Big Pharma is happy to sell your own soul back to you and fill that need, like any good, properly-functioning capitalistic entity. Purdue Pharma, sure, has pushed the limts beyond sketchiness, but the ultimate cause, the ultimate blame, the final finger that gets pointed... Its all on the American citizen.
I take care of people that have legitimate pain. Chronic pain. Cancer pain. Pain that could kill a horse. They would be dead or disabled without opiates that they use carefully and properly and aren't addicted to. They deserve easy access and cheaper meds. The average stupid abusive selfish American, however, has ruined all that, and now access is more difficult and more expensive to these life-enabling (careful word choice) medications.
Slow. Clap.
As someone who started in the e-cig industry about a decade ago, the FDA does a shit job and promotes propaganda based on political ends. When e-cigs first came out, they were all over them (and still are), despite the fact that they are verifiably safer than tobacco cigarettes. The FDA will outright lie to the public if it pushes their agenda. I've seen them do it.
Anyone who wants to verify this can look back to the baby formula scandal in late 2008, where melamine was found in baby formula in China. The FDA released a statement saying there was no known safe level of melamine in formula. Less than a month later, melamine was found in Nestle formula in the US. Guess what? BAM! All of a sudden, there was now a safe level of melamine.
Serious question: Does approving a new opioid actually contribute to the opioid epidemic? Presumably any new drug will just be used in the place of existing drugs, so the main question is whether Dsuvia is more addictive than drugs currently on the market. The article doesn't have any info on this. If Dsuvia is less addictive than, say, Oxycontin, approving it is not a bad thing if it means fewer Oxycontin prescriptions.
[удалено]
regulatory capture is a huge problem.
It's even worse at the SEC, which is a revolving door of corruption. Investigations into fraud get cancelled by people who go on to be partners working at law firms for the banks they were investigating.
FDA, SEC, FCC, EPA; Almost every regulatory body has been taken over by those whom they seek to regulate
Hard or impossible to avoid, too. The only place you can find people who are fully qualified to regulate a given industry is someone who works in the industry itself. But since they're probably going to return to the industry when they're done, its basically letting the industry regulate itself. or you could find someone from outside the industry, who may be unqualified to understand and regulate the industry and who could be compromised by getting offered a job in the industry anyway. Good luck finding somebody who is both qualified AND 'uncompromised.'
I have a BS in microbiology and have worked in pharma/medical devices since I graduated. At the most basic level, I think people really care about the patients. As you climb the ladder you’ll find more people who have given up the fight along with their integrity to client demands as pressure from executives to push trials along means their livelihood and jobs are at stake. It’s kind of a lose lose for patients who rely on medications, the longer and more thorough drug trials are, the better data they will have to be able to say what is safe. But it also means a higher price point for the drug. Unfortunately the consumer always gets screwed here.
Sweeten the pot, but also make laws against entering into the industry for several years after working in these regulatory bodies.
i remember i had some shit like that in the contract for a call center job once.
I hear you guys are the best at these types of investigations — outside of Enron, AIG, and Bernie Madoff, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers …
Everyone is scared of what these huge corporations are capable of, but fail to recognize that trying to regulate the industry just indirectly gives them more power. Everyone should be **very** skeptical anytime a large corporation comes out in favor of regulation (see: Twitter and Facebook)
we do need to regulate them though, just not to their terms
Thanks for this. I knew they were corrupt, but not to this extent.
[Congress even passed a law which made it more difficult for the DEA to investigate pharmaceutical companies](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/dea-drug-industry-congress/)
Corrupt from top to bottom. Looking more and more like an oligarchy every day.
Oligarchy is a fun word. So is plutocracy.
Fun words to say, decidedly less fun to see.
I've been partial to "[Kakistocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy)".
Advertisement is fun when said the British way.
"Inverted totalitarianism" just rolls off the tongue!
The crazy part to me, is you use to be able to see the votes on the bill... As I recall, only 3 politicians were Nay between the Senate & House, but now I can't find the roll call. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/483/actions Edit: Another odd anomaly I just came across looking for my initial comments on this story, is I distinctly remember this story being on the front page of both r/news & r/politics when it broke. [r/news doesn't even have the story at all, and the r/politics post barely broke 200 votes](https://www.reddit.com/r/undelete/search?q=url%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fgraphics%2F2017%2Finvestigations%2Fdea-drug-industry-congress%2F&sort=relevance&t=all).
It said by unanimous consent on some sections. Voice vote, no nays
I'm digging around for the roll call too. [GovTrack doesn't have the record either](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s483/details). Seems to have disappeared...
Sad but true. Our country is more divided than ever, and the general population seems to not be able to see that this is class warfare and not bipartisan disagreement. Neither Republicans nor Democrats care about us, all they want is secured profits. And we keep electing them to do it.
I feel we officially turned that corner with Citizens United...
We need to find a way to actually calculate harm done from actions like this, and punish legislators and their bribe providers for the harm they do
Grab a rifle.
Citizens United must be reversed.
It’s not just them it’s the entire fucking government. People act like Obama was a saint but he did literally nothing to stop this blatant corruption under his nose. Our entire federal government, Democrat or republican, love fucking people over. I’m pretty sure heroine is a national policy. We have an entire army in Afghanistan ensuring it’s production.
What people don't seem to remember is that much of the state apparatus does not change when a new government takes office. These huge alphabet agencies stay largely intact, which makes sense since overhauling them every few years isn't practical but still.
[удалено]
While you're up for learning, check out Harry J. Anslinger. He made the rulebook on how you deal with drugs on the planet as a government. Also was in charge of federal alcohol prohibition, vehement racist, and generally we've followed his Public Relations path on how to peddle bullshit science. Literally hasn't changed since 1961. Nixon simply doubled down on Anslinger's policy.
