GekeVenn: GLAXOSMITHKLINE

The collusion of big government and big pharma is about control. It's not about public safety or public health. It's about control, which is why the government passed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) back in 1970.

Laws like the CSA are always passed under the guise of protecting the public from its own behavior, in this case, from drug abuse. Unfortunately, the problem of drug abuse never goes away, despite government regulations to stop or prevent it. That's because eliminating drug abuse was never the purpose of the Controlled Substances Act. The purpose of this law was to give corporations (which comprise the government) the ability to control how we consumers are allowed to use the plants pharmaceutical companies are unable to patent.

One such plant is the poppy, from which opium is derived. Opium use and attempts to control its trade have a long history, but what's happened over the last 200 years is illuminating. In 1803, Friedrich Sertuerner discovered the active ingredient in opium to be morphine, an opium alkaloid called principium somniferum. In 1827, the Germany firm of E. Merck & Company began to commercially manufacture morphine.

By the 1850s, the British government was importing opium from India to sell through their own government-controlled opium monopoly. And in 1874, C. R. Wright, an English researcher, synthesized diacetylmorphine from morphine. Twenty years later, Heinrich Dreser coined a name for this opioid: heroine. Dreser worked for another German firm, The Bayer Company, that soon began producing it.

In 1905, the US government banned opium, but not the drugs commercially derived from it that were being sold by Merck and Bayer.

In 1912 the International Opium Convention was signed by several countries, stating that, "The contracting Powers shall use their best endeavours to control, or to cause to be controlled, all persons manufacturing, importing, selling, distributing, and exporting morphine, cocaine, and their respective salts, as well as the buildings in which these persons carry such an industry or trade." (emphasis added) Notice that this law doesn't mention the consumption of these drugs, only their trade. The intent here was to control and monopolize the industry, not protect the public.

The pharmaceutical industry has been synthesizing opioid compounds for decades, including GlaxoSmithKline, which first patented one back in 1964. Since 2008, the industry has focused on using alkaloids from the kratom plant to derive synthetic, patentable compounds that promise to help break opioid addiction. And so, in 2016, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began taking steps to classify kratom as a Schedule 1 under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Again, we return to concept of control. This is because the patents of companies like GlaxoSmithKline are only valuable if the public is prevented from buying or growing the kratom plant on their own.

Assisting in the effort, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has undertaken a misinformation campaign to promote the idea that the kratom plant is dangerous and to warn against its use: Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. on FDA advisory about deadly risks associated with kratom. What the FDA's statement fails to mention is that Gottlieb is both a board member and adviser of the pharmaceutial giant GlaxoSmithKline, which stands to financially benefit from a kratom ban.

GekeVenns originating on Steemit are shared on the following platforms:
Facebook Profile: (930 friends)
Facebook Page, Exposing Progressive Corporatism: (4,200 followers)
LibertarianArts and GekeEconMeme Twitter accounts: (350 followers)