Disband DEA & FDA

DISBAND FDA & DEA -

by Bonnie Colleen McCool

Cancer Monthly in May 2006 published an article stating the Food and Drug Administration lost more credibility by insisting "no sound scientific studies" support the medical use of marijuana, dismissing and contradicting highly regarded scientists. Cannabis medicines were once the “drugs of choice” in the United States. Until they were declared illegal, they had been used in about 30 prescription medicines for a 100 specific medical problems.

The FDA reeks of corruption. It has not approved any herbs or vitamins for the treatment of illnesses. They are owned by big pharma. Read: "Tyranny in the USA: The true history of FDA raids on healers, vitamin shops and supplement companies."You can learn more about the true history of the FDA and Big Pharma in Mike Adams tell-all book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them.

This agency needs to be disbanded! The naturally medicinal cannabis plant and other medicinal herbs scare the pharmaceutical industry because they cannot be patented, as medicine. Many herbs and other natural occurring compounds don't need their tweaking to be good medicine and are indeed synthesized in many patent medicine formulas.

Patients testify to Cannabis' help in treating chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, gastrointestinal (GI) tract disorders and HIV/AIDS! A 2007 Columbia University in New York study reported smoking average strength cannabis was as effective as taking 8 times the US FDA recommended dose of Marinol! The patients who smoked cannabis dramatically reduced their requests for over-the-counter medications and reported better sleep patterns.

Studies have shown it to slow the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice namely, virus-induced leukemia, lung and breast cancer. In another study THC destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats!

Harassing the sick and dying over their medicinal use is the most un-American activity I can think of!

Some scientists speculate that cannabinoids play a protective role in the brain, slowing the rate of disease. A study has shown THC is far more effective than available Alzheimer's drugs to treat symptoms and halt the disease's progression. Ooooops! Who spilled the beans? Scientists and patients all over the world, that's who!

A Financial Times article estimates 80,000 people died as a result of taking the FDA approved drug VIOXX ! "Ninety-two percent of FDA advisory meetings in the last decade included a member with financial ties to drug companies, according to USA Today -- the FDA calls them sponsors -- and federal law against using experts with financial conflicts of interest was waived 800 times. Too bad THAT can't be on the warning label."

As you will learn in the article, "Relevant nonpartisan journalism Speaks Truth to Power," Congressional oversight of the FDA began to decline with passage of a highly dubious law allowing the industry to pay so-called user fees as a way to speed FDA approval of new drugs.

David Willman in a superb investigative series that won a Pulitzer Prize, found that the FDA had become a partner rather than a supposed watchdog of the pharmaceutical industry . They have many lobbyists, who fill the campaign coffers of friendly lawmakers, and dangle high-paying jobs before these so called overseers to get them to look the other way.

There has been no Congressional investigation of the FDA's role in approving any of the seven drugs that caused needless deaths and injuries on their watch, for sure, the lawmakers who were themselves partners of the industry didn't instigate one. Be aware psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty and there is a link between psychotropic drugs and violence including school violence!

An FDA internal whistleblower, medical officer David Graham, called Vioxx a "profound regulatory failure" by an agency "incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx." For at least a decade, the congressional abandonment of oversight of the FDA turned a blind eye while the thousands of American people died! Read more about "The FDA's Deadly Track Record."

The cannabis plant may not be harmless but it has never caused an overdose death. It is definitely a safer choice, compared to tobacco use which is responsible for over a thousand deaths a day. It is safer than alcohol which is related to at least 300 deaths per day and alcohol makes domestic violence 8xs more likely, cannabis does not. Taking children out of homes of nonviolent cannabis users and placing them in homes in which alcohol is the drug of choice is policy bordering on insanity!

Deaths and needless injuries happen too often in botched paramilitary drug raids. Daniel Rocha was shot in the back by Austin Texas police, witnesses say he was on the ground defenseless. Daniel smoked marijuana sometime in the last month before he died. Police seized 2 ounces of marijuana at the Sunrise Florida home of Anthony Diotaiuto after shooting him 10 times.

In Atlanta, Georgia a 92-year-old woman, Kathryn Johnston, was shot and killed.. Three officers burst into her home with a no-knock warrant based on false information. These officers repeatedly lied to judges to obtain search warrants, falsely claimed confidential informants purchased drugs and falsified warrants to meet goals set by their superiors. Official lawlessness rules as it did during alcohol prohibition.

The military and law enforcement have recruitment problems because current policy attracts those interested in working in a corrupt system and milking it, thereby creating a pervasive disrespect for the law.

Our system could run with the milk of human kindness, if America had the ethical, efficient and constitutionally limited government our founders envisioned.

"In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I've found some pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at pointblank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all five.)"

According to Radley Balko former policy analyst at CATO specializing in "nanny state" issues and author of the study "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Drug Raids in America."

The last 25 years have seen a 1,300% increase in the number of paramilitary raids on American homes. The vast majority of these are to serve routine drug warrants, including for offenses as trivial as marijuana possession. The groundbreaking study, "Overkill," provides a legal, historical, and policy background explaining the trend.

Cato scholar Radley Balko offers a critique of "no-knock" and "short-notice" raids, explains how such confrontational tactics cause violence rather than lessening risks, and offers recommendations for reform. Accompanying Balko's report, Cato is also releasing an interactive raid map that plots examples of mistaken raids from 1985 through 2007, including cases in which in innocent people and offenders with no history of violence were killed as well as cases resulting in the needless death or injury of a police officer. The map also shows other examples of paramilitary police excess and unnecessary raids on doctors and sick people.

Our DEA overseers have harassed the sick and dying, shamed and destroyed families, locked up and killed many (including enforcement) over one of the safest therapeutically active plants known to man. While FDA"overseers"allowed more pharmaceutical killers on the market, suppressed the truth about cannabis and failed to grant the terminally ill access to investigational drugs. Both agencies exacerbate problems instead of solving them. They should be disbanded.