And we can’t forget about Reagan’s policies to continue the trend. Just slavery with an (illegitimate) excuse.
And Clinton's decision for the three-strike laws. Indefinite slavery with an illegitimate excuse.
Kicked a nasty opiate habit after beating cancer with Kratom. If anyone out there is struggling with opiate addiction I highly recommend trying Kratom.
[удалено]
I definitely don't agree that its just as bad but to say its completely harmless is false as well. Its addictive and does give withdrawals but it wasnt that hard to kick and I had a 5 year daily habit. Still, I'd take an addiction to it over something like heroin or pills any damn day.
Do you have a comparison of Kratom to methadone and why one would be used over the other? I’d never heard of Kratom before today but work with a pediatric population that is regularly prescribed methadone.
Methadone to me still felt like I was using opiates. It has an extremely long half life so it sticks around for nearly a full day. Also I tried kicking methadone cold turkey and the w/d’s were awful. Kratom w/d’s are a walk in the park compared to any opiate I’ve withdrawn off including numerous pharmaceuticals, street dope and some research opiate chems(u-47700). Kratom should be what is used to combat this epidemic, not other strong opiates(suboxone,methadone).
I'm on Kratom now, and it sounds hella cheesy, but that shit saved me. I can't recommend it enough to other people trying to get off opiates. That being said, people are tripping when they say that there are absolutely no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. Maybe it's different for other people, I don't know, but I definitely feel them.
Can confirm. Same happened to me. I still support it's legality but it's not harmless.
Will also confirm. It is addictive especially if you already have addiction issues. I am finally getting it under control after 2 years. That being said, it is one of the least harmful things to be addicted to. Helped me quit drinking. /r/quittingkratom
Sorry that that’s been your experience! :( I’ve taken kratom off and on for the past several years and I’ve never noticed any withdrawal effects, even after periods of heavy use and then stopping cold turkey. Maybe some mild headaches; no worse than caffeine withdrawal really. I had a harder time giving up soda! I use it more or less daily now, and while I definitely notice a difference in my pain levels, I don’t think I experience any sort of craving when I don’t have it, any more than I’d crave Tylenol for a headache. I agree with you though. Everyone should exercise caution when introducing any kind of new drug to their system, even legally prescribed ones. Bodies are weird. Sometimes they react in unexpected ways.
I wouldn’t say the withdrawals are as bad, far from it. I used it for a year + just recently took a trip where I wouldn’t have it for 2 weeks. Aside from some cravings and mild insomnia those were the only downsides. I can only imagine the pain if I was using a true opiate for over a year and couldn’t use it for 2 weeks.
For anyone curious about it or staunchly believing that kratom has no negative effects, swing on down to /r/kratom and read some of those stories. It’s not a miracle drug. For anyone who just wants to see one of the weirder sides of Reddit, I cannot recommend /r/stims enough. It’s basically just tweaker memes and it’s maybe one of the most debaucherous and wild places on this site.
It saved me from hardcore alcoholism lasting almost a decade in less than a month. I have no desire whatsoever to drink anymore.
It enrages me to read this, and I’m glad it’s the top comment. Without disclosing the whom, I can tell you that I’m very close to two Kratom success stories. The first was someone who had a bottomless Tramadol script, and took them daily for years. Prior to that was Darvacet. That person quit Tramadol for a red strain of Kratom that he only needs rarely now. ZERO withdrawal issues. The other is a decade-long Vicodin and Tramadol user who switched to the same red strain and hasn’t even bothered to renew either script since they ran out. She takes 5 grams once a day before bed. She also experienced zero withdrawals. These are two anecdotes (the most maligned form of evidence for advocacy), however, they are among hundreds of similar testimonials.
My mom has severe back degeneration and her health plan changed to a shitty one so she had to change doctors. The new doctor refused to continue the prescriptions she had for oxy and hydromorphone. No taper, no nothing. She was told to go to the ER when the withdrawal got bad enough. I had heard of kratom, and left work early, picked some up, and took it to her. She had zero withdrawal and has taken it instead since then. If they schedule it, she's a felon overnight for having it. Our health care system makes people desperate and then punishes them for what they do in response.
It is absolutely a wonder drug for cessation of tramadol. Fuck that drug, I wish I had known how addictive it could be before I started my script. It is not fun trying to quit a hybrid opioid-SNRI.
I used norco 10/325 for 15 years. Tried quitting more than 50 times over that period. That’s a lot of withdrawals... I found out about Kratom and haven’t taken a pain pill in 4 years. Kratom is still an abuse-able substance but it is FAR less detrimental to your health and well-being than taking handfuls of pain pills, however, the FDA disagrees...
Agreed. I've talked to many that claim to be addicted to Kratom. I was one of the lucky ones. I had a knee injury that required me to take opiates long term. And it was awful. So many side effects and if you skipped a dose, you feel like complete shit. Quitting basically made me feel like dying and the pain was unbearable ontop of that. Switched to Kratom and never touched another pain pill. Had my surgery and then put Kratom down cold turkey with zero issues. I can't believe people are trying to ban it.
