How the Death of Whitney Houston, and Countless Others, Could Have Been Prevented
My first reaction to the news of Houston’s death was to wonder if anyone ever taught her the basics of how-to-use-drugs-and-not-die. Essentially, we’re willing to let people die because we’re so fearful that teaching people how to use drugs in a less risky way “enables” them to keep using drugs. But shouldn’t we do whatever is necessary just to keep people alive? Alive long enough to help get them into drug treatment. Alive long enough to work through their troubles. Alive long enough to help them find some measure of peace in their lives.
Read the full editorial at:
AlterNet
NPR's This American Life Takes On The Police
Stories about people who have the right to remain silent... but choose not to exercise that right—including police officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests.
MORE
"Attractive Undercover Cop Poses As Student And Entraps Teens To 'Sell' Her Marijuana"
Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other. One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn't smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn't want the money -- he got it for her as a present. A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrested 31 students -- including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head.
Tony Bennett is Right: Legalizing Drugs Would Save Lives
It doesn't matter if you're hooked on alcohol, Xanax or illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine -- prohibition for some drugs stigmatizes all people struggling with addiction. Period. Addicts are not defined simply by their drug of choice nor the drug that is or is not their ultimate cause of death. Their entire lives are tragically plagued by the stigma that criminalization heaps upon them, and the marginalized underworld prohibition thrusts them into.
That is a painful and deadly component of the experience of anyone unlucky enough to live with a disease that, unlike cancer, our government tries to battle with handcuffs.
Read the full editorial at:
Huffington Post
North America
In a shocking about-face, the administration has launched a government-wide crackdown on medical marijuana
"Over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multiagency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush's record for medical-marijuana busts. "There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He's gone from first to worst.""
Read more at
RollingStone.com.
Marijuana Law Reform at the Statehouse 2012
"Each year, these bills are easier to introduce, there is less controversy, and the media reaction is generally neutral to positive," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of
NORML. "Baby boomers, medical marijuana, the Internet, and the state of the economy have all had an impact, even, finally, on legislators and their staffs," he explained.
"Before 1996, nobody invited NORML; now our staff is regularly going to meetings requested by legislators around the country," St. Pierre recalled. "First, we couldn't get them to return our phone calls; now they're calling us. Everything is in play because of activists around the country doing years of work."
Read the full article at:
Stop the Drug War
New Definition of Addiction Stirs Up a Scientific Storm
Indeed, the new neurologically focused definition debunks, in whole or in part, a host of common conceptions about addiction. Addiction, the statement declares, is a “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” illness characterized by (a damaged decision-making (affecting learning, perception, and judgment and by (b persistent risk and/or recurrence of relapse; the unambiguous implications are that (a addicts have no control over their addictive behaviors and (b total abstinence is, for some addicts, an unrealistic goal of effective treatment.
The bad behaviors themselves are all symptoms of addiction, not the disease itself. "The state of addiction is not the same as the state of intoxication," the ASAM takes pains to point out. Far from being evidence of a failure of will or morality, the behaviors are the addict's attempt to resolve the general "dysfunctional emotional state" that develops in tandem with the disease. In other words, conscious choice plays little or no role in the actual state of addiction; as a result,
a person cannot choose not to be addicted.
Read the full article at:
The Fix
Should Officials Be Allowed to Search Students' Bras for Drugs?
A divided state Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of the student, finding the search was “degrading, demeaning and highly intrusive.” The state appealed that decision. The state Supreme Court decision is expected to affect 1.5 million public school students.
Powell said the search was not unreasonable because there was “a compelling governmental need” that outweighed the rights of individual privacy, she said. The school’s primary responsibility “was to promote the health and safety of students,” she said.
Read the full article at:
The Washington Post
Europe/UK
Health Alert Over Drug Sold as “Safe Ketamine”
Methoxetamine, known as MXE or "mexxy", mimics the effects of the banned anaesthetic ketamine, and its use has grown over the last six months in Britain as well as northern Europe, say charity workers.
A survey of drug trends published in November showed that the use of both ketamine, which is a class C drug, and methoxetamine, its "legal doppelganger", is on the rise in several areas of the UK.
Read the full article at:
The Independent
Mobsters Without Borders [documentary]
This documentary film investigates the European leader’s cocaine importing network stretching from Calabria to Milan, Italy and from Costa del Sol, Spain to Ruhr Valley, Germany. Infiltrating sectors such as real estate and healthcare to government contracting and marketing to laundering illegal drug trafficking and weapons smuggling profits, Calabrian mobs permeate economies across the European Union.
Latin America
Mexico Seizes 15 Tons of Methamphetamine
“The big thing it shows is the sheer capacity that these superlabs have in Mexico,” said Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the
Drug Enforcement Administration. “When we see one lab with the capability to produce such a mass tonnage of meth, it begs a question: What else is out there?”
