Pharmaceutical Companies Battling to Keep The Status Quo.....

If Terrorists killed 165,000 Americans people would freak out.

But when Pharmaceutical companies kill 165,000 Americans nobody even bats an eye.

If you sell Heroin in the back alley you will be cuffed and sent to jail. But when Pharmaceutical companies sell Opioids (prescription Heroine) the police do not even take notice.

Not only have the pharmaceutical companies helped kill 165,000 Americans but they want to keep right on doing it. They will do whatever is necessary to make sure the status quo remains. That means they make lots of money as people get addicted and die. That is all good business.

http://abcnews.go.com/…/drugmakers-fought-state-opioid-limi…

The makers of prescription painkillers have adopted a 50-state strategy that includes hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to help kill or weaken measures aimed at stemming the tide of prescription opioids, the drugs at the heart of a crisis that has cost 165,000 Americans their lives and pushed countless more to crippling addiction.

a political powerhouse that spent more than $880 million nationwide on lobbying and campaign contributions from 2006 through 2015 — more than 200 times what those advocating for stricter policies spent and more than eight times what the formidable gun lobby recorded for similar activities during that same period.

the drugmakers and allied advocacy groups employed an annual average of 1,350 lobbyists in legislative hubs from 2006 through 2015, when opioids' addictive nature came under increasing scrutiny.

"The opioid lobby has been doing everything it can to preserve the status quo of aggressive prescribing," said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing and an outspoken advocate for opioid reform. "They are reaping enormous profits from aggressive prescribing."

Prescription opioids are the synthetic cousins of heroin and morphine, prescribed to relieve pain. Sales of the drugs have boomed —quadrupling from 1999 to 2010 — and overdose deaths rose just as fast, totaling 165,000 this millennium. Last year, 227 million opioid prescriptions were doled out in the U.S., enough to hand a bottle of pills to nine out of every 10 American adults.