By Matt Agorist
As the Free Thought Project previously reported, one of the manufacturers of a fentanyl drug was exposed for lobbying against marijuana, while simultaneously bribing doctors to push their dangerous opioids. Now, after the federal government granted Insys permission to make a synthetic version of cannabis, they are claiming that it’s safer and more medically valuable than actual weed. Seriously.
The DEA recently announced through the federal register that the synthetic THC made by Insys, sold under the brand name Syndros, will be listed as a schedule II drug, meaning it can now be prescribed by doctors. In the meantime, actual THC—containing the exact same properties, but able to be grown in your backyard—remains on the same scheduling list as heroin, noting that it has “no currently accepted medical use” and “a high potential for abuse.”
Insys has become notorious over the last two years after six former executives and managers were arrested on charges that they engaged in a nationwide scheme to bribe doctors to prescribe a drug containing the opioid fentanyl. Now this same group of dangerous drug peddlers is being given a partial national monopoly on the sale of legal THC, by the group who claims to protect Americans from drugs.
Along with the executives, Michael Baich, the former CEO, was also charged in an indictment filed in federal court. Even the company’s billionaire founder, John Kapoor was arrested in October for his role in the bribery scheme. He was freed on a $1 million bail after pleading not guilty.
The idea that the DEA would provide a company—who was caught bribing doctors to prescribe opioid drugs that have led to one of the largest addiction problems in the history of the world—with a pass to sell their synthetic version of a plant they continue to kidnap, cage, and kill people over, is infuriating, to say the least.
When asked about this overt conflict of interest and unscrupulous handout to Big Pharma, the DEA answered with a typical bureaucratic reply.
As VICE reported, the DEA noted in its announcement on Wednesday that it received public comments from people opposed to making synthetic THC products Schedule II while keeping marijuana Schedule I. The DEA also said that “two commenters expressed concern that pharmaceutical companies are making a profit from approved drugs containing marijuana constituents.”
“The DEA notes that FDA-approved products of oral solutions containing dronabinol [THC] have an approved medical use, whereas marijuana does not have an approved medical use and therefore remains in Schedule I,” the agency said in its response.
What makes this information so damning and hypocritical is that in September 2016, the Free Thought Project helped to expose Insys Therapeutics for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep marijuana, a plant that has never killed anyone, illegal.
In a glaring display of hypocrisy, Insys, who makes Subsys, a sublingual fentanyl spray, claimed that marijuana is dangerous because it could hurt children. At least that was their public reasoning for shoving $500,000 towards a campaign opposing marijuana legalization in the US. Now, they are pushing the same drug!
If you want to know why there is a drug war, ask yourself, ‘who benefits from it’?
Legal pot is detrimental to the opioid crisis and reduces addiction. However, this is bad business for big pharma and their lapdogs in the DEA.
Opiate addiction, overdose, and accidental death problems might simply be avoided if, ironically enough, marijuana is made legal nationwide. This would drastically reduce the scope of the DEA’s enforcement as well as threaten the grip opioid manufacturers currently have on addiction.
As TFTP has documented on several occasions, cannabis holds the promise of helping opiate addicts kick their addiction by substituting their cravings for opiates with the non-addictive painkilling properties of marijuana. And it’s not folklore. Doctors have experimented with cannabis as a substitute for opiates with high degrees of success.
Study after study has confirmed that medical cannabis access reduces harm from opioid abuse among the population. A recent study published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependency journal found that states with legal medical cannabis experience fewer hospitalizations related to opioids.
Medical marijuana legalization was associated with 23% and 13% reductions in hospitalizations related to opioid dependence or abuse and [opioid pain reliever] OPR overdose, respectively; lagged effects were observed after policy implementation.
Researchers from the University of California analyzed hospital administrative records for the period of 1997 to 2014. The author reported:
This study demonstrated significant reductions on OPR- (opioid pain reliever) related hospitalizations associated with the implementation of medical marijuana policies. … We found reductions in OPR-related hospitalizations immediately after the year of policy implementation as well as delayed reductions in the third post-policy year.
From the outside, this entire scenario looks like a case of big pharma pushing its deadly drugs while reaping massive profits. However, if we look closer, that scenario is not only made possible by, but fostered through, pharma’s ties to the state. As people beg the state for more regulation, real free enterprise solutions, like legal weed, are being ignored, or worse, prosecuted.
Until this paradigm of government and pharmaceutical collusion and the war on drugs comes to an end, we can only predict that this epidemic of mass opioid overdoses and the war on the potential cure to get far worse.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.
In “order” to “understand” – which doesn’t mean comprehend to them, it means to “stand under” or agree – what they’re really saying when they say things like, “it’s safer and more medically valuable”, you must first see them as what they really are, liars hiding behind a corporation whose sole purpose is to operate at a profit at our expense. So they really mean it’s safer and more medically valuable to the corporation, not to us, the opposite of what we think it means. Welcome to Newspeak.2.0.
