Legal Opioids Have Killed Hundreds of Thousands As Big Pharma Bribes Politicians to Ignore It

Monday, March 19, 2018
By Paul Martin

As the opioid crisis continues, pharmaceutical companies continue to pay politicians to look the other way, and the federal government fails to push for legitimate solutions.

By Jack Burns
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
March 19, 2018

More than 200,000 Americans have died from prescription opioid overdoses since 1999 and as the epidemic continues, it raises serious questions about why the United States government has failed to stop it in the last 20 years. According to a recent report, many influential politicians are receiving incentives from drug manufacturers to, in essence, look the other way.

Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the maker of OxyContin, has contributed millions of dollars directly and countless more dollars indirectly to lawmakers to keep its drugs flying off pharmacy shelves. Rightly considered “blood money” by critics, the contributions are made in an effort to buy off state and federal legislators.

The Sackler family, the private owners of Purdue, have made billions off of a drug that has killed citizens both young and old alike—the sum total of whose deaths amount to the population size of a small metropolitan city. Yet nothing has been done to even slow the death rate attributed to opioids, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ response has been to push for more federal involvement in states that have attempted to allow solutions such as cannabis.

An investigative report from the Daily Caller revealed that Purdue has given $2.3 million to politicians to ensure that the drug pipeline for the “drug cartel” stays open, further enriching the Sackler family—and that is just what is traceable.

“Purdue and the Sacklers have disbursed $2.3 million to nearly 300 U.S. candidates and political organizations since 1996, and Congress, until recently, has done very little to combat the opioid epidemic, TheDCNF’s investigation found. The OxyContin-backed politicians often held leadership positions, chairmanships, or served on committees that have oversight of the pharmaceutical industry. Conversely, the Sacklers have never publicly donated to addiction rehabilitation centers, a previous DCNF investigation found.”

For those holding out hope that the federal government will do anything about the burgeoning crisis in opioid overdose deaths, the future does not look promising. While President Trump has claimed that he wants to “Make America Great Again” and he plans to “Drain the Swamp” of corrupt politicians, his administration has moved in the opposite direction, and appears to be solidifying the pharmaceutical industry’s hold on Washington.

“It’s blood money, literally,” Public Citizen’s Health Research Group founder and senior adviser Sidney Wolfe told TheDCNF. “It’s money earned off people’s lives being spent. This is dirty, bloody money.”

The Rest…HERE

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