Profiting from the ‘war on drugs’
Follow the money. It tells an interesting tale and explains a lot about drug policies in America. After last week’s column on medical marijuana, someone suggested taking a look at who profits from the “war on drugs” — and the extent to which lobbyists control the issue. Then the headline appeared in Monday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Drugmakers fight states’ opioid limits.
I encourage you to go back and read the entire article, but the gist of it is that manufacturers of prescription painkillers have employed hundreds of lobbyists and devoted millions of dollars to fight legislative measures in all 50 states that seek to combat the prescription opioids crisis.
The team of writers from the Associated Press and state paper noted that in Arkansas, the ratio of prescriptions to patients exceeds national averages. There are more prescriptions written than there are residents in the state, according to 2015 figures from IMS Health, a company that reports being the largest vendor of U.S. physician prescribing information.
“Prescription opioids are the cousins of heroin and are prescribed to relieve pain,” the article said. “The drugs are at the heart of a crisis that has cost 165,000 Americans their lives and pushed countless more to addiction.” The article continued, “Sales of the drugs quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, rising in tandem with overdose deaths. 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. Arkansas health and law enforcement officials have described the misuse of opioids as an ‘epIdemic.’”
The article also pointed out the thousands of dollars that have landed in the campaign coffers of Republican U.S. Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton — and their Democratic counterparts Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, who preceded them.
After you read that article, do an Internet search of who profits from the war on drugs. Several interesting articles popped up on my Google search. One was from the April 2012 issue of Reason magazine. If you are unfamiliar with the print publication and its online presence, both are editorial products of the Reason Foundation, which promotes individual liberty, free markets and the rule of law — principles that I appreciate.
The 2012 article focuses on four industries that profit from the war on drugs and the extent to which they lobby for and against issues that suit their interests. The legalization of marijuana, for example, could impact the sale of alcohol and opioids, so those manufacturers fight its legalization. Prescription pills and booze bottle kill people, but they are legal. Politicians who won’t take marijuana money are lining their pockets with dollars from these industries.
One, the drug treatment industry: “It wants the government to direct users—both hard and recreational— into addiction treatment facilities instead of jail, and it wants the government to require insurance companies to cover addiction treatment like it would any other illness. This doesn’t mean the addiction recovery industry doesn’t have voluntary clients, just that it wants government to declare drug use a disease, force anyone who has it to receive very specific treatment from very specific doctors, and have a third party pay the bill. The addiction services industry didn’t get this power by wishing for it. Since 1989, addiction services trade groups and individual companies have donated a combined $869,405 to political campaigns and spent almost $5 million lobbying in order to secure direct and indirect government funding of addiction ser-
vices.”
Two, private prisons: “Corrections Corp. of America, the country’s largest private prison company, has donated almost $4.5 million to political campaigns and dropped another $18 million on lobbying in the last two decades. The company, and others like it, is up to its elbows in drug war spending. Its facilities house low-level drug users and contain in-house rehabilitation programs. CCA even trains its own drug-sniffing dogs. In 2010, the company had revenue of $1.67 billion. Florida-based GEO Group, which has given almost $4 million in campaign contributions and spent $2.28 million on lobbying since 1999, had revenue of $1.27 billion in 2010.”
Three, alcohol: “Marijuana legalization advocates like to point out that pot is safer than alcohol, if for no other reason than no one has ever died from a marijuana overdose. They also like to point out that the booze industry has been working to subvert drug policy reform for decades, at least going back to the early 90s when the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) FOIA’d the donation records for the Partnership for a DrugFree America and found that it had accepted large donations from Jim Beam and Anheuser Busch.”
And four, drug testing supplies: This industry backed the expansion of workforce testing and initiatives connected to the testing of welfare recipients. “These groups have successfully pushed for the passage of drug testing laws and regulations across the country, and were behind the Drug Testing Integrity Act of 2008, which made it illegal to buy, sell, manufacture, or advertise ‘cleansing’ products that promise to help consumers ‘defraud a drug test.’ A new federal law that allows states to drug test people seeking public assistance is proving to be another boon to such companies.”
Reason dug a little deeper and found that Florida had spent $118,140 testing welfare applicants — $45,780 more than it would have spent if it had just given welfare to the 108 applicants who tested positive for drugs.
Bottom line: If the war on drugs were won, lots of folks would be out of business or experiencing much lower profit margins. So the battle continues with no victory in sight.