Corporate fentanyl (opioid) dealers donate big money to try and stop legal marijuana

By SJ Otto

An article in US News and World Report exposes one of the most corrupt political campaigns I have ever seen:

“Fentanyl Maker Donates Big to Campaign Opposing Pot Legalization.” The Fentanyl maker is not an illegal chemist, it is a big pharmacy corporation, Insys Therapeutics Inc. While it is not an illegal organization, it might as well be. According to the US News article:

“Insys currently markets just one product, according to an August filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission: a sublingual fentanyl spray it calls Subsys.

Two former company employees pleaded not guilty last month to federal charges related to an alleged kickback scheme to get doctors to prescribe Subsys.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit late last month against the company alleging Insys hawked the drug to doctors for off-label prescribing, saying the company's "desire for increased profits led it to disregard patients' health and push addictive opioids for non-FDA approved purposes."

So while this company is legal, it has skirted the law and behaved as if they were little more than a common illegal drug dealing organization. The US News article wrote:

“It's hard to imagine a more sinister donor than Insys Therapeutics Inc. in the eyes of pot legalization proponents, who long have claimed drug companies want to keep cannabis illegal to corner the market for drugs, some addictive and dangerous, that relieve pain and other symptoms.”

It also said:

“Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy campaign manager Adam Deguire tells U.S. News that legalization foes will not return the donation. In a statement he expressed gratitude and stressed that Insys is based in Arizona, unlike the Marijuana Policy Project, which has contributed substantially toward passing the initiative.

A voicemail requesting comment from Insys was not immediately returned.

Advocates for the marijuana legalization initiative Proposition 205, which is up 10 percentage points in a poll released Wednesday by the Arizona Republic, condemned the donation.”

Insys Therapeutics Inc. makes Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that may be responsible for as much as 90 percent of the opioid deaths, in recent years, that are being labelled an epidemic. We did an article on this drug, April of last year; “The opioid epidemic is really a fentanyl epidemic—and we don’t need all the hype.”

From 2011 until about last year, Insys also sold a generic equivalent to Marinol, a synthetic version of the cannabinoid THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). So it is a real irony that the company donated $500,000 toward defeating a ballot initiative to legalize the pot plant.

So far there is evidence that shows that legalizing marijuana would have some benefits. According to the US News article:

“Johns Hopkins University researchers concluded in 2014, after studying the effects of state medical marijuana laws through 2010, that "medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates."

This kind of corruption is not new to the US political system. But, as with the election of President Donald Trump, such corruption seems to be out in the open more and more often. It is open and blatant. It just seems as if conservative organizations like this just don’t care how they achieve political goals anymore. According to the US News Article:

“J.P. Holyoak, chairman of the initiative-backing Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, said in a statement that "we are truly shocked by our opponents' decision to keep a donation from what appears to be one of the more unscrupulous members of Big Pharma."

Holyoak said: "Our opponents have made a conscious decision to associate with this company. They are now funding their campaign with profits from the sale of opioids – and maybe even the improper sale of opioids. We hope that every Arizonan understands that Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy is now a complete misnomer. Their entire campaign is tainted by this money. Any time an ad airs against Prop. 205, the voters should know that it was paid for by highly suspect Big Pharma actors."

This is just like the Evangelicals who support Trump because he supports their political goals. And yet, they don’t seem to be bothered that the man they support for these Christian changes doesn’t follow a lot of their Christian laws, ethics or morality. It would seem that there are a lot of people who oppose legalizing marijuana for moral reasons. But taking money from a pharmaceutical opiate drug dealer seems about as immoral as they can get.  

Pix by The Idiot Factor.