COERCION, CORRUPTION AND CONSPIRACY: A LETHAL MIX. By Gurli Bagnall

[Quote] The 15.1 million Americans abusing controlled prescription drugs exceed the combined number abusing cocaine (5.9 million), hallucinogens (4.0 million), inhalants (2.1 million) and heroin (.3 million)…. “Our nation is in the throes of an epidemic of controlled prescription drug abuse and addiction,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. [End of quote.]
 
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) http://66.135.34.236/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=397&print=yes <http://66.135.34.236/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=397&amp;print=yes>

 
There is only one aspect of the above quote with which I disagree. A person who  trusts his doctor but becomes an unwitting addict while taking a prescribed drug, is not an abuser.  In most instances, he is the abused.
 
In the 1990s, 17,000 people in Britain were preparing to sue the drug giants, Wyeth and Roche, in respect of ill health and addiction caused by two of the benzodiazepine drugs, Ativan and Valium. When legal aid funding was suddenly  withdrawn, the class action foundered. Many  other prescribed psychotropic substances have similar effects and  the manufacturer of Paxil is currently facing angry consumers.  (See “Consumers Join Forces to Protest Against Antidepressant Paxil and Kickoff Boycott of Drug Company GlaxoSmithKline.”)   http://www.prleap.com/pr/13734/
 
So who are the REAL abusers?
 

The opening quote comes from a paper published recently by CASA but  the  seriousness and extent of addiction to prescription drugs has been known for at least the last three decades.  The World Health Organization (WHO) came to the same conclusions as CASA many years ago, although they acknowledged that the problem was of international concern, not just within the USA.
 
The paper contained other interesting statistics.
http://66.135.34.236/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=397&print=yes

<http://66.135.34.236/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=397&amp;print=yes> 

Since 1992, for instance, the increase in prescriptions for  addictive, psychotropic (psychiatric) drugs has outstripped all others and up till 2002, new users among 12 to 17 year olds was up by 542 percent, more than four times the rate of increase among adults.
 
This reflects badly on doctors who, as CASA confirms,  excuse themselves by claiming that patients commonly try to pressure them into prescribing a controlled drug.  CASA’s survey of physicians also indicated that some patients  shop around for doctors to obtain more drugs, they deceive, manipulate and forge or alter prescriptions. That these things happen occasionally cannot be denied, but how did such a situation arise?  
 
The children certainly didn’t start their habits by strong-arming their GPs.  For the most part, schools deemed them to be inattentive and referred them to psychiatrists who know how to write “Ritalin” in their sleep. It is not uncommon for parents who refuse to drug their children, to have Social Services remove them from the family home. Then there is the matter of economics. Society has been led to believe there is a pill for every ill. Only doctors can legally prescribe drugs and it is the medical profession that has vigorously promoted this concept. It’s good for business. Unfortunately, few of the drugs cure anything.  There are no profits in cures.   
 
Psychotropic drugs have also found their way to the streets. The illegal trafficking started long before prescription drugs became freely available on the internet.  So where  did and do the peddlers get their supplies?  
        
Having created a captive market that needs fixes of ever increasing strengths,   the authorities can hardly be surprised that there is an increase in lying, stealing, cheating and violence.  To act surprised and to take on a concerned demeanor, shifts the blame to seriously ill and vulnerable victims,  many of whom land up in prison and psychiatric wards through no fault of their own.
 
US State Senator for Georgia, Nancy Schaefer, is most eloquent on the dangers of such drugs which are routinely forced upon children in the United States.  For the full article, see:  
 
http://www.jonchristianryter.com/2005/073005.html
 
Schaefe: Children in America are being medicated to death—death by mind-altering drugs. [They] are coerced into mental health screening, they are forced into psychiatric treatment and they are prescribed dangerous psychotropic drugs. America's children are oftentimes denied contact with their parents, they are restrained without parental knowledge and they are given many different psychiatric medications. [End of quote.] 
 
This is not just a matter of classroom behaviour. We also see it, for example, in our own international ME communities.
 
Schaefe: Children in America are victims of fraud and death. Millions of them are diagnosed with alleged mental disorders because they are easily distracted, or they talk out of turn in class, or because they don't follow directions. Because they have discipline problems, they are subsequently drugged on substances equal to heroin and cocaine. [End of quote.]  
 
The behaviour may be irritating but it sounds normal.  What is more barbaric: A couple of strokes on the backside with a cane, or an entire life destroyed by enforced addiction and mental and physical illness?
 
Schaefe:…I am a mother of 5 children. I have four sons and one daughter. They were youngsters who, at times, were distracted, talked out of turn, or didn't always follow directions. In today's schools system and psychiatric world with forced mental health screening, my children would have been placed on deadly drugs and potent pills that are capable of completely debilitating that child—or driving them to violence or suicide. [End of quote.] 
 
Remember the Columbine massacre?  (Just one example.)
 
Schaefe: Since Illinois was the first state to pass the Illinois Children's Mental Health Act (ICMHA), which created a $10 million Children Mental Health Partnership, I fearfully expected other states to follow suit and pass this dreadful piece of legislation. I want to prevent this at all costs in Georgia. The Illinois legislation calls for a social and emotional exam to be administered to all children without parental consent and for women to be examined for depression during pregnancy. [End of quote] 
 
Two birds with one stone! Turn the mother into an addict, and the unborn child is hooked as well.  We’ve witnessed it for years.  From the early sixties to the late 1990s,  benzodiazepines (tranquillizers) were frequently prescribed to pregnant women who gave birth to infants suffering the “floppy baby syndrome”.  That is the term used for babies enduring withdrawal symptoms;  their inconsolable and  characteristic high-pitched screams are the only way these helpless new-borns can alert others to their extreme distress. So much for a civilized society.   
 
