Recently, a study suggested that medical cannabis and recreational cannabis legalization was causing big pharma to experience financial losses. It went on to say that drug makers were experiencing losses at a continual rate in the market. The reason, of course, is none other than medical cannabis and recreational cannabis legalization. After decades of addicting America and turning the country into the most drug-dependent one in the world, the pharmaceutical industry has some audacity to whine about losing pocket change.
It is very difficult to put an actual figure on what this industry makes each year. They are very elusive and corrupt in their practices. Pharmaceutical companies, drug makers, doctors, and healthcare establishments have been involved in direct lies to the public resulting in multi-million dollar fines. These fines might sound large, but they are nothing more than a slap on the wrist to these big drug makers.
A website called violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org says the total number of penalties since 2000 to the pharmaceutical industry finically adds up to $87,015,620,847.
· Johnson & Johnson has been charged with off-label or unimproved promotion of medical products and has an estimated $14 billion dollars plus in penalties.
· Merck has been charged with drug or medical equipment safety violations and is said to have racked up an estimated $10 billion dollars plus in penalties.
· Pfizer has been charged with off-label or unimproved promotion of medical products and has an estimated $10 billion dollars plus in penalties.
· Perdu Pharma has been charged with fraud and has an estimated $9+ billion dollars in penalties.
The list goes on and on and can be viewed here. I wouldn’t say that medical cannabis or recreational cannabis is to blame for profit loss in the pharmaceutical industry. I think the pharmaceutical industry itself is to blame. After decades of lying and addicting Americans to prescription drugs, people are waking up and deciding they have had enough. It makes you wonder why these companies were allowed to thrive while poisoning and addicting America to all kinds of drugs while lawmakers and politicians fought to keep cannabis from the people. Shame on these drug makers and shame on politicians who have kept cannabis from the American people for over eight decades.
How Much Profit Does Big Pharma Make Each Year?
Based on at least one study, drug makers alone are said to be losing about 3 billion dollars a year because of states that legalized medical and/or recreational cannabis. I have a few problems believing this math. Pharma sells meds for astonishing prices, especially in the U.S. market.
According to ahip.org, “Drug manufacturers earned, on average, $18.6 billion in total global revenues for a new drug – 10 times more than the average $1.8 billion cost of new drug development.” A good return on business is 100%. If you can cover your start-up and operational costs while making a 100% return, you are doing great. Just imagine making ten times your investment in things. To do this, you have to pretend you’re a drug maker or pharma kingpin because those are the professions reserved for this kind of pay.
A report on kff.org says, “In 2019, the U.S. spent more than $1,000 per person on prescribed medicines, an amount higher than any peer nation.” The Congressional Budget Office says, “Nationwide spending on prescription drugs increased from $30 billion in 1980 to $335 billion in 2018. (All estimates of drug spending and prices in this report are expressed in 2018 dollars.) Over that period, real per capita spending on prescription drugs increased more than sevenfold: from $140 to $1,073.”
This increase in sales was driven by more Americans using more prescription drugs. Award-winning journalist Melody Petersen wrote a book called “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transform Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs” that came out in 2003. In this book, she brought something alarming to our attention. She noted that “For the first time, more psychotropic drugs were prescribed to children than antibiotics and asthma medications in the United States.”
Cancer.gov describes a psychotropic drug as, “A drug or other substance that affects how the brain works and causes changes in mood, awareness, thoughts, feelings, or behavior. Examples of psychotropic substances include alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, marijuana, and certain pain medicines.”
In February 2012, Business Insider said, “Studies suggest more Americans are turning to generic drugs to cut costs, but perhaps we’ve taken it too far. Nearly 50 percent of Americans take prescription drugs, with the number of people taking more than five drugs rising 70 percent between 2000 and 2008.”
How Did America become a Nation Hooked on Prescription Drugs?
Running for election isn’t cheap. Political parties need access to funds in order to have successful campaigns for office. It’s hard to find an exact number, but just looking at things, we know it’s a lot more money than most of us will ever see. This money has to come from somewhere. Individuals are only allowed to contribute $2,900 to an election, with slightly higher amounts for other donors.
$2,900 barely buys the average politician’s tie these days. The political office has been and continues to be a place where the money goes to disappear. The misappropriation of public funds has led to enormous deficits from state to state as well as for the nation in general. As a temporary patch to the hole in the financial wallet of the nation, state lawmakers have looked to cannabis legalization as a potential answer. By taxing cannabis extremely high, they can start to generate millions and even billions of dollars, which they can put their dirty hands on. They’ve misappropriated funds for this long. Do you really think they’re going to change their ways now? Most American politicians have so many pharma investors that you can actually see latex gloves in their mouths when they speak, from the hands of their pharma contributors, puppeteering them. If pharma was as good as it claims and worked so well, people wouldn’t be ditching it for alternative medicines like medical cannabis.
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