In America in the 1960s was a man who was convinced that there was something frightening hidden under the surface of the new modern suburbs. Behind what looked like a confident individualism was rising up throughout America there were really hidden fears eating away at people from inside. There were feelings of anxiety, loneliness and emptiness, and he was convinced he could make a lot of money out of these feelings: he was called Arthur Sackler … Valium: he offered it to the doctors as an extraordinary new way to treat these inner anxieties, and he said it wasn’t dangerous or addictive. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head III: Money Changes Everything, BBC iplayer 2021
Betty Ford’s admission began to have a dramatic effect. In its wake stories began to pour out [post Betty Ford] of people all across America who were also addicted to Valium. It seemed that there was a private hidden world of anxiety behind the public faces that affected millions of people. But Arthur Sackler who in the 1960s had promoted Valium as beneficial and non-addictive was unrepentant. And a company that he and his two brothers had started was about to develop a new drug: a synthetic form of opium called Oxycontin, and that was going to deal with the next wave of anxiety that would hit America. ibid.
Millions had become addicted to opioids and yet no-one in power had come to rescue them. But the liberals couldn’t face this because they too had no idea how to solve those problems. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? *****
It’s estimated that 15% of South Africans have a drug addiction. Stacey Dooley: The Cannabis Smugglers, BBC 2015
In every area of life throughout Britain we’ve lived with a highly conspicuous creature, a being that is sociable with well-defined habits and quite simple needs. Timeshift: The Smoking Years, BBC 2012
American industrialist James Albert Bonsack invented the first cigarette rolling machine. The date was 1880. Smoking would never be the same again. ibid.
Women started to challenge conventions. ibid.
Bernays’ research suggested that the cigarette was a symbol of male power and of the penis. ibid.
Over 80% of British troops returned home from the war as smokers. ibid.
Lennox Johnson who was conducting his own research into smoking – as early as the 1920s he was speculating on the likely long-term health effects smokers were exposing themselves to. ibid.
He had also devised a nicotine replacement therapy. ibid.
Within two years of starting their research Doll & Hill discovered there was a clear link between smoking and lung cancer. ibid.
Smokers displayed a remarkable reluctance to accept the science. ibid.
The tobacco lobby quickly found ways to counter the findings. ibid.
Cigarettes were also seen as essential fashion accessories. ibid.
More than half the British population smoked. ibid.
The smoker today is a diminished, anguished, exhausted creature. ibid.
Thus begins a life-long drug addiction. Goering’s Secret, Yesterday 2015
Charles Parker junior was born in 1920 and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. Ken Burns, Jazz: The Gift 1940-1942, PBS 2001
Parker began to drink, to use marijuana, then Benzedrine dissolved in cups of black coffee that allowed him to play without sleep night after night. ibid.
Charlie Parker was seventeen and already hooked on heroin. ibid.
The unofficial queen of 52nd Street was Billie Holiday ... In 1941 she married a some-time marijuana dealer named Jimmy Monroe. And began smoking opium. Ken Burns, Jazz: The Gift 1943-1945
There were an estimated twelve million peasants addicted to opium. Jeremy Paxman, Empire IV: Making a Fortune, BBC 2012
Since 2000, more than 500,000 Americans have died of opioid overdoses. Millions of Americans have become addicted. Every 25 minutes a baby is born with opioid withdrawal. The US government estimates that the cost of opioid abuse is over $1 trillion. We call this ‘the opioid crisis’. But a crisis is something that just ‘happens’. What if we discovered that the opioid crisis was caused by businesses seeking to profit from pain? What if behind the crisis there was a spectacular crime? Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century I ***** Sky Documentaries 2021
No American family has profited more from controlled substances, from Valium and Oxycontin, than the Sacklers. ibid.
In the 1960s Sackler became incredibly rich by expanding the market for addictive tranquillizers. ibid.
Controlled-release Oxycodone, or Oxycontin, would be the drug that triggered what we call the ‘opioid crisis.’ ibid.
Johnson & Johnson also genetically altered the nature of the plant to create a super-poppy … Soon 74,000 acres of Tasmania were devoted to opium. ibid.
Blinn was taking the equivalent of 200 hits of heroin a day. He kept the prescription bottle for 20 years because he felt something was not right. ibid.
