Insys Therapeutics, the company who makes insane profits from a drug behind one of the worst overdose epidemics in the nation’s history, fentanyl, has donated $500,000 to a campaign opposing marijuana legalization in the US state of Arizona.
In a glaring display of hypocrisy, the maker of the drug Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray, claims that marijuana is dangerous because it could hurt children.
(Check out this compilation video (the quality is a little poor) which portrays the plant as have no uses beyond simply getting high.)
Why, exactly, is the maker of a highly addictive and deadly drug attempting to thwart the legalization of an amazingly beneficial plant? They want that market for themselves.
According to investor filings examined by the Intercept, the company is scared of losing profits if the state stops kidnapping, killing, and caging people for marijuana.
According to the report by the Intercept, Insys is currently developing a product called the Dronabinol Oral Solution, a drug that uses a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to alleviate chemotherapy-caused nausea and vomiting. In an early filing related to the dronabinol drug, assessing market concerns and competition, Insys filed a disclosure statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating plainly that legal marijuana is a direct threat to their product line:
Legalization of marijuana or non-synthetic cannabinoids in the United States could significantly limit the commercial success of any dronabinol product candidate. … If marijuana or non-synthetic cannabinoids were legalized in the United States, the market for dronabinol product sales would likely be significantly reduced and our ability to generate revenue and our business prospects would be materially adversely affected.
In the filings, the company goes on to note how the government-created monopoly is, in fact, necessary for the survival of their synthetic form of THC, noting that dronabinol is “one of a limited number of FDA-approved synthetic cannabinoids in the United States” and “therefore in the United States, dronabinol products do not have to compete with natural cannabis or non-synthetic cannabinoids.”
To expose their corruption even further, the company also concedes that studies illustrate the benefits of natural cannabis over synthetic dronabinol. However, they simply don’t want the competition, which is why they’ve labelled cannabis as a competitive threat.
In addition, literature has been published arguing the benefits of natural cannabis, or marijuana, over dronabinol, and there are a number of states that have already enacted laws legalizing medicinal and recreational marijuana.
According to a study that looked at 17 states with medical cannabis laws in place, researchers “found that the use of prescription drugs for which marijuana could serve as a clinical alternative fell significantly, once a medical marijuana law was implemented.”
Prescriptions fell dramatically for opioid painkillers, with 1,826 fewer doses being prescribed per year by the typical physician in a medical cannabis state. Amazingly, the trend also applied to prescriptions for depression, seizure, nausea and anxiety.
This information has companies like Insys on the defensive as illustrated in the statements above. Insys isn’t just leaning on Uncle Sam to use their force to kindap, cage, and kill their competition — they are paying doctors to prescribe their deadly and highly addictive pain meds.
In February, former Insys executive Natalie Reed Perhacs, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud including engaging in kickback schemes in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama (Southern Division).
Only a few months later, two more execs were arrested for paying doctors to prescribe their drug.
This pay to play practice led to doctors writing nearly 250 million opioid prescriptions in 2013 – enough to provide every American adult with a bottle of pills, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 2 million Americans today are addicted to prescription opioid painkillers; more than 14,000 died from prescription opioid overdoses in 2014.
This Big Pharma-created mass addiciton, coupled with a government crackdown on prescription opioids has led us into perhaps the worst overdose epidemic in U.S. history as millions of prescription drug addicts turn to heroin ironically cut with fentanyl.
Nothing highlights the hypocrisy, immorality, and sheer idiocy of the drug war quite like marijuana prohibition. Here we have a medicine that kills cancer cells, saves the lives of countless epileptic children, heals broken bones, relieves pain, treats PTSD, is not dangerous, and exhibits a variety of other incredible benefits – yet the state will kill you over it.
All of this violence, denial of medication, and violation of rights is little more than the state doing the bidding of its corporate masters.
In their statement issued last week, Insys claimed they oppose cannabis legalization “because it fails to protect the safety of Arizona’s citizens, and particularly its children.”
If they actually cared about the children, however, they wouldn’t be advocating for state-sponsored violence against their parents for treating their pain with a beneficial plant.
Please share this article with your friends and family to let them know how Big Pharma in bed with government is stifling scientific advancement and ruining lives.
