Some Thoughts | Prohibition, Big Business, and Governmental Oversight

There is a man who was almost single-handedly responsible for shaping many of the drug proscriptions today (not to be confused with prescriptions, which doctors write). Although the reasons driving these proscriptions have changed, many of the current drug laws are derivatives of this person's ideas.

His name was Harry Anslinger, and he (along with the print news media) helped fuel a yellow journalism campaign to make cannabis illegal. He started the Federal Bureau of Narcotics three years before the 21st Amendment was ratified. They used racially-charged pejoratives to create tension, demonized jazz music, and distributed entirely false propaganda to make hemp illegal. This was done mostly on the premise that hemp was going to completely bankrupt the paper industry. William Randolph Hearst (CEO of Time, as well as a slew of other publications) helped fuel this campaign to keep his exposure to the timber (and thus, paper) industry protected and profitable. Popular Science did an article in 1937 that touted hemp as the nation's first "billion dollar crop," and that terrified the shit out of them!

In general, I think that marked the beginning of the USA's dangerous dance with fascism. By that, I mean that governmental interests started aligning with those of the businesses that it is supposed to regulate. When people read or hear the word fascism, they think Mussolini and Stalin, etc., and just assume that our country is very far removed from such ideals. After all, that is what we fought against in World War II.

Regardless, I think that the incentive structure of businesses in a free market are going to naturally be aligned with fascist ideals. That is what they lobby for--deregulation, such that they can make more money, and pay people less. That's just how businesses are. They want wider profit margins to satisfy their investors. Applying those ideals to healthcare leads to what we see happening to our healthcare system today--public health crises that end up costing everybody more in the long run. Aside from Covid-19, there is another public health crisis that has reached pandemic levels in the USA--I am talking, of course, about the opioid epidemic. I wrote this (https://beta.cent.co/+wgohfx) article a few weeks ago, detailing my thoughts on how we can improve and approach the disease of addiction with effective tools and perspectives to treat it.

On the whole, I feel that fascist business leanings have no place in a system charged with keeping people healthy. The simple reason is misaligned incentives. The United States is the only first world country whose politicians do not fight to lower healthcare costs. The onus is left on the citizens to pay whatever pharmaceutical companies decide for the drugs and services they provide.

If you tend to lean more toward the right politically, you might be wondering, "what's wrong with making profits? Why should there be a limit to what these companies can charge?" A number of things, actually, because these costs are coming out of everyone's wallets. If you have health insurance or paid hospital bills, I am speaking directly to you.

Healthcare for unfettered profits are a causal force in the exorbitant cost of healthcare in the USA. This is realized in the cost of insurance premiums and hospital visits. That's not to say that you can't go to the hospital and pay nothing for the visit. The hippocratic oath requires that ailing individuals be treated by any doctor who is able to do so. Just show up without an ID and give a false name. Or give them your ID, and don't pay the bill. People do it all the time, and all it affects is their credit. Because hospitals are for-profit institutions, the cost gets realized by the honest (and usually insured) people. This is a part of how insurance premiums go up all the time, and why hospitals charge jaw-dropping prices for their drugs and services (the other reason being profits). One night in the hospital can easily be enough to bankrupt a family in the USA. That is predatory; and I think it should be criminal.

Why is it that Canadian citizens (and tourists, too) can walk into a doctor's office or hospital for any ailment and pay absolutely nothing? Because they have universal healthcare! The USA, sadly, is the only first world country that doesn't have some form of universal healthcare. Yet, somehow, the USA spends nearly 20% of its GDP on it! Did you know that the USA is the only first world country whose politicians do not negotiate for lower healthcare prices on behalf of its citizens?

How could this be? Here are a few YouTube videos detailing how that happens. Although the video is about 10 years old, the practices of these companies have not changed. I strongly encourage you to watch these videos, if you are interested in defining the root cause of these issues. For, only by determining the causality can we propose a workable solution.

https://youtu.be/y3XlJB7J5-o

https://youtu.be/Ch5OuzB9L48

https://youtu.be/tAgWO2yq1k8

For those who don't have a half hour to listen to Gary Null speak, he goes on to detail the top 10 most prescribed drugs (as of 2009). Profit margins for some of these drugs are in the 100,000% to 500,000% range. Since the time that he testified, I know at least one of these drugs has been taken off the market because it was too dangerous to people's health. That drug is Celebrex, an NSAID that absolutely pillages people's internal organs. What does that tell you about the marketing practices of Big Pharma? What does that tell you about the incentive structure of a for-profit healthcare system?

Another reason society is still rife with prohibition is that many natural remedies to people's problems cannot be patented. Patents in the drug world have an expiration date. Once that patent expires, the pharmaceutical companies can no longer realize 500,000% profits on their chemicals, and the race is on to create a slightly different molecule to achieve the same purpose as those which preceded it. Derivatives of plants that grow in the ground can never achieve those profits, and it is in the best interests of the pharmaceutical companies to lobby to keep them illegal. In fact, I would argue that the above reasons contribute hugely to why these drugs remain illegal. That, and the War on Drugs, which has provided a lot of job security for employees of the criminal justice system.

Pharmaceutical companies are the champions of derivative work. That is how they stay in business, in the USA. They create a "new drug," that is similar to the ones already out there. Then, they get a patent on it. What does it cost? I am sure they have figured out exactly how to extract as much profit as possible from their new drugs, based on how many people would be eligible to take it, and how badly they would need it. We have come a long way from the days of Jonas Salk, who created the polio vaccine and distributed it for free, because people needed it.

So what do the pharmaceutical companies do to ensure they can keep raking in cash, hand-over-fist? They create slightly different derivatives of drugs that already exist, such that they can patent (and thus, profit from) them. Everybody wants to jump down Purdue Pharma's throat for the Oxycontin and opioid epidemic, but they were only taking a page out of another pharmaceutical company's book, from over 100 years ago. That company is Bayer, who created heroin. Oxycodone, however, is available in generic form, so the pharmaceutical companies have moved on—to fentanyl, and all of its potential derivatives.

Oversight, instead of being applied to regulations governing these pharmaceutical companies, has been misplaced. The FDA and DEA have decided that the doctors and their patients should be punished, and not the companies making these drugs. This, of course, is in lieu of reigning in the businesses who lobby for deregulation to make their system more fascist.

To sum this up, Big Pharma does not give a flying fuck about you, me, or anybody taking their chemicals. They care about one thing: profits. That is how free market, psychopathic principles work when applied to healthcare. Punitive, prohibitive policies do nothing to help people who are sick. That is putting healthcare outcomes in the hands of the criminal justice system, who likewise gives zero fucks about anything but exacting punishment for crimes. Self-medication with certain chemicals is a crime, in case anyone forgot that. Can you imagine if the criminal justice system were charged with treating cancer patients? I can hear it now: "Jim, you have cancer, you asshole. You smoked cigarettes for three decades and you need to be incarcerated for it." That sentiment is just as illogical as our current paradigm, where addicts are charged with crimes for self-medication.

Doctors, on the other hand, care very much about their patients. That's why they became doctors--to help people get well when they are ill. Outrage would be very well placed upon the system driving these idiotic and asinine policies. Compassion and understanding would be well placed upon the doctors and patients, who are both suffering as a result of the systemic toxicity surrounding them. #healthcare #covid19 #bigpharma #health #drugs

This article originally appeared on my Cent blog, at https://beta.cent.co/+27wqpa