And Marijuana Remains Illegal

[kpete]

And Marijuana Remains Illegal

by John Cole

Sweet jeebus:

Pfizer: The Drug Giant That Makes Bank from Drugs That Can Kill You
To say that Pfizer has been accused of wrongdoing is like saying BP had an oil spill.

During one week in June Pfizer 1) agreed to pull its 10-year-old leukemia drug Mylotarg from the market because it caused more, not less patient deaths 2) Suspended pediatric trials of Geodon two months after the FDA said children were being overdosed 3) Suspended trials of tanezumab, an osteoarthritis pain drug, because patients got worse not better, some needing joint replacements (pattern, anyone?) 4) Was investigated by the House for off-label marketing of kidney transplant drug Rapamune and targeting African-Americans 5) Saw a researcher who helped established its Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica as effective pain meds, Scott S Reuben, MD, trotted off to prison for research fraud 6) was sued by Blue Cross Blue Shield to recoup money it overpaid for Bextra and other drugs 7) received a letter from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) requesting its whistleblower policy and 8) had its appeal to end lawsuits by Nigerian families who accuse it of illegal trials of the antibiotic Trovan in which 11 children died, rejected by the Supreme Court. And how was your week?

http://www.alternet.org/story/147467/pfizer%3A_the_drug_giant_that_makes_bank_from_drugs_that_can_kill_you/

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/07/10/and-marijuana-remains-illegal/

[asdjrocky]

1. Yep.

Cannabis is more effective than aspirin and safer than Ritalin.

If you really want to know why it's illegal, think Herst, 1937, and his famous paper pulp machine. Oh, and of course you can thank racism, it's the trigger to almost everything bad in America.

[Oregone]

3. "Cannabis is more effective than aspirin"

Damn straight. Incredible pain & inflammation drug in small doses, with no worries about negative side-effects or addictions.

[asdjrocky]

5. And no one has ever died. nt

[Riftaxe]

10. not even by

direct consequence of impaired judgment from marijuana....dude?

[asdjrocky]

11. Show me a link and I'll believe it.

Dude.

[Froward69]

15. while imparment vary...

texting drivers are 800 times more accident prone than sober...
cell users 400 times
Drunk = 200 times
Yet sober drivers are 1/3 more likely than stoned drivers to cause an accident...

Stoned drivers drive more slowly.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Oh but don't you know? Big Pharma can do no wrong!

We are so fucked up it's not funny.


Damn.


Recommended.

[Warpy]

9. Who stacked the FDA with bible beaters and corporate hacks for 8 years?

Remember, we have just gone through a period of the laxest regulatory enforcement since the turn of the last century. Stupid didn't want any industry regulated, especially the ones he favored like oil and drugs.

Some outfits seem to have taken full advantage of it. Others, not so much.

As for a promising drug turning sour in large clinical trials, that happens more often than not. There's really nothing unusual there. People who sign up to be guinea pigs know the risks. They're usually not responding to older drugs so they have little to lose.

[femrap]

4. And I bet the Liquor Lobby

has a lot to say about making pot legal.

Hell, we can't even have hemp...we gotta have petrochemicals/plastics instead.

I f*cking hate corporations.

[Octafish]

6. Gee. Next thing you know, some liberal will tell you Big Pharma helped Saddam develop WMDs.

[Tsiyu]

7. Only the BigTime drug dealers are protected by the Feds

The Feds got such a racket going.

They are like the Mafia protecting the Pharm co's, who develop designer drugs so that eventually every single human on earth has to take something by prescription, no matter how safe.

That's called economic "growth" - no matter how many people die - and the Feds will protect it like the Mob.

But the dude growing a safe, effective plant - with medicinal properties he needs to utilize - on his back porch has to go to prison. That's called "criminal" even if no one is harmed, and he will see his life destroyed.

Great system!

[XOKCowboy]

8. I want to gag everytime I hear "Ask your doctor about _____" in a commercial

Only in America are pharm companies allowed to advertise prescription drugs. How much does it add to the cost of those drugs when Pfizer, et al spend hundreds of millions of dollars hawking them on TV and in USA Today?

Get money out of politics now. Public financing of all campaigns and if you give a pol a dollar it's a freaking BRIBE!

[Canuckistanian]

17. Do Americans tell their doctors which drugs they want?

I wouldn't dare to second-guess MY doctor if I needed a prescription for something serious.

Doctors spend a decade in training alone - they're professionals, licensed by the state to practice medicine.

Can I over-rule their best choice of drug merely because of what I saw on a TV commercial?

[XOKCowboy]

18. I'm sure that they do.. Americans are profoundly affected by what they see on TV

I'm like you. I trust my doctor to prescribe what he thinks is best due to his years of experience and schooling. Unfortunately the drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars feting doctors (and hospital administrators and purchasing agents) to lavish dinners, vacations and cruises to promote their drugs.

I say ban all prescription drug advertising like elsewhere in the sane world.

[JNelson6563]

12. +100 to OP and most of the comments!

:toast:

[Mnemosyne]

13. KnR... n/t

[gateley]

14. If the pharmaceuticals could make money off of it, it'd be legal. But then they'd

tweak it so they could patent it, (kind of like Monsanto and Cargill did to stevia) thereby destroying all that is good about it in its natural state.

It's all about the money. Always. Every fucking time.

[Goldstein1984]

16. Pfizer can't make a lot of money from pot.

It really isn't any more complicated than follow the money.

Pot is too easy to cultivate.