Por Drogoteca
The title I chose for this article might seem somewhat harsh – like busting a door down – but while it may be unpleasantly true, it’s necessary just the same. No possible effort should be spared at this point to alert the public to how they are being lied to and used — in the worst meaning of the word — as “cash cows” to be milked of their money.
Pharmaceuticals as public enemy number one
Through this website we have called out — time and time again — what BIG PHARMA is and what it does: a bunch of guys with plenty of money and no scruples who prefer to watch men, women, and children die and make millions in profits rather than ever lower their prices. If you don’t give them money, they don’t care about your wellbeing; don’t be stupid and think that they work for your health, because it’s not the case.
In this situation, where the patient (as well as the non-patient) is the target of Big Pharma’s voracious appetite — especially in its business dealings, which move millions upon millions of euros — we must begin to educate ourselves on topics which before were considered as restricted to doctors and pharmacists: our health and its remedies. Obviously, you can’t expect everyone to be able to figure out that “female viagra” is a complete rip-off that poses a real risk to the user’s health; or that the medication we’re giving children with the excuse of that great illness “created and invented for the masses,” namely ADHD, are exactly the same ones that lead to the imprisonment of adults who use them — not just correctly, but also freely and consciously; or that the new saviors in the fight against the “opioid epidemic” that come from the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, namely naloxone and naltrexone (as well as buprenorphine, albeit in a different way, since folks have already caught on to the economic rip-off), are in reality two old drugs that have proven ineffective, but which are now being “groomed” so that they can be presented en masse as a necessary resource in equally absurd quantities as opioids. They’ve managed to produce a citizenry with 2 million addicts (in the USA alone) and a prison population — even in private prisons — that is hooked on opioids in historically record numbers, with 15% of prisoners addicted. Brilliant.
Bravo. These above-board narcos at BIG PHARMA nailed it when it came to finding a captive clientele, and with the blessing of the state, whom they buy in the same way that, for example, Boiron bought a homeopathy chair at a medical school in order to burnish his image while said department prostituted its metaphorical ass for money, plain and simple. It’s all the fault of cash, which lubricates like hell…
What else can I say? If they’re the best, then they deserve recognition.
First, they managed to hook a good portion of the population (all the way from the elderly to the very young) on extremely powerful (hence highly ADDICTIVE) narcotics like morphine, fentanyl and other like substances, thereby ensuring a steady clientele; whether it was morally correct to do so obviously doesn’t matter in this story. Afterwards, when their criminal behavior led to deaths — not of junkies, but of common, decent citizens — they wrung their hands and even mumbled a “mea culpa” of sorts. But that was all a facade; they were preparing phase two. They found that their clients were beginning to die off, some falling asleep behind the wheel and others unexpectedly at home (because unlike these novice druggies, experienced drug users know what they are doing to a greater extent than these newbies who are “hooked on meds”), so they said that maybe they had gone overboard with the prescriptions and with the “stimulus they had imprinted on the market,” but that they were working on a rapid solution.
It should be remembered that once upon a time, one of the pharmaceutical industry’s grand “solutions” was to launch heroine as a non-addictive drug that made morphine addicts lose all interest in morphine. I don’t have to explain what happened next, do I?
“Stimulating the market” is a euphemism for “we’re going to use you like cattle until we squeeze all the life out of you, from childhood to old age,” and it works. In the USA and Canada, people will believe anything, which isn’t strange when you know that the media that feeds their reality belongs to the same folks that invest in these “pharmaceutical” big-shots. As morally scandalous as this seems, it is quickly forgotten from collective memory. The public doesn’t know what’s going on because the people who are stealing from them also act as their guides, this in an environment in which the public has — up to now — been deprived of any knowledge that would allow them to realize how much they are suffering and what is being done to them… to their children, their siblings, their parents… to everyone.
And now let’s go to the solution, a.k.a. the magic remedy: naltrexone. A drug from the 70s which has been used for decades and is anything but new. Naltrexone, in addition to naloxone, which they’ve been promoting for years. Why? As in everything: because it makes money. Right now, naloxone and naltrexone — the new kids on the block who are not all that new — are abused substances: abused by BIG PHARMA, who raise the price hundreds of times for no apparent reason other than economic interest.
Of course, this solution — which isn’t actually a solution — represents an incredible amount of revenue for the pharmaceutical industry, but this way they do it through a frontal assault on the public coffers, selling prodigious nations quantities of these opioids at prices that far surpass the largest profit margins of classic drug trafficking.
Look how they embellish it: “Not just for doctors: the antidote for opioid overdoses — naloxone — is now available to everyone.” That’s how the medical journal STAT clearly explained the re-release of naloxone, providing us with statistics such as how naloxone use (i.e. demand for the drug) has increased four-fold over the past decade, without mentioning the current status of the drug, acquisition of which is peaking. In Ohio they are even encouraging people to carry naloxone with them — to treat possible overdoses that they may encounter as they go about their daily lives — while both North Carolina and Pennsylvania now allow free acquisition of naloxone in pharmacies. Furthermore, North Carolina and New Mexico are supplying recently freed prisoners with naloxone due to the regrettably high frequency of overdoses in that population, especially in the 48 hours after release.
