BY
NORMAN J CLEMENT RPH., DDS, NORMAN L.CLEMENT PHARM-TECH, MALACHI F. MACKANDAL PHARMD, BELINDA BROWN-PARKER, IN THE SPIRIT OF JOSEPH SOLVO ESQ., IN THE SPIRIT OF REV. C.T. VIVIAN, JELANI ZIMBABWE CLEMENT, BS., MBA., WILLIE GUINYARD BS., JOSEPH WEBSTER MD., MBA, SHELLEY HIGHTOWER, BS., PHARMD., LEROY BAYLOR, WALTER L. SMITH BA., ADRIENNE EDMUNDSON, WALTER L. SMITH BS., LEROY BAYLOR, BS., MS., MS., IN THE SPIRIT OF BRAHM FISHER ESQ., MICHELE ALEXANDER, CUDJOE WILDING BS, MARTIN NDJOU, BS., RPH., DEBRA LYNN SHEPHERD, BERES E. MUSCHETT, STRATEGIC ADVISORS
THE EXCERPTS AND WARNINGS
norm j clement dds______
“…racism wears many masks, it is Jim Crow one decade only to be disguised as voter ID in another century, preventing election fraud, when no fraud ever exists…when wisdom becomes a threat, the knowledgable are deem arrogant and those learned are imprisoned…in healthcare, we must lead the fight for justice by connecting the dots of injustice…uncovering the unique, cleverly designed barriers erected to inhibit people from seeking treatment and preventing those licensed professionally and whom are capable from delivering proper healthcare are required to view them as algorithms seeking care, then waging war upon both their souls and neither affording them dignity and respect…”
Joe Madison_____
” The question is??? What are we going to do about it”
Carl Hart Ph.D
CHAPTER ONE:
Hart:
Remaining Silent Is Not an Option
“Observing the carnage and racism that take place under the guise of protecting the public from so-called dangerous drugs (i.e., the war on drugs) made me rethink my views about drugs and their regulation. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I once wholeheartedly believed that drugs like crack cocaine and heroin destroyed certain Black communities. In fact, I began studying neuroscience because I thought it was uniquely suited to solve the ‘‘drug problem.’’
NeuroView
“In 1999, I landed my dream job, conducting research that involved giving thousands of doses of drugs, including crack cocaine, marijuana, ketamine, and methamphetamine, to a range of people in order to study the effects. I believed my work contributed to our understanding of drug addiction. Twenty years later—20 years I’ve spent studying the interactions among the brain, drugs, and behavior and observing how moralizing about drug use is expressed in social policy—my initial excitement has given way to skepticism, cynicism, and disillusionment.
It took me a long time to see the damage my field was doing to communities like the one from which I came. I was too busy for too long being a soldier in the regime, caught up in the cause of ‘‘proving’’ how damaging drug use is to the brain. And because my intense actions aligned with the dominant perspective held at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)—my primary funder—I personally benefited. I was awarded multimillion-dollar grants to conduct my research, and I served on some of the most prestigious committees in the area of neuropsychopharmacology. I also was awarded tenure at my university, which, importantly, allows me to speak so freely here and elsewhere.”
Using ‘‘Science’’ to Legitimize a Massacre
“The fact is, we, as researchers, consistently exaggerate the harmful effects of drug use. This is not to say that drug use can’t or doesn’t cause some people to experience significant distress and problems that impair their ability to function. This, by the way, is the most common definition of addiction, what we call substance use disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5). I am merely pointing out that most people—70% to 90%—who use even the most stigmatized drugs, such as heroin and methamphetamine, do not meet the criteria for a substance use disorder (Hart, 2013). This fact highlights two important points. The first is society’s flagrant disproportionate focus on addiction when discussing drugs. Addiction represents a minority of drug effects, but it receives almost all the attention. Another related point is this: if most users of a particular drug do not become addicted, then we cannot blame the drug for causing drug addiction. It would be like blaming food for food addiction.
Even more pernicious is the fact that NIDA unabashedly touts the baseless notion that drug addiction is a brain dis-ease. To date, there has been no identified neurobiological substrate to differentiate non-addicted persons from addicted individuals (Hart et al., 2012). Simply put, there is no solid evidence that human recreational drug use causes brain damage; nor is there credible evidence showing that addiction is caused by a brain abnormality. Unfortunately, this fact has not tempered dire warnings in the neuroscientific literature regarding the harmful impact of drug use on the human brain. Consider the following claim by Volkow et al. (2016): ‘‘If early voluntary drug use goes undetected and unchecked, the re- resulting changes in the brain can ultimately erode a person’s ability to control the im- pulse to take addictive drugs.’’
