Big Pharma Whistles, and the Drug Enforcement Administration Comes
Running
April 10, 2012
The DEA is enabling—even encouraging—a generation of opiate addicts,
while the FDA tries to quash safe and helpful supplements like DHEA.
Goodness, the legal drug-makers have been busy! This week
the Associated Press revealed that in 2010, US pharmacies dispensed
the equivalent of 69 tons of pure oxycodone (used as ingredient in
OxyContin, Percocet, and Percodan) and 42 tons of pure hydrocodone (used
in Vicodin, Norco, and Lortab). That’s enough to give forty 5-milligram
Percocets and twenty-four 5-milligram Vicodins to every single person in
the United States.
The production and sale of both drugs has increased tremendously over
the past decade; in some locations, sales have increased by 1,500
percent. Distribution is particularly high in Appalachia, the
Midwest—particularly suburbia—and the Southwest.
Why the increase? Our poor diets and inactive lifestyles increase
inflammation and pain. Older people are especially vulnerable in this
regard. And doctors are increasingly willing to treat pain with drugs.
Sales are also being driven by addiction, as users become physically
dependent on painkillers and begin “doctor shopping” to keep the
prescriptions coming.
As with all opiates, oxycodone and hydrocodone bind to opiate receptors
in the brain, blocking not only pain signals but any negative emotions
like stress or anxiety. The euphoria associated with early use fades
relatively quickly as tolerance builds. The pain-managing efficacy will
also be reduced as tolerance builds—which is why these drugs should not
be used for long-term or chronic pain. If users take the drug for longer
than prescribed, or in higher doses, it is likely that they will become
addicted.
Addicts die from drug overdoses at a much higher rate than the rest of
the population. Opioid pain relievers like oxycodone and hydrocodone
caused
14,800 overdose deaths in 2008. Addiction is also responsible for
the alarming
rise in pharmacy robberies nationwide.
The epidemic is not likely to abate soon. The explosion of pain
management clinics in Florida, dubbed “pill mills,” prompted the state
legislature to close a loophole that had allowed physicians to fill
oxycodone prescriptions on the spot. Authorities say a half-billion
doses of the drug and its generic equivalents were distributed in the
state during 2009 alone. An unknown number wound up in the hands of
“patients” who had come from out of state to have prescriptions filled
by multiple pill mills, before driving home to resell the pills on the
black market.
According to Gene Haislip, who for seventeen years was head of the
Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of Diversion Control, the DEA’s
policy of allowing increases in the production of these drugs in the
face of widespread illegal and non-medical use shows a “serious lack of
accountability and oversight”:
The DEA is the lone federal agency with the power to decide how much of
the drug gets made and put out there; it alone has had all the
responsibility to do something about this problem. The way I did it for
seventeen years, which was basically the way it had always been done
even before the DEA was the DEA, is that when a significant diversion
problem occurred, the quota increase requests would come under greater
scrutiny. With Oxy, there has been a significant diversion problem since
the late 1990s, so the requests should have come under greater scrutiny.
That apparently didn’t happen, Haislip says. Instead, the DEA has
rubber-stamped Big Pharma’s requests to increase oxycodone production.
And why is that? Political influence, plain and simple.
As Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine,
pointed out in her 2004 book The Truth about the Drug Companies, the
Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) employs
more lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress. Since
2007, the group has spent more than $20 million annually on lobbying in
Washington to see that its interests are protected. Haislip says DEA
won’t block a company’s requested quota increase “if that company is
supporting members of Congress who have the power to block the agency’s
funding.”
Then there’s the revolving door between the Office of Diversion Control
and drug manufacturers or consulting firms that work with both industry
and DEA. People working in the Office of Diversion Control know they
might get lucrative work with drug companies upon retirement, and this
constitutes a huge conflict of interest that prevents DEA officials from
doing their duty. They certainly aren’t going to offer an opinion or do
something that’s going to cut off their future prospects.
Contrast the “hands-off” approach dealing with incredibly addictive
narcotics with the aggressive disapproval of perfectly safe supplements
like DHEA. DHEA, which is short for dehydroepiandrosterone, is a natural
hormone produced by the adrenal glands, the gonads, and the brain. DHEA
is the most abundant circulating steroid hormone in humans and is
sometimes referred to as the mother hormone since other hormones can be
made from it. In its supplement form,
DHEA is used for slowing or reversing aging, improving thinking skills
in older people, slowing the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, weight
loss, decreasing the symptoms of menopause, and boosting the immune
system.
As we reported last October, DHEA supplementation also helps create
improvements in muscle strength and bone mineral density with a
reduction in body fat mass. And there is substantial support for its
effectiveness in fighting adrenal insufficiency, hypopituitarism,
general osteoporosis, systemic lupus, depression, schizophrenia, and
balancing the overproduction of cortisol produced by excessive stress.
Too much cortisol ages us rapidly; a little extra DHEA can make all the
difference.
There are a number of different forms of DHEA. 5-DHEA is the form most
commonly sold on the market and used for aging, depression,
obesity,
cardiovascular risk, and adrenal insufficiency. However, it can
result in an increased production of male hormones, which may be
positive or negative depending on various factors. For example, some
aging males convert extra testosterone to estrogen, a process called
aromatization, and too much in women can cause unwanted hair growth.
For
men with prostate troubles, 1-DHEA might be a better choice (no
estrogenicity and decreased androgenicity), while
19Nor-DHEA might be better for women (little estrogenicity and
anti-androgenic metabolites). But these little-known forms of DHEA are
especially vulnerable to being lumped together with dangerous drugs and
banned—simply because they are not well known.
DHEA has had
a fifteen-year record of complete safety. Despite this, FDA and
certain members of Congress keep trying to regulate it as a controlled
substance, specifically as an anabolic steroid, even when used in
dietary supplements.
Currently DHEA could
be classified as an illegal anabolic steroid if the DEA were to
present evidence that it meets all eight requirements under the Anabolic
Steroids/Controlled Substances law. As the DEA has not yet put DHEA on
the list, they clearly either don’t think it fits or hesitate for other
reasons.
Legislation was introduced a few years ago to add DHEA to the DEA’s
controlled substances list, even though DEA already had the power to put
it on the list if they met the burden of proof.
No deaths from DHEA. No addictions. No shameful deals between the
manufacturer and federal agencies. No organized crime because of DHEA in
America’s heartland. And yet DHEA is under attack, while big Pharma
keeps churning out dangerous opiates by the ton.
The Alliance for Natural Health USA
1350 Connecticut Ave NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20036 Ph: 800.230.2762
www.anh-usa.org
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