There were some major announcements this week, from both the White House and the Department of Justice, concerning efforts to suppress the national Opioid Epidemic. Upon the recommendation of a Presidential Task Force, the Administration declared the Opioid Epidemic a National Health Emergency last Autumn.
Before leaving Davos on Saturday, President Trump announced a crackdown by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on shady companies trafficking in bogus Opioid detoxification formulas. The agencies issued Cease and Desist Orders to 11 companies who were marketing unregulated medications unapproved by the FDA.
"Health fraud scams like these can pose serious health risks." Trump stated, "These products have not been demonstrated to be either safe or effective and may keep some patients from seeking legitimate, FDA-approved treatment. Selling these unapproved products with claims that they can cure Opioid addiction is a violation of Federal Law. Also, making unsubstantiated therapeutic claims violate FTC regulations against false and deceptive advertising."
Of course, this story was ignored by the Corporate Media---which takes in billions in advertising from Big Pharma annually.
Attorney-General Sessions today announced the creation of a new team called J-Code made up of tech specialists. Their job will be to take down illegal drug traffic that occurs in the so-called 'Dark Web'. Sessions stated that he was inspired to create the new team after FBI agents destroyed a major Internet Opioid ring last Summer. The website Alpha Bay was linked to 40,000 pushers who serviced nearly a quarter-million addicts and were responsible for at least two known overdose deaths. It was the biggest Darknet takedown in history, but the MSM ignored that story too.
Sessions said in a speech today in Louisville that he had completed a reorganization of the Drug Enforcement Agency and launched a new investigative unit within DEA. This unit will analyze Obamacare providers to ferret out ones which are dispensing unusual or suspicious levels of Opioids. According to CDC statistics, 1/3 of overdoses are connected to prescription drug abuse.
This is wonderful news, indeed! Thank you, President Trump.
ReplyDeleteChuckling here, but I'm really starting to hate that word "alpha." Whatever it is they're selling with that branding, pretty sure it's not going to be good.
Opioid addiction is just a tragedy in this country. Obamacare helped to unleash a real nightmare. Many people who would never shoot heroin for example, have been taught to trust doctors, so if your doc is either clueless or getting kickbacks, it's pretty easy for patients to get hooked. That's always been true, but Obamacare just opened the floodgates.
Also tragic, all the substances people sell that are supposed to clean you out. Desperate people will try anything and I hate to see that vulnerability preyed on.
I noticed that too: it seems that wherever the term 'Alpha' pops up, something fishy is going on.
DeleteTrump mentioned the Opioid Crisis in his speech tonight; I don't recall Obama ever acknowledging it. This new policy that Sessions introduced to the DEA is going to close a lot of medically-related loopholes. Anomalous rates of prescriptions and hospitals with high OD rates are going to raise red flags and be investigated. A lot of the pill-mills they've already caught were discovered through HHS/Obamacare audits. This new rule will correlate all the prescription Opioid-related materials and make abuse nearly impossible.