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, BEVERLY C. PRINCE MD., FACS., LEROY BAYLOR, JAY K. JOSHI MD., MBA, ADRIENNE EDMUNDSON, ESTER HYATT PH.D., WALTER L. SMITH BS., IN THE SPIRIT OF BRAHM FISHER ESQ., MICHELE ALEXANDER MD., CUDJOE WILDING BS, MARTIN NDJOU, BS., RPH., IN THE SPIRIT OF DEBRA LYNN SHEPHERD, BERES E. MUSCHETT, STRATEGIC ADVISORS
A CONTINUATION OF MS KATHERINE ROSENBURG-DOUGLAS’S STORY AND THE OPIOID QUACKERY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX WHICH WITHHOLDS PAIN MEDICATIONS PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR
“IF YOU EVER THINK YOU ARE TOO SMALL TO MAKE A CHANGE, THEN YOU HAVE NEVER SLEPT WITH A MOSQUITO”
On July 22, 2021, Jeff Singer MD wrote:
“On July 21, 2021, a settlement was announced between several states and the pharmaceutical distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health, and Amerisource Bergen, along with drug maker Johnson and Johnson, who were accused of contributing to the opioid overdose crisis.
The three distributors agreed to pay the states $21 billion over 18 years and Johnson and Johnson agreed to pay $5 billion over 5 years, ostensibly to go towards drug treatment and education programs. Johnson and Johnson and the three distributors continue to dispute the allegations while agreeing to the settlement.”
Dr. Singer, rightfully has questioned this agreement in his title “Opioid Settlement Will Do Nothing to Change The Trajectory of The Overdose Rate.” Singer et al. are absolutely on point simply because “Relieving Pain has become a Pain” for many being treated for Chronic Intractable Pain and Incurable diseases specifically those diseases of genetic origin.
RELIEVING PAIN IS A PAIN
KATHERINE ROSENBURG-DOUGLAS CHICAGO TRIBUNE REPORT WRITES:
“The doctor I chose is about 30 miles from my home. He tells me it’s troublesome keeping up with his patient load as other area doctors leave the specialty. Thankfully, many pill mills have been shut down, but even good doctors have closed up shop as keeping up with ever-changing restrictions imposed by legislators has become increasingly arduous, my doctor told me.
Among the most asinine of guidelines pushed by various plans to end the opioid epidemic: A pain doctor’s records should show he or she is trying to reduce the number of medications and the dosage patients are on. If your formerly high cholesterol returned to a healthy level with a certain dosage, can you imagine your doctor cutting the dose in half on your next visit?
It’s not clear to me what purpose the every-30-day visits serve, other than to pick up my written prescriptions — controlled substances can’t be called in. But just as these rules unnecessarily hurt those of us in real pain, they also won’t deter those battling addiction who want a fix.“
RULING THROUGH INTIMIDATION
The DEA has ruled through intimidation by setting “arbitrary parameters, and no clear guidelines,” according to Florida Pharmacist Association CEO Michael Jackson in the June 2017 Conference of the Florida A&M Alumni, New Orleans.
While Richard “Red’ Lawhern, states: the DEA enforcement foundation relies upon unproven unscientific data, that’s must be repudiated and all persons charged, convicted, and imprisoned must be released, exonerated, and financially compensated. Below statements are recorded and can be seen or listened to by hitting on the below links.
LISTENING TO THE SCIENTIST
THE STORY BEHIND THE DEA’s OPIOID-CRISIS QUACKERY
“Getting Well in America” has posted a 42-minute interview with Richard Red Lawhern at the link below. Please pardon the first few minutes of the audio, as it came across as rather choppy from problems with my phone connection.
RICHARD “RED” LAWHERN PH.D.
In this interview, Dr. Richard Lawhern focuses on the misdirection of the CDC guidelines on opioid prescription, and the outright extra-judicial persecution being used by DEA DoJ and others to drive doctors out of pain practice.
NO CLEAR GUIDELINES NO CLEAR PARAMETERS
MICHAEL JACKSON RPH., CEO FLA. PHARMACIST ASSOC.
VIDEO: “THE DEA IS COMING AFTER PHARMACIST AND HAVING NO GUIDELINES”
bf966c4e-1f69-45ed-ac15-850dadfeb040-1DEA ” WE ARE GOING TO COME AFTER YOU”
THE AMERICAN AGONY THE OPIOID WAR AGAINST PATIENTS IN PAIN
From the Review of Helen Bogel’s Book:
Managing pain with opioids is a science—except politics, money, and overzealous law enforcement are denying American patients the relief they so desperately need. Demonizing the best pain reliever we have leads to needless suffering, even suicides, and it drives the rise in deadly street drugs.
Helen Borel gathers and presents the evidence, the intimidation, the raids of clinics, the chilling effect on those very professionals we trust to care for our loved ones and ourselves. She looks hard at the Veterans Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Justice, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chapters include “The Suboxone Hoax,” “The Wrong Arms of the Law,” and “The Epidemic of Death,” plus an entire section on solutions for this widespread crisis. Read American AGONY now—or you might be the next one hurt.
Jklingenhofer wrote:
“Thank you for speaking up on behalf of chronic pain patients, and also acute pain patients. Another important side effect of this war on opioids is that surgical and post surgical pain is being under medicated by our doctors no hospitals, including some of our best hospitals in the country.
I am a chronic pain patient with a lifelong disease requiring many surgeries in my lifetime. I remember when the pain wasn’t managed well, the short period when it was given the importance of a vital sign, back to being under-medicated. I live in terror of having to have another surgery, and have put off a needed surgery for well over a year now.”