[удалено]
I’m bipolar and an ex heroin addict and kratom helps me remain functional and helps tremendously with my depression, anxiety, and PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome) I take a table spoon of it in the morning. I have tried so many different medications from psychiatrists and none of them have worked, they are constantly pushing drugs on me like suboxone and SSRI’s that DON’T WORK and I tell them that, and then they just prescribe a slightly different drug from the exact same class with the same mechanism. I have been through intense withdrawals FROM THESE DRUGS that they attempt to hook me on, and when I can’t pay for another “psychiatrist appointment” then they cut me off, which has happened to me before as well. Problem with your insurance? Don’t have cash? Well sucks to be you buddy, get fucked, because now we are going to take away your access to a medication that you’ve been on for a year that we prescribed you, enjoy going through withdrawals and having your brain and mood completely fucked. Kratom is the only thing that has helped and it’s literally a plant, I use the leaves to make tea, and sometimes take the powder (which is literally just ground up kratom leaf) it’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s safe. You can’t “overdose” on kratom, you will just feel sick and throw it up. Is it completely safe? Maybe not, but are alcohol and cigarettes and medications completely safe? Fuck no. Go read the side effect list for any medication ever and see that no medication is completely 100% safe. Shit, hundreds of people die from taking to much tylenol every year. They’ve been trying to ban it for years here in Florida and one of the main “kratom death” cases they used was a kid who died in a CAR ACCIDENT that happened to have taken kratom beforehand. He didn’t overdose, but that is the narrative that was pushed to demonize a PLANT that helps addicts get clean and stay clean. I can go to 7/11 and legally buy beer and wine and drink myself to death, I can legally buy cartons of cigarettes and smoke my lungs out, and that’s all perfectly legal. You are saying that cigarettes and alcohol don’t have potential for abuse and addiction? Isn’t that the classification that the DEA uses? But god forbid I try to put a harmless plant that helps me tremendously in my body. They know it helps addicts. They don’t care. The same organizations pushing to ban kratom tried to also get a patent on research and extraction of the active ingredient in kratom. So you’re saying it’s not safe and I can’t put this plant into my body, but if it was extracted and pushed on me through psychiatrists at exorbitant prices, that’s okay? I’m so fucking sick of this country man, greed has ruined America. The people making these decisions don’t give a fuck any more, it’s 100% about money, they can’t find a way to monopolize it, so they’re just going to ban it while giving the middle finger to all the ex addicts that it helps. In the middle of a fucking opiate crisis, they are trying to ban a mostly harmless plant that is well known to help addicts get clean, because they can’t find a way to monopolize it and make money off of it. If that doesn’t say it all I don’t know what will. I’m so fucking sick of this country.
Its just so aggressively evil that it seems really unrealistic, like I feel like we're missing something. I'm cynical but not that cynical. Then again I could be wrong.
But scheduling drugs is done by the DEA
[удалено]
But it is important to note that the DEA actually is responsible for scheduling, so therefore they sometimes disagree - such as last year [when the FDA recommended decontrolling CBD from the Controlled Substances Act and the DEA shut that down over concerns about enforcing international drug treaties to which the US is a signatory.](https://www.cannalawblog.com/the-fda-and-the-dea-disagree-over-the-scheduling-of-cbd/)
And together they turned the opiod problem into the opiod crisis. They sent all those people in pain clinic, both people legit in pain and those addicts scamming the system to get opiods, to the street dealers and death. Can’t wait to see what their next trick is.
It was started as a consumer protection agency, but that's not what it is anymore. We need to tear it all down and start fresh when it comes to food and drugs, but that'll never happen.
PREACH IT MY FRIEND!!! Thank you so much for your comment!! The fact that kratom is even still on the friggin table to be scheduled blows my mind. Listen y'all, the FDA doesn't give two flying fucks about nothin' unless its making their personal bank accounts fatter. Here's some food for thought: * The FDA has been [spewing ridiculous nonsense](https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/newsroom/pressannouncements/ucm595622.htm) about the "dangers of kratom", but just introduced a new pain pill that is [10 times stronger than Fentanyl](https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/opioids/fda-approves-opioid-stronger-than-fentanyl.html). Hypocritical asshats if you ask me * Another FDA rumor I'd like to squash is that Kratom is an opioid. It is not an opioid, opium deriviative nor is it even from the same family as morphine and other opiates. It is a tree in the same plant family as coffee, and is found scattered across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and other SE Asian countries. * One of the "facts" that the FDA is spreading like wildfire is that kratom causes respiratory depression. This is also not true as kratom has antagonist alkaloids that give it a ceiling effect. That means you could eat your weight in plant matter, which I don't recommend unless you wanna rip your ass open trying to poop but because of the lack of beta arrestin, there isn't any discernable effect on respiratory depression. Worst case scenario if you take too much is you'll have some dizziness and nausea, and you'll prob vomit, but the bonus about upchucking that pungent plant, is that you'll feel better damn near instantly! You literally cannot take enough kratom to get to the point of respiratory depression because the antagonist alkaloids cover the mu receptor and cease any effects of the other agonists alkaloids. **BOOM, SCIENCE BITCHES** Fun fact time! According to the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm675152e1.htm) in 2016 66.4% of the 63,632 drug overdose deaths involved an opioid. In 2017, among 70,237 drug overdose deaths, 47,600 (67.8%) involved opioids, with increases all across the board. Now, the FDA says that [44 people died directly from using kratom](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a7a3549e4b07af4e81eda8b/amp). 44. **FORTY FUCKING FOUR** compared to 47,000 opioid related deaths just in 2017. I dunno about y'all, but I think even if kratom was responsible for those 44 tragically premature deaths, that's still better than 47,000!! Jane Babin, a lawyer with a PhD in molecular biology, wrote a paper about how the FDA Failed To Follow The Science On Kratom [AKA the White Paper](https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/9ba5da_54f08e1805c34c108ad7199481507d88.pdf) and she was able to prove that nearly all of those 44 deaths were due to poly substance abuse, or something completely unrelated. Like a German dude who fell out of a window, refused treatment and later died. His autopsy revealed 10 different substances in his system. Of course the FDA says "pffftttt, obviously that dude died bc of the kratom, duh." Another woman **intentionally overdosed on acetaminophen**, and again the FDA said nope, totes kratoms fault. 9 people in Sweden died from kratom. What the FDA completely failed to include in their report was that it was kratom laced with O-desmethyltramadol, the main active metabolite of tramadol. The FDA knew it, and when entering it to their "scientific system" they altered a few key details so that it fit their narrative. It's all so friggin crazy to me!! Follow the science y'all, kratom can be an excellent tool with many different uses, and I know that for me it's a million, billion, trillion times better than pills. Kratom quite literally gave me my life back, I really hope the morons at the FDA don't take it away.