The original goal of BIG PHARMA’s lobby was to completely “penetrate, from a budget perspectvie” the police force, but now the focus has been broadened to include other professions, such as parking lot attendants, security guards, and other relevant members of society. Naloxone and training courses on how to use it are currently being provided by the same industry that produces the substance, the industry that takes money from the public coffers — money that has been paid in by everyone, the very same industry that has created a problem which they themselves qualify as an “epidemic” and which now needs a solution that — surprise, surprise — will be brought to us by BIG PHARMA.
Does this really not seem suspicious to anyone else?
The latest assault on our pocketbooks has now begun with this “new” medication — sold as a panacea for use in a saturated penitentiary system — which, as we have already said, is just good, old naltrexone, not some kind of magical solution. Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist which blocks receptors, making consumption of opioids useless, as they cease having an effect on the user. In our country, this drug has been and continues to be used in “drug free” treatments where it is preferable for the patient to know that even if he consumes, it’s not going to have any effect on him. It can be bought in the pharmacy, often with no prescription. I say this because technically a pharmacy can’t give you anything without a prescription, but due to its lack of psychoactive effects (or better still, its anti-psychoactive ones) and the fact that it is impossible to abuse, a pharmacist will just give it to you. I obtained a box full of the stuff for less than 80 euros. Naltrexone is cheap and accessible; it always has been. And it’s consumed orally (naloxone isn’t active via the oral route, thus the use of naltrexone, even if the former is the antagonist most often used in overdoses, either through injections or nebulizer through the nose). Now, the pharmaceutical industry has worked its magic and, from a molecule that presented basically no benefits, as is the case of naloxone, they’ve created a “new presentation” that allows them to charge WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT for old substances — the patent is no longer just the compound and its chemistry — and that’s how they game the system. In this case, they’ve created a deep intramuscular injection — a long-ass needle which, via a shot in your rear, impregnates your body with naloxone for a month, rendering the effect of heroine, fentanyl, or morphine useless. That said, drug cocktails like cocaine and barbiturates, or alcohol and amphetamines will continue to have an effect. So, if you really want to drug yourself, you still can, just with not one particular drug.
Naltrexone and similar substances only counter opioids and opiates, but they have an enormous “potential customer base,” namely released convicts who have been given a few shots of naloxone in case they have an overdose the day of their release. This is actually more common than you think, since they come out like caged bulls with zero tolerance because they haven’t taken opioids in months. Thus, the desire to get high coupled with the maximum effect for the minimum dose tends to push them to the other side. With naltrexone and its “reformulated” duration of one month — along with the unjustifiable price (more like highway robbery) of 1000 dollars — folks will now be able to experience a longer blockage against opioids. Of course, once they’ve received the injection, they wont be able to reverse the effect.
As a user of opioids and opiates, I am thankful for the existence of something that can save my life. But I can’t help but ask myself if the number of users really justifies such a savage increase in the dispensing of these medications. Even with laws that allow the average citizen, with no explanation needed, to purchase said medications, I think — as a user — that it would be better to change the laws which classify drug use as a criminal act (in Spain it is considered a right, although restricted in public spaces), thereby ending black market drug sales once and for all.
Because even if it sounds like a bad conspiracy theory, I have to bow to the evidence: the black market and pharmacology complement each other and need each other to justify many of their actions. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how W-18 could have possibly hit the street, or about the latest deaths in Canada of people who were synthesizing carfentanyl, with all the dangers it poses. And the evidence keeps bringing me back to BIG PHARMA. They’re the ones with the capability — you don’t do something like this in a garage lab with 4 beakers — as well as the ones who alway come out ahead. It’s perhaps a bit too daring to say that they synthesized and marketed these drugs in order to increase public hysteria about the opioid epidemic and its death toll, so I’ll simply put it out there as one of my nutty ideas (but there it is).
Now, when I see that they’re going to sell naltrexone at 1000 dollars an injection under the trade name “Vivitrol,” I can’t help but think, “Holy crap, they’re fucking geniuses!” What narco would be capable of doing this and all on the government’s tab while publicly claiming to be the savior of society in the war on drugs? I wouldn’t be surprised if they received the congressional medal of honor back in the US or something like that, especially if they make a political donation, like the makers of fentanyl do. BIG PHARMA is the one that sets the gold standard for aiming high, not narcos like Pablo Escobar or El Chapo Guzmán.
They’ve built a prison around our entire society and we watch in disbelief as our basic rights are violated, remaining unaware of what’s actually happening or who the perpetrator is and who the victim.
To get back to the title of this article, we have to think long and hard about who’s gambling with our health.