Schaefe: How could this happen? And, even more important, why is this happening? In April of 2002, the Bush administration established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. This Commission was to carry out a "comprehensive" study of the United States mental health service delivery system. According to Dr. Dennis L. Cuddy, in his article "Mental Health, Education and Social Control", Part 5, as of the end of 2004 there were "...27 sites around the country piloting various aspects of the New Freedom Initiative," which provided for strong antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs as treatment for the many "so called" mental health problems detected. Additionally, Dr. Cuddy revealed that the most powerful force behind this initiative is the pharmaceutical industry, including Eli Lilly & Company. [End of quotes.]  
 
The words “social control” offer part of the explanation for this dangerous  agenda. It is also a serious worry that the head of the USA Legislature, President Bush, has a financial stake in the drug company, Eli Lilly.
 
Senator Nancy Schaefer is but one of many in the US who are protesting at this sweeping legislation. 
 
In the 1 August, 2005, issue of USA Today, the following was published:
 
[Quote] ….a survey of primary care doctors giving children stimulants, commonly prescribed for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), found multiple psychiatric medicines prescribed in about 5% of office visits during 1993-94. That surged to 25% of visits in 1997-98. Another study of privately insured kids found that 3% given psychiatric drugs got more than one in 1987. It was up to 23% in 1996….Drug companies are marketing their products more aggressively to consumers and doctors…One drug often causes side effects….For example, stimulants may cause insomnia, which leads  to prescribing sleeping pills…. ‘Doctors are doing this polypharmacy stuff all the time with kids,’ says Penn, ‘but when you look for the research, there is none.’ [End of quote.]
 
Let us not deceive ourselves. The problem is not unique to the US. Addiction to prescribed drugs affects us all at an international level.  
 
We live in an era where we can take nothing on trust.  The WHO alerted us to the problems of addiction to prescription drugs many years ago, but recently the same organization co-operated with two powerful drug companies to (directly or indirectly) push their products for the traditional twenty pieces of silver. 
 
This information came as quite a shock when it landed on my desk. 
 
Vera Hassner Sharav of THE ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) drew attention to this development:
http://www.ahrp.org/
  
Sharav: …the credibility of the World Health Organization (WHO) is in doubt since its financial ties to Eli Lilly and Johnson and Johnson….The reach of Big Pharma is indeed all-encompassing….The Final Report -- Nations for Mental Health -- issued by the WHO Mental Health Policy and Service Development, Department of Mental Health and Substance Dependence (2002), was underwritten by Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. 
 
A three-step approach was envisaged to create a process to put mental health in the political agenda. The first step was to increase the general awareness of the importance of mental health through a series of key high profile events to focus public attention. Second, it was planned that efforts would be devoted to building the will of the key political authorities to participate.  
 
Third, and finally, efforts were directed towards securing political commitments by decision-makers (e.g., legislative measures, policy undertakings, and performance of specific initiatives in favour of mental health, such as a campaign to destigmatize mental disorders).
Every one who accepts financial support from a pharmaceutical company--no matter what the stated "educational" goal--becomes a promoter of the company's drugs--whether the recipients acknowledge that fact or not.  [End of quote.]
 
The report is couched in careful language; where drugs are concerned it does not blatantly say, “Feed ‘em, feed ‘em! Make sure they really need ‘em.”   But read between the lines and it is hard to disagree with Sharav’s view that  [quote] the WHO’s report, Nations for Mental Health, is a covert promotional marketing tool masquerading as an objective credible source of information. [End of quote.] 
 
The full WHO report can be seen at: http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/400.pdf
 
So who ARE the abusers?  
 
*Governments are for allowing themselves to be seduced (collectively and individually) by the drug industry; for betraying the people who elected them to office for personal gain, and for turning a blind eye to the chemical torture that is taking place all around them.
 
*The drug industry is for its profit driven policies; for with-holding evidence of iatrogenic death and disease; for buying the silence of our politicians and for manipulating them to the will of the industry; for buying the support/loyalty of specialists within the  medical profession and other authorities,   and  for its callous disregard for the human suffering it causes.
 
*The regulatory bodies are for allowing conflicts of interest (personal greed)  to rule on drug “safety”.  
 
*Doctors are for their conflicts of interest; for making clinical “judgements” based on drug industry sales hype; for not listening to their patients; for ignoring clear signs of addiction and other adverse effects.  And when the damage is done, for “diagnosing” their victims as being mentally disturbed. 
 
*And now there is a big question mark over the integrity of the WHO. 
 
That lethal mix of coercion, corruption and conspiracy are present in all of the above. 
 
The following is taken from  Gary Matsumoto’s book:   “Vaccine A: The covert government experiment….” (ISBN0-465-04400-X.)  
 
 
“…DISSENT AGAINST THE ABUSE OF POWER IS ONE OF THIS COUNTRY’S PROUDEST TRADITIONS.  IT IS A PRIVILEGE THAT AMERICANS HAVE GIVEN THEIR LIVES FOR, AND ONE THAT WE NEGLECT AT OUR PERIL.”
 
 
And so say all of us!
 
Gurli Bagnall
August, 2005