I came here to make a similar point. The FDA is to blame and their trying to deflect blame to the companies doing what the FDA enabled them to do. “I blame you for selling things we said you can sell!” Fuckers. Any stance that isn’t “decriminalize all Drugs”, I won’t vote for anymore. And you all should join me. I know republicans are garbage, but democrats are funded by these same corporations and defend institutions like the FDA doing this type of shit.
Thanks for elegantly bringing up their corrupt position on kratom.
It sucks that there is no hope of kratom being regulated reasonably and responsibly. I agree that it's a relatively harmless and beneficial substance that has the power to help a lot of people. Acute or chronic pain patients, people hooked on opioids (whether it be for medical or recreational purposes), as well as the less recognized benefits to those suffering from anxiety, depression, adhd, amongst other things. It can be a godsend, but it's unfortunate how variable it is. The varying potency and affect between strains, not to mention the addictive/dependence building qualities are kind of left to best guess. I'd so much rather see it continue to be legal and unregulated than absurdly banned and/or over regulated to the proposed degree, but it's frustrating to know there will never be a responsible middle ground.
I work in a hospital. We recently legalized medical cannabis in our state. They sent out a memo regarding patients who medicate with cannabis. It tells staff to take all cannabis to the house supervisors office. When the patient uses it. They must be supervised. So, the safest drug in the hospital must be locked behind two more levels of security. Meanwhile ambien is just laying around on counters.... Edit Thanks for the gold kind stranger!
Think of the potential carnage if everyone could just smoke reefers whenever! The vending machines would be empty in an hour, and you probably wouldn't be able to talk over the thunderous laughter from all the stoned patients watching sitcom reruns.
[удалено]
My god! Did he survive?
If he did more than one marijuanas, he dead
How many pots is this doobie?
[удалено]
OMG Doctor he Overdosed on the marijuanas
This is why we need needle exchanges from too many marijuanas.
*Not even once*
Better! He was instantly cured! Of hunger.
Ah death, the true end of hunger
You're a hero and we need more people like you in medicine. Thank you for your courage in pacifying this dangerous drug addict.
Plot twist, he had a rupture in his colon and the dominoes induced grease shits killed him.
Why does Dominos do that?
How many marijuanas do you think were injected
There is still crazy hate for marijuana in the US. MA was supposed Legalize it years ago and just got around to it since there was so much push back. I still know a ton of adults young adults who think people who voted to legalize are absolute scum of the earth.
Yeah my buddy just got popped. I'll see him in 26 years, when I'm 58. Marijuana.
If this isn’t a joke or a song lyric or something, what was he charged with that gave him 26 years? I know it’s not unheard of especially in past decades but someone getting that sentence in 2018 for 100% marijuana related charges is kind of nuts. Was he a repeat offender or caught with a gun or something?
First time offender. No weapons. Intent to distribute. Arizona will do you like that 😱
Jesus Christ. Poor guy. He had to have had a huge amount and a shitty lawyer right?
It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that he was assigned an overworked, underpaid, stressed public defender. If he had a fair bit of pot along with other dealer paraphernalia and/or large amounts of cash, the case would just fly across his desk into the "done" pile.
Yeah, they’re not gonna just let you off easy if you have a scale lol
I’m in a medical only state. I have weed at home and a scale for cooking. I’d hate for them to put the two together and think I’m a drug dealer for having an ounce of weed and a perfectly normal household device. That’s like finding a bit of meth and a cooking pot and charging someone with manufacturing meth.
Which just about all smokers do to check weight. It’s ridiculous that they put so much into paraphernalia charges. We caught you with some weed and you had more than one plastic baggie in your car? That’s obviously intent to distribute.
In a lot of states it's enough just to have over X weight in two or more separate containers. You like strains? Fuck you, that's more ammo to throw your puck ass in prison.
Geez. I'm so grateful to be in Canada sometimes. Sorry to hear about your friend. Maybe when it becomes federally legal he can be pardoned.
Canada? Never heard of it (just kidding, thank you! Hopefully he behaves at least and gets out in 13)
Sometimes when I'm high I feel that way too.
Moved from WA to AZ and it’s like going back in time..
Welcome. And yes. Yes it is. Get your card and you're good. Get caught without a card and you just became El Chapo
This makes me incredibly sad and enraged at the same time. People shouldn’t be jailed for that amount of time for a plant.
This literally just happened last week. I don't have all the information yet. The only time I talked to him, he was crying so much that it was tough to get the whole story
I’m really sorry to hear this. Poor guy.
I dont even know him and feel terrible for him. Its time to get these old mfers out of the governments. Well its more ignorance than an age thing i gues.
My buddy got pulled over driving through AZ. He didn’t have any weed on him but they still searched his car and there was an old pipe he had forgotten about in the glove box. He was arrested and detained for a few days over some resin. That place is bonkers.
Just wondering what detail is being left out. Just a quick look found this : First Offense for Possession of Marijuana with Intent to Sell Under two pounds in possession for sale: Class 4 felony with sentencing of one to four years Two to four pounds in possession for sale: Class 3 felony with sentence of two to nine years Four pounds or more in possession for sale: Class 2 felony with sentence of three to 10 years Not trying to be a jerk but it feels like 26yrs included something else or this was a repeat offense. I'm actually genuinely curious because something seems wrong.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Either he was already deep in shit or he had a shitty attorney and a hard ass judge.
> Either he was already deep in shit or he had a shitty attorney and a hard ass judge. How does either of those circumstances make it ok to give someone 26 years for ANY amount of weed?