CATO INSTITUTE DR.JEFFEREY SINGER MD PODCAST, JUNE 1, 2021
JEFF SINGER MD CATO INSTITUTE
JEFF SINGER MD________
” POLITICIANS AND POLICEMEN SHOULD LEAVE THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE TO DOCTORS AND SCIENTISTS”
Sharing with you, another of Dr. Jeff Singer’s podcasts on “Following the Science” is good advice for lawmakers”
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/follow-science-opioids
THE DEA AND STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE HAVE GONE ROGUE
There is an equally disturbing trend within the medical/pharmaceutical community wherein medical practitioners are targeted. Law enforcement agencies have conducted raids and arrested medical personnel for dispensing legally prescribed medications to the community.
“These agencies have failed to recognize a people’s chronic disease conditions of intractable pain while further failing to understand or comprehend human suffering, the science of clinical treatment, and the value of human life.”
The DEA is the single most heinous governmental agency whose tactics have led to the increased cost of medications and healthcare across America by misinterpreting the purpose and roles of medications needed to treat acute, chronic, neuropathic, and psychological pain.
The DEA approach to chronic intractable pain disease and to narcotic addiction disease disorder fails to address clinical issues; a 360-degree view of life, requiring treatment. The DEA has sold Congress especially the media and the American Public, “snake oil.” If addiction is a disease process, then how does law enforcement become the primary healthcare provider to treat a clinical disease process?
“A corporate pharmacist I’d never seen before or since denied my weekly Rx pain meds. He felt “morally uncomfortable” filling both–same medication, different doses–which ONE did I want? I said both. His moral compass spun me to active advocacy
Since they all took blood money from their overlords who want us dead!!!“
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jeff Singer MD further wrote:
“Some, like the editors of the Wall Street Journal, criticize the outcome because roughly 10 percent of the settlement goes toward legal fees. They also argue that the defendants were wrongly accused:
Politicians and plaintiff attorneys claim the companies hooked hundreds of thousands of Americans on opioids with deceptive marketing and negligent dispensing practices to boost their bottom line.
The main problem with this argument is that opioids such as oxycodone require a doctor’s prescription. Thousands of doctors would have to have been complicit in the conspiracy. Ditto the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is supposed to monitor and control opioid shipments by distributors to pharmacies.”
“like Congress are corrupt & loathed by 90% + of American’s. They target the disabled, elderly, vets & our Drs while ignoring the foreign invaders coming through our borders bringing in illicit drugs. This is Big Government at it’s worst, like all the Fed alphabet Agencies.”
Here, the Numbers Don’t Seem to Add up Proportionally to the so-called crime having been committed for example the Wall Street Journal noted 10 percent of the settlement goes toward legal fees; 2 billion dollars!!!
Now that would theoretically leave 19 billion dollars for the States to distribute. However, there is no mention of what part if any of the settlement money was proportion to those victims’ survivors whose deaths were the result of suicide caused when their legitimate pain prescriptions were denied by a pharmacist.
Most notable, the statistics record nearly 83% of the death resulting from illicit opioid counterfeits such as fentanyl and heroin. So why is it that legitimate drug manufacturers have to pay anything when it is well understood the bulk of the overdose deaths were generated by illicit street drugs?
“As a chronic pain patient, I find this scary as hell. Will the government ever get out of the health business? The DEA does not have a medical license; thus, should not be practicing medicine.” GET OUT OF MY LIFE!!!!!
Or, is it two billion dollars talking louder to the lawyers working to settle these cases than caring about truly knowing the truth, and what about the victims?
Dr. Singer noted:
” But the suit was even more misguided because the overdose crisis was never caused by doctors “hooking” their patients on opioids. That’s a false narrative that is convenient for politicians searching for a scapegoat and an easy solution.
As I have written before, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the National Survey on Drug Use and Health show no correlation between the number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors and the non-medical use of opioids or opioid use disorder.
Jessica Minerd-Massey
@MasseyMinerd:
“Severe CPP since 2003. Advocate for all victims of the CDC, DEA, War on Drugs(=Eugenocide) & everyone’s right to choose their own life & death. “
And Drs. Nora Volkow and Thomas McLlellan of the National Institutes on Drug Abuse pointed out in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016 that, “Unlike tolerance and physical dependence, addiction is not a predictable result of opioid prescribing. Addiction occurs in only a small percentage of persons who are exposed to opioids — even among those with preexisting vulnerabilities.”
“Policymakers and the press continue to confuse chemical dependency with addiction. They are two completely different things.
Research from the University of Pittsburgh shows that the overdose rate has been following a steady exponential growth curve since at least the late 1970s—well before the invention of OxyContin in 1996—with no signs of slowing. The only changes over the years relate to the particular drugs in vogue.”
@ChronicPainGPS
#ChronicPain patients are young, old, male, female, straight, gay, black, white, Latino, etc, etc Pain & disability doesn’t care who you are. This is something literally everyone should agree on.”
“Yet policymakers squeeze doctors and their patients in pain while non‐ medical users of drugs in the black market have long ago moved on to more readily available and dangerous drugs like illicit fentanyl.
This has always been a drug prohibition crisis—not an opioid crisis. The attorneys general can claim a few scalps from the pharma industry, but until we end the war on drugs nothing else will change.”
Wall Street Journal pointed out:
AG’s are hoping the settlement will prod manufacturers such as Teva and Endo and retailers including Walmart, Walgreens and CVS to settle lawsuits so they can wave around the payouts when they campaign for re-election or for Governor.
The opioid settlement is another example in a growing list of lawsuits that redistribute income from the larger society to rich plaintiff attorneys, who then help politicians with their campaign contributions, who then rehire the lawyers to help with more mass tort claims. Alas, it’s the American way.
FOR NOW
YOU ARE WITHIN THE NORMS
Your writing is getting better all the time. Keep up the good fight.