The first clause of this sentence encourages people, including cops, to be paranoid about any drug use, even the nonproblematic recreational use that characterizes the experience of the overwhelming majority who use these drugs. The paranoia this statement provokes was on full display when police admonished witnesses to stay off drugs while their brother in blue used his knee to cut off the dying Floyd’s last breath. The second clause is perhaps even more disturbing because it argues that there are inevitable brain changes in response to drug use that cripple the user’s self-control. There is absolutely no scientific evidence in humans to justify this statement. As I have noted previously, the pretty pictures produced by brain im- aging without data are not evidence, but they are misleading (Hart et al., 2012).”
CHAPTER TWO:
RACE IN THE WAR ON DRUGS THAT WASN’T
According to America’s War on Drugs has played a profound role in reinforcing racial hierarchies. Although Black Americans are no more likely than Whites to use illicit drugs, they are 6–10 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses. Helena B. Hansen, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University, examines the recent history of White opioids to show how a very different system for responding to the drug use of Whites has emerged, in which addiction is treated primarily as a biomedical disease. Meanwhile, more punitive systems that govern the drug use of people of color have remained intact. At this seminar, Dr. Hansen argues that public concern about White opioid deaths creates an opportunity to reorient U.S. drug policy toward public health for all—and make proven harm reduction strategies widely available.
White supremacy is A top security threat, Garland says
Alexander Nazaryan·National Correspondent May 12, 2021·4 min read
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress on Wednesday that violence incited by white supremacists poses “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” That assertion reflects the near-universal consensus among national security experts, including those who worked for the Trump administration.
Garland’s warning came during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which was conducted by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and incited by white supremacist groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Five people died as a result of the attack.
______ JOHN ERLICHMAN, NIXON’S DOMESTIC ADVISOR, APRIL 2016
” We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”
“In my career as a judge and in law enforcement, I have not seen a more dangerous threat to democracy than the invasion of the Capitol,” Garland said, calling the attack an “attempt to interfere with a fundamental element of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.” The attorney general went on to say that “there has to be a hierarchy of things that we prioritize. This would be the one we’d prioritize.”
Pattern or Practice Investigation of DEA Healthcare Rights Violations
BY
DAILY REMEDY
Dear United States Attorney General Mr. Merrick Garland,
In a time when rule of law descended into mob rule, literally and figuratively, certain individuals rose to prominence with alarming alacrity.
Politically ambitious, morally ambiguous, these individuals used the pretense of law to unleash lawlessness throughout the land, from the general public to the courts of law.
Nowhere was this more manifest than in the investigation and adjudication of statutes around the opioid epidemic – in which extreme, medically inappropriate interpretations of the laws created a disparity between the laws’ intention and its implementation.
Interpretations became legal arguments, and accusations served as the basis for convictions. Ushering in an era of Medical Mccarthyism in which the fear of prosecution defined the quality of patient care.
Initiate a pattern or practice investigation analyzing the influence of local police and regional DEA agent in affecting negatively the quality of clinical care in communities across the country –
– Study how the fear of legal ramifications affects the clinical care provided for patients
– Distinguish medical errors from infringements upon personal liberties in healthcare settings
– Examine discriminatory practices against chronic pain and opioid dependent patients
The brutality is in the bias, the subtle departures from due process that begin with a lack of clinical understanding, which grow over the course of investigational fraud, that then manifest as judicial prejudice – resulting in a legal system attempting to moralize a fundamentally clinical problem through legal means, attributing blame to patients in a capricious and arbitrary manner.
Access to healthcare is a right. To deny access is to deny justice.
CHAPTER THREE:
“FOLLOW THE SCIENCE ON OPIOIDS: CATO INSTITUTE PODCAST“
CATO INSTITUTE DR.JEFFEREY SINGER MD., PODCAST, JUNE 1, 2021
JEFF SINGER MD________
” POLITICIANS AND POLICEMAN SHOULD LEAVE THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE TO DOCTORS AND SCIENTIST”
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/follow-science-opioids
What HBO’s ‘Crime of the Century’ Doesn’t Tell You
By Dr. Lynn Webster, PNN Columnist
A Narrow Perspective of Opioids
“I thought about this particular patient after seeing the HBO documentary “Crime of the Century” and its terribly incomplete perspective of opioids. It occurred to me that the visceral reaction of most viewers would be, “Why are opioids even being used?”
In part, I agreed to be interviewed by Alex Gibney, the director of the documentary, to educate why opioids are still prescribed, despite their risks. After months of exchanging emails and having conversations with a producer, I decided that speaking on the record would be a calculated risk. As a doctor who had prescribed opioids, and who had lost patients because of their pain, I had been confronted by tough interviewers in the past.
The interview reopened a painful episode when a patient under the care of my pain clinic died — despite the treatment we provided, not because of it. The interviewer asked me about my patient’s death. I chose not to address it during the interview out of respect for those involved, and I will refrain from doing so in the future.