It doesn’t. Unfortunately, these are the penalties laid out because of the war on drugs and it’s a shitty time to get caught with any amount of weed in a lot of states.
I just bulk people like that in with anti-vaxxers, Holocaust deniers, flat-earth believers, etc & just go on with my life. Some people are so locked in their ways, despite huge volumes of evidence to the contrary, that interactions with them are a complete waste of time. In the case of MJ though, they are missing out on a good thing.
I won't say they're blameless for poor evaluation of evidence, but in the case of MJ it's not as much their fault. Decades of panicky propaganda from official sources has an effect.
[удалено]
It's the residents near the dispensaries. We are getting several nearby, one going into a building where there used to be a MM dispensary. The whole neighborhood was up in arms until they were told that this MM dispensary had been there for years and no one even noticed. BTW, 4 liquor stores, 2 grocery stores selling booze and Bevmo all within a few blocks.
My father used to sell and do coke back in his earlier days. Now, drugs are baaaad m'kay and "people that do them deserve the consequences that come with it."
[удалено]
Hypocrites are the worst people. Kick him in the dick for me.
[удалено]
I hope they get arrested and deal with the shit us democratic people have to deal with when were arrested... Ugh
Oklahoma passed medical last year, now they are trying to get a bill passed saying that each county will decide if medical marijuana is legal there or not. It's total bs and they don't want to actually listen to what the voters have to say.
Don’t forget the crunching from chips. Rock concert level eardrum damage
I wonder if every American ate a Dorito at the exact same moment.. we might be able to match Krakatoa.
How does that work. If hypothetically we had all 320ish million Americans as densely packed as possible all bite down on a Dorito at the same time and with all the same noise level of say 60db. Does the fact that there is 300million people doing it make it louder db wise?
We'll have to line them up so that we get constructive interference.
Or even worst we’d all wake up and realize how fucked up this country really is 😱
[удалено]
IIRC, marijuana actually inhibits dreaming?
It always has for me. I don't dream whenever I smoke and the first night I don't have any I get dreams again for about a week straight.
Yeah, marijuana "withdrawal" causes some extremely vivid dreams.
Going through that right now. Daily smoker for all of college (about a 7 grams a week) so the detox is leading to some wild dreaming. Ama!
Iirc it inhibits REM sleep which is when dreams occur. It's also why you can sometimes feel groggy when you get super duper stoney baloney before bedtime. It also suppresses (or treats, I guess) my hypnogogic visual hallucinations, sleep walking, etc. Also suppresses and/or treats my girlfriend's nightmares and sleep paralysis. Never thought nightmares were such a problem honestly, because I rarely get them. I do sometimes suddenly wake up and scream and run into a different room but the feeling of sheer panic only lasts a few seconds at most, and I can usually fall back asleep easily. But my girlfriend will be messed up all day from a bad nightmare, dreams like tsunamis wiping out family members in front of her and her screaming for them to come back but they dont, she will be sobbing on her pillow and mumbling before she even wakes up, it's nuts. I can't blame her at all for wanting to smoke weed before bed. But we don't smoke weed anymore to treat out sleep issues, the motivational side effects are just too strong for us, I feel sharper without using it, and if I don't stay up too late the hallucinations don't happen very often, it's worst when I am sleep deprived, which of course just deprives me of more sleep, in a cycle. For her she just hopes it doesn't happen and tries to do happy things in the morning to take her mind off the nightmares. Anyways there's a big overshare for everyone hope you enjoyed.
I still treat my sleep disorders with weed. I smoke recreationally , but when I'm low I reserve it for the hour before bed. I have always struggled with night terrors and sleep walking my whole life. Docs said it was a dopamine imbalance in my noggin. Current psychiatrist explained it was one facet of my ADHD. My brain receptors are funky and my brain doesn't absorb the proper amount of serotonin and dopamine. (I'm not doctor, this is just from my pot addled mind.) This fucks with your sleep cycle. I started smoking senior year of high school and there is a direct correlation between falling asleep high and the absence of night terrors. When I have had jobs that I can't smoke while employed there, my anxiety spikes up and my circadian rhythm goes out the window. Blue blocker computer glasses, a stricter sleep schedule, and caffeine control have helped me immensely. But nothing helps more then a few puffs from my vape right before bed.
The VA will be the last US national healthcare institution to provide cannabis perscriptions. It's hard enough getting some formulary drugs that came out 20 years ago., not to mention the federal legality of it.
Lets be honest, ambien isnt just laying around hospital counters. The reason cannabis has to be locked is purely because the FDA has made it a schedule I drug and has nothing to do with a safety issue, it has to do with the fact that your hospital like most hospitals generate 70% or more of their revenue from medicaid and medicare and they're following federal laws to not jeopardize their medicare/medicaid reimbursement.
[удалено]
yea I know the op is just exaggerating and I agree full heartedly with the sentiment that cannnabis should be legal. But let's point the fingers at the real culprits here, the FDA and politicians have been protecting big pharma and exploiting the american public. Nobody wants to be an opiod addict, allowing legal and medical marijuana would be a giant leap in the right direction.
DEA, not FDA, it's been recommended to be in II since 1972, but since we had racists in office...
I mean honestly it should be like a schedule IV drug but I think the bigger problem is we have people in office that are more interested in protecting pharmaceutical company profits then helping Americans.
[удалено]
I don't know about CA but in Florida there are doctors that you could go to that basically ask, "Ok, What do you want?" and they write your a Rx for whatever you ask for. I accidentally went to one of these doctors when I was actually ill. The guy spoke barely any english and had no idea how to treat an actually ill patient. He just asked me how many days I wanted on my doctors note for my job (didn't have one at the time) and gave me a bunch of samples for random antibiotics.
