Nov. 5, 2018
Sun seekers at the iconic Caribe Hilton on a secluded beach in San Juan would have had no idea what was afoot in a hotel room upstairs.
A special agent posing as a venture capitalist from Texas was negotiating with two Turkish businessmen for pricey chemotherapy drugs that had been smuggled into the country.
About the Author
This dept may have built in problems just as all the others but they deserve the guns , tanks , anything to help us .Im a pain patient and feeling the crisis from a unique and horrible way ..im a retired Firefighter /Emt / first responder . Ive seen so many horrible things in these years .i have been cut off my opioids .Who do i stand for ? They need everything to fight .let them do it . like we really dont get cats down much anymore but thats what so many still think ..Ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree ?
Mark,
These agencies that were supposed to protect our health, have all been undermined by industry interests. The underfunding was done strategically, to help the industries. If we don’t know the facts, we can’t act on them or change anything. Instead of going after the real criminals, the pharma marketers and profiteers, they went after people with chronic pain. People like you that worked hard and risked their health to protect the public. The insurance companies have an interest here too. They knew that if they could deny pain patients or label them as addicted or mentally ill, they could deny payments, and make even more money. Pharma peddled useless dangerous and ineffective alternatives, none of them worked and some actually killed people, but they were peddled as less dangerous than opiate addiction. A bunch of Psychology marketers jumped in too, along with the treatment industry, every one of them denied the existence of pain, peddled a phony cure or attributed it to mindset, attitude or catastrophizing. they did not need any scientific evidence that these things even existed , all they had to do is create doubt.
Instead of going after the criminals they forced pain patients to suffer, of course many of these people with pain did not have the luxury of takinga day off when the injuries became permanent, The medical industry saw profit in denying care and giving out opiates to people who could not get decent healthcare.
It is a lot more profitable to go after people with pain and their responsible physicians, than to stir up the wrath of industry insiders enforcing the Laws on counterfeit pharmaceuticals, or drug distributors.
Tracking down counterfeit drugs might embarrass a few of the profiteering corporations, and undermine what little faith Americans have in the system. These same Agencies were attacked, undermined and underfunded, when opiate wholesalers flooded the market, even now they are unable to prosecute the real offenders, and choosing to go after sick people and their doctors. It is very clear that this administration chooses profits over people, so our FDA is hamstrung. The media has not covered the many cases of counterfeit drugs, deaths, or contamination either. Those topic are effectively censored because they can be bad for business and cut into Pharma Profits.
If it ain’t broke; don’t fix it. But if it regulates trade, even illegal and harmful trade, it sounds like the Republicans are all for it being shut down.
Here is an agency protecting public health often from armed bad guys, and the Republicans want to close it down, and are even now bleeding it dry with no leadership. It is clearly NOT a budget issue, as the office brings in more revenue than it costs. So much for claims of deficit reduction hawkism.
I love it when I hear an ignorant congressman talk about arresting a guy for selling tainted milk. Wonder what he would think if his grandkids wound up in the ER from bad milk.