Try to realize when you read things like that from a government agency, it’s not coming from people going to people talking about people no matter how hard they lie to ‘splain it away that it’s somehow good for us, it’s coming from a creature of the mind fiction, a corporation, and a corporation can’t interact or operate with flesh and blood, it may only deal with other corporations.
So being “medically valuable” could mean just that. It’s medically valuable to them to sell us phake phood, plants and medicine because we get sicker and sicker which ups their profit.
Excellent insight Grace by Faith! I think you’re on to something here.
Not to forget Fake Truth.
Well said.
I feel fortunate that I live in a US state that had the good sense to legalize the production and sale of medicinal and, later, recreational Cannabis and cannabis-related products, although I’m in major disagreement over the prohibitively expensive commercial licensing, excessive taxation, the merging of the more moderately-priced medicinal distribution networks and oversight into the outrageously-priced recreational system, and prohibition of personal cultivation.
Here’s a clue: it isn’t Colorado.
Beware of any product regulated by the guv including cannabis, because you can bet they tweak it to make it toxic. Remember, they don’t want us healthy and happy, it’s only when we’re weak and miserable that we agree to give away rights such as using plants growing naturally on our land as we see fit. 😉
The chemical inquisition continues.
Well hasn’t that always been Big Pharma’s business model? Patenting molecules that nature gives to us freely just to resell an inferior version to the sleeping public.
drain the swamp – shut down the dea, the fda and all the other alphabet agencies
if their on-paper mandate is constitutional, then good, if not, remove them
if their real activities are constitutional, then good for them, if not, jail the whole lot of them – do not pass go, do not collect $200 or anything else at all
Actually, the only solution is a firing squad, or a noose for these filth.
Please, can we make it out of nice American hemp?
Looks like we can add the DEA to the list of government agencies who are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Big-Pharma.
Syndros is a liquid version of Marinol soft gel capsules and contains (delta 9)THC. They shouldn’t be confused with Spice/K2. A comprehensive new drug application (NDA) submission package will have been given to the FDA. The agency approval necessitates that the drug be moved out of Schedule I once it has an ”accepted medical use.” At the time of NDA approval, the FDA recommend the appropriate lower schedule (II-V) based on the abuse liability data submitted as part of the NDA. Following NDA approval, the DEA has up to 90 days to issue an interim final rule (IFR), after which it can be marketed and dispensed.
In order to provide a safe and effective therapy a product has to be consistent and pure. Horticultural methods can’t do this, nor can they provide a measured dosage. While it is obvious to everyone that any company has profit motive, it is incorrect to believe that the company does not have patient health and therapeutic outcome as the main priority. It makes perfect sense to try and block an alternative product that’s inferior. If the alternative product fails to deliver efficacy and safety then the mode of action for the entire class of therapeutics becomes suspect and patients may lose access to your product through physician concern and/or regulatory action. Also a company has to spend a lot of money in order to meet higher medical (and product) surveillance requirements if the regulatory authorities become concerned about the safety and efficacy of a therapeutic class. Both the patient and the company could lose in the end.
What company has patients health forefront from their profit margins? Don’t fool yourself my friend they will find a way to get you hooked as always they want the control.
Hey Peters: TITRATE THIS.
This is laughable – rofl.
The DEA,FBI,CIA,ATF,DHS,TSA and others are all corrupt.
The only way to have your own cannabus is do it grow your self stop asking Psychopaths Fagots and pedos pooft to legal any f thing Take the army and police away from them they are to protect human and all life!If you remove the scum! They call me dragan scum all my life i speak my mind that race crawl out from inner earth and inbreed with humans than there is no need to do any legal human lore they illegal THUG low bullshit they created!It is human ignorance and comfort zone that got all humans and mother earth in this mess! Think of this 7 billion people are held hostage by 350 million inbreeds by slavery to digital and paper money ,plastik!!Future of humans should be free from all army police or force!UNDERSTANDING Absolute no do not stand under anyone wee are all humans not your religion or your body for that but Avators in a tangable body!Spirit being brother sister father mother Christ concioussnes emenate ing from the Thimus gland in your solar plexus human body Temple! They have polluted The pacific ocen with Radioactiv waste its reacting creating weather disastor’s under the dome past the dome is endless life forms and inner earth!The weather is what it is from coal burnnin and human bay product waste by Rich Thugs under the dome! LOVE THEM FOR THEY NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING is destroying self and all life with the Fallan race that was allways under ower feet technology started from inner earth!The higher frequency of LOVE will rise Earth and leave them in there own mess but wee the ones that are loving earth will go to 5d i just do not know if it is synthetic or Organic crystaline human form light body!