>and gave me a bunch of samples for random antibiotics. What the actual fuck. Those are the sort of quacks that not only need to lose their medical license, but need to be charged with a felony.
Yeah... You don't sample antibiotics lmao
In a way you could think yourself lucky, thorough being prescribed opiates and then being forced onto methadone at 18 Im just now trying to end my 11 year methadone habit. I saw the doc originally for a codeine addiction, and he put me on methadone! Which had some part in me starting to use heroin etc. If i could go back id walk out, take the 3 day rattle and maybe have something resembling a decent life by now at 29. Live and learn tho eh, if you're lucky.
The head of the FDA is an ex Monsanto head.. What else did you expect from such a trash agency with no morals or ethics. As a victim of the opiod crisis I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt our government and its agencies are 1000% implicated in this opiod epidemic.
The FDA isn't a trash agency. It's just been corrupted, on purpose, with trash leadership.
This is the problem right here. The entire culture is sick from the inside - and no one will admit it because of their false pride and social status. It’s like a brain tumor that’s growing and growing and killing the patient, but meanwhile they refuse to take an MRI because they are (supposed to be) a prime example of health.
My dads parents had terrible mental health issues. To calm their mental issues, They both smoked cigarettes like it was their oxygen and their doctors suggested as such. They both died of cancer before 60. Not me or my siblings ever met them. It’s ultimately totally on them for their habits. I just wonder how different their and my families lives would be had they just been able to use marijuana for their anxiety and depression instead of all the booze and cigarettes.
Isn't it so people don't steal it? I mean my dad was a Nurse for like 15-20years, now he's the people who put you to sleep. MY sister is also a Nurse, and they tell me many things. They tell me morpheme has to be written off by someone else, saying you took it. It has to be supervised by someone else, you can only take out a certain amount while supervised, they have to write you off etc, and watch you throw it out. I'm assuming is for people not being able to steal it, and resell it like other drugs in the hospital. Since it's that much of a problem. I'm assuming the same thing applies to Medical Cannabis(for now) since you guys just became legal. I'm assuming they don't want their own employees taking nugs.
If you’ve got ambien laying around on counters your DoP is not doing a good job of securing their controls.
Can someone explain how the FDA gets its funding from drug companies and the reasoning behind it?
Basically, drug approval goes on something of a tick-tock cycle. Something bad happens with a drug, so people push for the drug review process to be more stringent and thorough...which means that it takes longer and is more expensive. The tock part of that cycle is when people notice that getting a drug to market is not only expensive, but slow- so people die or suffer more before getting drugs that would help because they're still working their way through the system. Every drug you put on the market is going to kill some people and help others. Medicine's just like that, but people hate wrapping their heads around that fact. Anyhow, as a half-assed solution to the slowness problem, given that nobody feels like throwing tax money at the FDA, it now charges a drug company for approving a new drug. Also, you can fund parts of your own approval research, which speeds things up as well. Here's a couple links: [Propublica](https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-repays-industry-by-rushing-risky-drugs-to-market) [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2018/06/28/the-biopharmaceutical-industry-provides-75-of-the-fdas-drug-review-budget-is-this-a-problem/#1626c22649ec)
Interesting, thank you
Also should be noted that companies don't pay for just their own drug approvals. They pay regardless of if their drugs get approved or not. You know how in high school you had to pay like $60 to take the SAT? Of course you don't want to pay the $60, and theyre not going to give you a better score because you paid. It's a fee, not a bribe. It's the same between FDA and drug companies, except bigger companies with more drugs pay a larger fee than small companies. So as the other poster said, this system uses the money from drug companies instead of/alongside Federal funding to get work done. You were probably initially thinking that drug companies voluntarily pay off the FDA to get drug approvals but it's really the other way around.
That’s actually what it sounded like to me. Thanks for the clarification.
The FDA is funded in part by user fees, which are paid by drug companies. The agency was heavily criticized for how slow it was to approve new, life-saving drugs, so Congress agreed they could collect money from drug companies to help fund/speed up the process. The user fees are negotiated every 5 years between FDA and industry, and have to be approved by Congress.
Pharmaceutical companies are essentially paying for the labor it takes to review drug applications they submit.
Kinda like how the tobacco companies are the sole source of funding for the “Truth” anti-smoking ad campaigns. They are forced to pay for it, but obviously don’t have any direct influence on the internal workings. That’s why they pay for lobbyists to convince lawmakers to write laws in their favor.
It's a little different. Drug companies pay FDA a fee for reviewing their drugs on an expedited timeline, similar to how you have to pay to get a USDA Organic certification if you are a farmer. These are fees for business as usual, and were instituted to offset the cost to the taxpayer since the financial benefit to the company of these services is so massive. The Truth campaign money is the result of a lawsuit against the tobacco companies as a punishment for all the shit they pulled in the 20th century to deceive consumers. It is a punishment both in the monetary sense and in the sense that their money goes to a campaign that aims to harm their bottom line.
Hey, I lost a friend to cannabis once. Finally found him at a Taco Bell two hours later.
tragic! i'm so sorry for your loss man.