Read the full article at:
New York Times
Off the Beaten Path, Chile Still Caught in Drug Supply Chain
Sharing a border with two of the world's top cocaine producers -- Bolivia and Peru -- makes Chile's involvement in the narcotics trade a virtual inevitability. However, unlike its northern neighbors, Chile is strictly a drug-consuming nation. With Brazil and Argentina, it accounts for two thirds of cocaine consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean. Alone, it makes up 10 percent, according to the
UN's 2011 World Drug Report.
Read the full article at:
InSight
Middle East
No Help for Kashmir's Female Drug Addicts
"Keeping in view the social stigma which female drug addicts face, it is important to set up a de-addiction centre for them," said Sameena (name changed , a 22-year-old college student and former drug addict.
Sameena said she began with glue sniffing "for fun" during her school days and then moved on to opiates. Fear of social stigma and lack of facilities forced her parents to take her outside Kashmir for treatment. Sameena has been under medication for 11 months now.
Read the full article at:
IPS News
Other News
New Exile Nation Video: Lynette Shaw
Lynette Shaw was the owner of the very first legal cannabis dispensary in the State of California, which she opened in Fairfax in the early 1990s. A key figure in the fight to legalize medical cannabis, Shaw's life as an activist began when her home was raided by police, after a dealer turned her in. But that's only one small aspect of her extraordinary life story, recounted here, which at one point saw her living underground while authorities scoured the world for her, after she became a suspect in the 1980 overdose death of actor John Belushi.
Lynette Shaw from
Charles B Shaw on
Vimeo.
View the entire extended interview archive for The Exile Nation Project.
Newsletters and Weekly Features
Continue reading "Whitney Houston's Passing Prompts Call For Drug Policy Reform" >
Following the
death of Whitney Houston,
Tony Bennett has called for the legalisation of hard drugs. Houston would not have died, Bennett said, if drug users were not forced "to hide".
Arianna appeared on Monday morning's edition of "CNN Starting Point With Soledad O'Brien," joining a roundtable to discuss singer Tony Bennett's call to legalize drugs. Bennett's comments came on Saturday evening after singer Whitney Houston died at 48.
The Land of the Free punishes or imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation. This collection of testimonials from criminal offenders, family members, and experts on America’s criminal justice system puts a human face on the millions of Americans subjugated by the US Government's 40 year, one trillion dollar social catastrophe: The War on Drugs; a failed policy underscored by fear, politics, racial prejudice and intolerance in a public atmosphere of "out of sight, out of mind."
LYNETTE SHAW
Lynette Shaw was the owner of the very first legal cannabis dispensary in the State of California, which she opened in Fairfax in the early 1990s.
A key figure in the fight to legalize medical cannabis, Shaw's life as an activist began when her home was raided by police, after a dealer turned her in.
But that's only one small aspect of her extraordinary life story, recounted here, which at one point saw her living underground while authorities scoured the world for her, after she became a suspect in the 1980 overdose death of actor John Belushi.
This complete interview is #21 of 100 in The Exile Nation Project's archive, which can be found on ExileNation.org.
Lynette Shaw from
Charles B Shaw on
Vimeo.
The health care products giant Johnson & Johnson continued to market an artificial hip in Europe and elsewhere overseas after the Food and Drug Administration rejected its sale in the United States based on a review of company safety studies.During that period, the company also continued to sell in this country a related model, which earlier went on the market using a regulatory loophole that did not require a similar safety review.
It is not known how many people overseas received the replacement hip after the agency decided in 2009 not to approve it, nor the number who received the closely linked implant sold in this country. During some eight years on the market, the two implants were used in about 93,000 patients worldwide, about one-third of them in the United States. Both models were based on the same component, an all-metal hip socket cup that experts say was faulty in design.
The DePuy orthopedic division of Johnson & Johnson, citing declining sales, began phasing out both models of the device — formally known as an articular surface replacement device, which DePuy marketed under the name ASR — in November 2009 and formally recalled them in August 2010 amid reports in databases of orthopedic patients abroad showing they were failing prematurely at high rates.
But in a confidential letter, the F.D.A. told Johnson & Johnson in August 2009 that company studies and clinical data submitted to gain approval in the United States to sell the model available overseas were inadequate to determine the implant’s safety and effectiveness, according to a summary of the letter reviewed by The New York Times.
The agency also told the company it would need added clinical data to pursue the application, a process that would probably have taken a year or more. DePuy’s receipt of the notice came as regulators and surgeons abroad as well as doctors in this country were raising serious questions about growing failures of both models of the implant.
A spokeswoman for DePuy confirmed that the company had received the agency’s so-called nonapproval letter. But the spokeswoman, Mindy Tinsley, declined to release the letter or to respond to questions about when, or if, DePuy disclosed the ruling to doctors, patients, investors or regulators abroad.
A principal researcher on the clinical studies submitted by the company to the F.D.A. said he was not informed of the agency’s decision. Also, a review of publicly available information indicates that the company did not discuss the agency’s nonapproval letter in financial reports or in presentations to analysts while the device remained on the market.
There is no suggestion that Johnson & Johnson broke the law. Regulatory standards in other countries, like those in Europe, for approving the sale of medical devices are typically lower than here. A spokeswoman for a British regulatory agency, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said that companies like Johnson & Johnson were not required to notify it when the F.D.A. refused to approve a product that was used in patients there.