A claim that I must address, however, is speaking fees. The documentary says that I was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees which supposedly influenced my prescribing practices. The fact is that I was paid a nominal amount in speaking fees. The purpose of those speaking engagements was to educate clinicians about the safest ways to treat people in pain, not to encourage them to use opioids. At no time ever did I advocate for the use of any branded drug.
Gibney’s comment in an NPR interview that I was “trying to preach the gospel of the opioid” during my career is patently false. If critics can’t distinguish the difference between continuing medical education and being pro-patient (which I devoted my career to) and corporate shilling and being pro-opioid, then that’s their problem. They may want to rethink their profession of telling a story based in truth about a complicated topic.”
Narrative over Nuance
“Beyond the erroneous claims about me, my fundamental problem with the documentary is its totalizing depiction of an extremely complicated and often confounding societal predicament. According to the documentary, all nuance must comport with the narrative. Deaths due to opioid overdoses – all tragic – are placed under a spotlight, but deaths because of chronic pain, often complicated because of restricted access to opioids, are left alone in the dark.
This narrative could accelerate flawed policies already gaining traction. More policy decisions like the 2016 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) opioid prescribing guideline, could have a further chilling effect on opioid prescribing — despite the fact that lowering the number of opioid prescriptions does nothing to reduce the number of opioid-related overdose deaths.
The documentary appropriately highlights how opioids can, and do, lead to addiction and deaths. But the scientific fact is that not everyone who takes opioids gets addicted or dies; comparatively few do. The benefits of using some opioids outweigh the risks for many people with severe chronic pain. For a certain patient category, opioids can be the difference between life and death, and happiness and misery.
Having studied addiction for my entire career, I am deeply sensitive to the propensity of some people to be harmed by opioids. I also am deeply sensitive to intractable pain for which there are no treatment options today other than the use – as judiciously as possible – of opioids. My experience with patients confirms two things: opioids kill, but so does pain. We cannot continue to treat these outcomes as mutually exclusive.
We must resist the temptation to further restrict or ban opioids for people who desperately need them. Instead, physicians must be allowed to fulfill their professional responsibilities and uphold their oaths, evaluate patients with complicated needs, apply proper discernment, and treat their patients in accordance with the best available scientific evidence.”
A CDC disease expert, DEA officer, member of Congress, activist, or documentarian should not ever attempt to practice medicine.
People Suffer Needlessly
“Today, one in five American adults suffers from chronic pain, or pain lasting longer than 12 weeks. Chronic pain is a full-blown crisis, not unlike the opioid crisis. Yet we hear precious little about the chronic pain crisis. Most people with pain silently, if unwillingly, endure their conditions. Few of us would listen to them, even if we had the opportunity.
Thirty years ago, I waited until my patient had finished telling me about her experiences. Then I simply said, “I believe you.” Hearing those three words, she burst into tears of relief. Few people had been willing to take her at her word when she told them her life had been derailed by unremitting pain. Hers was among the millions of voices that were, and remain, unheard.
The documentary’s central claim is that marketing opioids is a crime and was understood as such at the time when they began to be used to treat non-cancer pain. The use of opioids in appropriate circumstances for a certain kind of patient was not a crime then, nor is it today. As long as such narratives continue to take root, we shouldn’t be surprised if one “crime” produces another masquerading as a solution.”
CONCLUSION
“Congress and state legislators should, therefore, amend federal and state laws to require law enforcement to obtain a referral from the appropriate state health-profession licensing board before instituting, aiding in, or defending an investigation or criminal or civil action against a prescriber or dispenser of FDA-approved medications in which medical need or patient care, including the prescribing or dispensing of medications, is at issue.”
WE ARE DEMANDING CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATION OF CORRUPTION OF DEA/DOJ AND DEFUNDING AND CLOSURE OF THE DEA
FOR NOW, YOU
ARE WITHIN THE NORMS
REFERENCES:
Lynn R. Webster, MD, consults with the pharmaceutical industry. He is author of the award-winning book The Painful Truth, and co-producer of the documentary It Hurts Until You Die. You can find Lynn on Twitter: @LynnRWebsterMD.
Norman J Clement owner of Pronto Pharmacy LLC, Tampa, Fl., who grew up in the 48221 Pasteur School, Hampton Jr High, Mumford High 69 FAMU PHARMACY, grad University of Michigan Dentistry, University of Florida Dental world traveler writes a Story of our current times: ywtn33782@gmail.com. 313-5103378
The story of How the War on Drugs is being used to target the Black family own pharmacies. And how a small group of pharmacist-owners, grads of FLORIDA A&M UNIVERSITY, WHO FOUND THEMSELVES TARGETS BY THE RACIST DEA ARE FIGHTING BACK. Black pharmacist lives do Matter read; Youarewithinthenorms.com