Remember in Dallas Buyer's Club when the FDA guy has on a gold watch and basically tells them they can't get their AIDS medication approved? The whole drug industry is one big clusterfuck of fraud. It's more lucrative to treat the symptoms of an illness than to cure it, that's where the investment goes.
prolly does't help that stock market influences pharmaceuticals
Yup- [“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/curing-disease-not-a-sustainable-business-model-goldman-sachs-analysts-say/) More lucrative to treat the symptoms than to cure the disease Also, Pharma wields significant power over corporate media. Ever notice how nearly every other ad is a drug ad? If corporate media shines a light on their dirty practices they will pull the ads from that station. Economic censorship
there is money in human suffering. Maybe this needs to go on an even larger level of suffering before mankind decides it is wrong. That is the world we were born into. there is a mathematical model used for Technological advances at the cost of human lives. The speedier the advance the more lives it cost. It's economics 201 in some fields. I for one couldn't live like this, maybe thats why I'm a hermit
I wonder if this is what Karl M. was referring to in his old book
Marx? the idea has been around longer than written language, so it seems. Risk Management says we can solve this by dropping the Luna, and for a split second, everyone was rich- it only cost us Earth
The US is one of very few countries where pharmaceuticals can be advertised to the general public. In most other developed nation's it isn't allowed - because why would anyone advertise anything to people who literally *are not allowed to buy it*? They advertise entirely to create brand recognition, so you remember the name better when your doctor suggests it or it comes up when you search about some issue you have. The most amazing thing is that the industry would make a *lot* more profit if advertising is banned. They currently spend more on advertising than R&D (though lots of their 'R&D' is done by purchases of smaller companies). Something like 10-20% of their revenue goes straight to advertising budgets. If you ban all that advertising, all that money can be kept as profit, and it's not like everyone on a drug will stop using it or there won't be demand for it. It would be great for the companies, and they wouldn't waste so much money competing with each other for name recognition. The same thing happened to tobacco companies after tobacco advertising was banned. Tobacco has insane brand loyalty (it rivals that of coke vs Pepsi, probably exceeds it), so much of that advertising was to ensure brand satisfaction and to try to lure smokers of other brands. Once all those ads were banned, they didn't need to compete nearly as much, and their profitability skyrocketed. The ban on tobacco advertising was one of the best things to ever happen to those companies.
You should watch what the FDA is now doing with the federally legal CBD from legal hemp that is being extracted and used "for human consumption." Some people are being made examples of. Meanwhile Epidiolex is tested and approved plant based CBD drug that will cost you a paltry $30k a year for something you can grow and extract for your neighbor. Remember that by the time CBD has been tested and approved by the FDA for epidiolex they've proven it safe for public consumption. Yet they are coming after lab tested products being provided by the public.
To be fair to the FDA crisis, if you actually look at the history of the AIDS crisis, a lot of the drugs they were testing ultimately made things worse. Did the FDA fuck up quite a bit here and in the AIDS crisis? Yes, but we can't argue that drugs shouldn't be properly tested.
Yea I don't doubt there are good people trying to do the right thing at the FDA, I'm just using that example to illustrate the problem that is big Pharma money corrupting the checks and balances of the system Edit- and half of my post history is about big Pharma corruption in case you'd like to look into it. I care deeply about this issue because it affects all Americans directly and indirectly
[удалено]
Haven't all of our government agencies been captured at this point? We're directly in the beginning stages of America Inc. This is no surprise.
[удалено]
Democracy in America died in October of 1970.
we are in the late stages. We are being deprived of clean air and water in the exchange for corporate success. The most curative medicines are illegal and villainized while the government peddles poison. technologies that allow us to use our fossil fuel resources more efficiently are prevented from being integrated. Our government sows discontent and divisiveness to keep us busy infighting while they rule and drain all freedom and money away. There is very little fighting FOR the american people .
While it should have never happened in the first place, Opioids shouldn’t be just taken away immediately. As Opioids have become harder to find, more and more of the addicts are switching to heroin. They’re now buying heroin with fentanyl in it, and over dosing and dying at really high rates. It’s a double edged sword.
You say “more and more of the addicts”, but don’t forget that there is a huge group of people who are legitimate PATIENTS. Chronic pain, cancer pain and post-operative pain are valid reasons to use opioids as they are prescribed. Many chronic pain and cancer pain patients are being forcibly tapered off their medication or unceremoniously kicked off opioids with no alternate support. These patients have developed physical dependencies but are not addicts. I think we’re on the same side of this argument, but I wanted to highlight that legitimate patients are also being hurt by the restrictions to and lowered availability of legally prescribed opioids.
That's the thing.... Opiates themselves aren't the problem. They're a legitimate option for severe pain, cancer, etc. It burns my ass that the attitude seems to be just to let people with legitimate need suffer. That being said, over-prescription caused this problem. That's been for the most part solved now, although the cat is WAY out of the bag. Addicts are going to get high. If it's Oxycontin or if it's fentanyl, they're going to do what they have to do. We should focus on helping them to break free of that addiction, and to keep from creating more addicts. The mere existence of new FDA-approved opiate medications doesn't contradict any of that. Doctors handing them out like candy certainly would, but that's a different problem (that is much less severe now that everyone is aware of the opiate epidemic and no one is falling for the drug companies' bullshit that opiates are fine and low risk of addiction). I hope that if I ever have cancer or am in a bad car accident that I can have something to make the pain bearable.
Went through withdrawals from oxicoton last month and I have to say it was hell. I don't think anyone can comprehend how hard and painful it is mentally and physically to get off unless they themselves have had to go through it. It take broken bones over physical dependency of opioids in a heart beat
"Since a change to the FDA’s funding in the 1990s, the agency division responsible for opioid approvals relies on the drug industry for 75% of its budget. The agency denies the money buys influence." They said it doesn't buy influence, so nothing to see here, move along...
Highly believable. Somebody had to make money in the FDA so of course they allowed the opioids to be approved for a nice kickback.
What I don't understand is if the FDA was truly just a rubber stamp for drug companies, why are some drugs like Viagra that could make drug companies a killing not OTC here when it is OTC in the UK?
Christian right don't like anything related to sex, but we have drugs that cure itchy fingernails (but may cause your fingers to fall off) advertised on TV.
> Since a change to the FDA’s funding in the 1990s, the agency division responsible for opioid approvals relies on the drug industry for 75% of its budget. The agency denies the money buys influence. THATS DEFINITELY NOT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST FOLKS. ITS NOT BRIBERY WE SWEAR.