A nationwide criminal conspiracy that included Fraud, Pills Mills, doctors trading drugs for sex, false statements to Congress, and attempts to target key officials of the Bush administration … The FDA was used to falsely and fraudulently market Oxycontin. ibid.
None of them would spend a day in prison. ibid.
Lifetree Pain Clinic prescription: 60 x Amitriptyline 50mg; 30 x Celexa 40mg; 224 x Oxycodone 30mg; 112 Percocet 10/325mg; 60 x Requip 1mg; 60 x Xanax 1mg; 60 x Zanaflex 4mg. ibid.
Starting in 2013, a powerful synthetic opioid surged in popularity: Fentanyl. It’s a 100 times more powerful than morphine. Rather than reckoning with its dangers, companies sold it as aggressively as drug cartels. But instead of gun-toting dealers on street corners, men and women in suits and lab coats pushed opioids and cash bonuses and power-point presentations at pain management jamborees. Flush with campaign cash from Big Pharma, Congress would look the other way. ibid.
‘40 people every day die from Prescription overdoses.’ Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century II ***** news
‘The opioid crisis started with prescriptions, prescriptions and patient care. This idea that we weren’t adequately treating pain. Drugs like Oxycontin … began to preach the gospel of the opioid … they developed new medical terms like pseudo-addiction … As you get stronger drugs, it’s more expensive. ibid. Joe Rannazzisi, insider whistleblower gives evidence
Fentanyl byproducts is killing a lot of people … It was a natural progression … Overdose deaths is under-reported, we know that for sure so we don’t know really how many people died. We started seeing massive amounts of death … prescriptions: 250 million. ibid.
An onslaught of pills, hundreds of thousands of deaths. Who is accountable? ibid. The Washington Post online article 20 July 2019
Some of America’s biggest pharmaceuticals were not only profiting from the opioid crisis, they may have been manufacturing it. ibid.
We have had many run-ins with the Sacklers lately. The crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Their man point of contention is that they did not ignore the opioid crisis single-handedly. Whether you believe that or don’t believe that, there is voluminous evidence the crisis began when Oxycontin hit the streets. Purdue [Pharma] led the charge. ibid. Bernstein, Washington Post
Generic versions … sending massive amounts of these drugs downstream because there were corrupt doctors all over the country. It became like the Wild West. This was a new drug cartel that was being established in the United States. But instead of coming in from a foreign country, they were drug dealers who were wearing suits and lab-coats. ibid.
A patient survey form. You say, I got back pain. The problem is that no-one ever saw the patient. As long as they have any kind of credit card they were fine. You’d have a doctor on the east coast, a patient and drug seeker on the west coast, the pharmacy was in the mid-west. It was just a trafficking organisation that was hiding behind the veil of the internet. ibid.
Broward County has more pill-mills (142) than McDonalds. ibid.
Superior Injury Centre 870-6370. ibid.
There was one store in particular that was known by drug dealers as the go-to: CVS Pharmacy. ibid.
In 2011 there was a crack-down by the DEA. Operation Pill Nation involved more than 500 law-enforcement officers resulting in seizures resulting in 7 vehicles, $19 million in cash and 105 arrests. ibid.
But the real problem wasn’t on the street. It was in the Executive Suites of pharmaceutical companies which had become addicted to the profits opioids could deliver. ibid.
Workers disciplined in Prozac mailings: At least one Lilly’s employee fired; seven face various other measures. ibid.
The product was Act-Tiv. It was a lolly-pop made of Fentanyl whose potency carried the enormous risk of overdose. ibid.
They start paying exorbitantly, a huge number of speaker programs, and they use the speaker program basically as a way of cover for the bribes they are paying. ibid. whistleblower
Clearly we’re breaking the law. ibid.
CVS Pharmacy: on the edge of a highway, so people would cruise in, get their drugs, and be out in no time at all. ibid.
I know they’re sick like me. Gotta be number one. ibid.
These changes are good to one way of thinking in the sense that they make it harder to buy and abuse pharmaceutical opioids. But what that does is it drives all these people who are already addicted on to the black market. ibid.
International drug cartels catered to those who had become addicted to prescription pills. As their need for narcotics increased and doctors were more reluctant to prescribe an increasing doses, users turned to heroin, and a synthetic opioid fifty times more powerful: Fentanyl. ibid.