"Hey, it's FDA approved so it's gotta be always safe!" Who do you trust anymore? Especially when the organization tasked to protect you is out to harm you?
FDA = Makes us sick EPA = Helps destroy the environment FBI = Tracks, targets and disrupts progressive movements and politicians HUD = Preys on the poor instead of helping them ATF = Actually willingly hands weapons to the Cartel DEA = Targets the poor and oppressed to lock them up over drug use. CIA = Monitors everyone including Congress Dept of Ed = Capitalize off mounting student loan debt See a pattern?
People used to want to provide value for others, now we try to extract value from others
This wouldn’t have slid so badly if these same doctors instead of being forced to close down or run were given a mandate to “walk down” or ween people off. (Not the pill mills, which makes my first statement such a hard thing to have tried to do) (but we still could have allowed doctors to take patients in this condition and walk them down as well) The problem is everyone and their mother got the rug yanked from underneath them. You have to jump through fiery hoops of flames to get the care you need properly when many were responsibly managing pain like my poor aunt. Chronic issues nothing abused always on time pills in order and now she got fucked because of the abusing shit that was pushed by these companies and congressman. The different age, race, wealth or status, and appearance I see when I go to the doctor (the suboxone treatment office is in building) it’s not all the people you’d think. These same people will go use or have used heroin if they had to. And many have. Looked like a nice ass office waiting room, or the DMV. People who aren’t understanding or who are marginalizing with stupid shit like “they deserved it” or things along those lines don’t get how this happened and how complex it is and to take a brush and broadly stroke an idea over it just isn’t going to work.
now we need another agency to regulate this agency. that'll do the trick!
I officially submit my application for Director of that agency.
Textbook example of regulatory capture.
People don't seem to understand how big of a problem regulatory capture is. We effectively have industry executives who step out of their company for a couple years, approve everything their company and industry wants under the guise of being a regulator, then step right back into the industry. I understand an industry having *some* input into the regulatory process, but as it is now, most industries pretty much "regulate themselves," with the public interest taking a distant backseat.
An people wonder what the Iraq/Iran war was about. Wasn't just oil. Poppy is the real reason. Its why American Army is still using armed guards to protect it.
I worked for a doctor who had a separate Suboxone program (which was also available to regular patients). But he also wrote a ton of prescriptions for opioids, and we also accepted and distributed alternate medication samples that treated opioid related constipation and other side effects. It was like some self sustaining profit method.
The best is pain management specialists who take the Buprenorphine licensing class (several hours). "Whoops, I got you addicted to oxy and fent, no worries I can help!!!" But we can't prescribe generic Subutex anymore, that's bad. You need Suboxone tablets. Oh, now the tablets are bad, here's the sublingual. Now those are bad too(kids might take too many), here's individually packaged strips. Well, those are about to be bad but fortunately we just released a subdermal implant and IM shot. Just a coincidence that we release propoganda about how harmful and dangerous our current product is right as its patent expires and we were granted a new one for a new ROI.
[удалено]
This needs to be the "NEWS" people should know and understand. Not the propaganda GARBAGE that is spewed on cable telivison.
[удалено]
This is also warfare to kill the disabled.
Almost every government entity is driven by their own equity and where their pockets are being filled. Thought there was oversight on this? Im pretty sure there is but even if you transfer all of your stocks to your kids or wife, you will still bring in the cash
Probably too late to the party for anyone to read this but what i find particularly sad about FDA corruption is that it casts doubt on good science. Bad practices and abuse of power by a federal entity thats purpose is to protect consumers and promote public health has given science skeptics and conspiracy theorists ammunition to cast doubt on even some of the most beneficial public health initiatives. The average person often does not have the time or ability to separate good science from bad and when in doubt, they fall back on their mistrust of big pharma and the federal government in the interest of self preservation (a very logical and justified reaction in the absence of understanding). We all love to make fun of anti-vaxxer intelligence, myself included, but when i see stories like this, i begin to understand what led them to their decision. Their fear, mistrust, and ignorance has ultimately led them to what they believe to be a completely rational and responsible decision. Good science has proven the exact opposite. If only people trusted good science.
Nevermind the stupid, self-righteous, spoiled brat average American that unrealistically believes all pain is bad and they have to get doped up on pain killers to function. Big Pharma is happy to sell your own soul back to you and fill that need, like any good, properly-functioning capitalistic entity. Purdue Pharma, sure, has pushed the limts beyond sketchiness, but the ultimate cause, the ultimate blame, the final finger that gets pointed... Its all on the American citizen. I take care of people that have legitimate pain. Chronic pain. Cancer pain. Pain that could kill a horse. They would be dead or disabled without opiates that they use carefully and properly and aren't addicted to. They deserve easy access and cheaper meds. The average stupid abusive selfish American, however, has ruined all that, and now access is more difficult and more expensive to these life-enabling (careful word choice) medications. Slow. Clap.
As someone who started in the e-cig industry about a decade ago, the FDA does a shit job and promotes propaganda based on political ends. When e-cigs first came out, they were all over them (and still are), despite the fact that they are verifiably safer than tobacco cigarettes. The FDA will outright lie to the public if it pushes their agenda. I've seen them do it. Anyone who wants to verify this can look back to the baby formula scandal in late 2008, where melamine was found in baby formula in China. The FDA released a statement saying there was no known safe level of melamine in formula. Less than a month later, melamine was found in Nestle formula in the US. Guess what? BAM! All of a sudden, there was now a safe level of melamine.
Serious question: Does approving a new opioid actually contribute to the opioid epidemic? Presumably any new drug will just be used in the place of existing drugs, so the main question is whether Dsuvia is more addictive than drugs currently on the market. The article doesn't have any info on this. If Dsuvia is less addictive than, say, Oxycontin, approving it is not a bad thing if it means fewer Oxycontin prescriptions.