However, the F.D.A.’s rejection may further deepen the company’s legal and financial problems surrounding the ASR. Last month, the company took a special $3 billion charge, much of it related to anticipated legal and medical expenses associated with the recall. An estimated 5,000 lawsuits involving the device are pending, including some from patients crippled by tiny particles of metallic debris shed by the implants.
William Vodra, a lawyer who specializes in F.D.A. regulation, said that, in general, drug and medical device makers typically disclose nonapproval letters if they might have a material impact on a company’s finances. Mr. Vodra added that apart from that financial calculation, there was no hard-and-fast rule about making such rulings public.
Mr. Vodra said that if a company decided to withhold a nonapproval letter that contained important safety information about a device used by doctors, it could face damage to its brand. “They have to think long and hard of the reputational impact,” he said.
The handling of the ASR highlights how the F.D.A., by keeping its approval process confidential, may affect the health and safety of patients. An agency spokesman, Morgan Liscinsky, declined to disclose the letter on the ASR, saying the agency had a policy of not releasing such notices because they might contain confidential business information.
Next Page »
- 1
- 2
President Obama's overall approval rating has climbed to 50 percent, according to a new poll. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
With the economy showing signs of life, so too are President Obama's re-election hopes, according to a poll released Tuesday
by the New York Times and CBS News.
The president's overall approval rating has climbed to 50 percent, up five points from the beginning of the year. Forty-three percent of Americans said they disapproved of his job performance. On his handling of the economy, 44 percent of poll respondents approved, compared to 50 percent who said they disapproved.
When respondents were asked if they thought the economy was getting better, getting worse or staying about the same, 34 percent said better, 22 percent said worse and 43 percent said about the same. That represents a turnaround from September, when only 12 percent said the economy was improving, compared to 43 percent who said it was getting worse.
Mr. Obama received lower marks for his approach to dealing with the federal budget deficit, with 59 percent of respondents saying they disapproved. Only a third said they approved of his handling of the issue.
Still, the improved economic outlook has Mr. Obama in good shape against the four remaining Republican presidential candidates seeking the opportunity to challenge him in the general election.
President Obama leads Mitt Romney by six percentage points (48/42 , Rick Santorum by seven (49/41 , Ron Paul by 11 (50/39 and Newt Gingrich by 18 (54/36 .
The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg and Allison Kopicki
put February's snapshot into perspective:
Polls can capture only a specific moment in time. To the extent that Mr. Obama's improved standing is tied to the economy, it is tenuous. Grim economic news continues to trickle out of Europe. Iranian saber rattling is increasing the sense of instability in the Middle East. Even the White House warns that jobless numbers are as likely to rise in the coming months as they are to dip.
THE BATTLE FOR MICHIGAN
As polls show Romney trailing Santorum in the state where he was born, the former Massachusetts governor is stressing his Michigan roots in an ad that shows him driving a Chrysler through neighborhoods.
"Now when I grew up in Michigan it was exciting to be here. I remember going to the Detroit auto show with my dad. That was a big deal. How in the world did an industry and its leaders and its unions get in such a fix that they lost jobs, that they lost their future?" Romney says in the ad. "President Obama did all these things that liberals have wanted to do for years. The fact that you've got millions of Americans out of work, home values collapsing, people here in Detroit are distressed."
He ends with a pledge: "I want to make Michigan stronger and better. Michigan has been my home and this is personal."
Watch the ad
here or below:
The new TV spot and
his op-ed in Tuesday's Detroit Free Press are all part of Romney's strategy to shield himself from attacks for
his 2008 stance against the auto bailouts for Chrysler and General Motors, actions that remain popular in the state.
But Michigan Democrats are crying foul. In a Tuesday afternoon conference call, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm charged that Romney had "stabbed us in the back in our darkest hour" by calling for the car manufacturers to go through the bankruptcy process.
While acknowledging that all four GOP hopefuls opposed the auto bailouts, Granholm contended Romney's stance was "particularly acute" given his Michigan ties. "All of them are wrong," Granholm said. "But for Romney, in particular, it shows that the man has no principles, no core."
Santorum began airing a new television ad of his own in Michigan on Tuesday,
a sunny, 30-second spot that includes video of the former Pennsylvania senator on the campaign trail and with his wife and children.
"Who has the best chance to beat Obama?" the male narrator asks at the start. "Rick Santorum, a full-spectrum conservative."
The ad goes on to tout Santorum's "rock solid" positions on values issues, support for Tea Party principles and his foreign policy experience. The spot also highlights the his jobs plan that aims to bolster the manufacturing sector.
It closes with the line: "Rick Santorum, a trusted conservative who gives us the best chance to take back America."
Politico has
an early look at another Santorum campaign spot that takes direct aim at "Romney's negative attack machine." The humorous ad uses a hulking Romney doppelganger with a machine gun firing mud at a cardboard cut-out of Santorum, with all of the shots missing their intended target. The punch line comes when the mud splatters on the Romney stand-in's white dress shirt, with the narrator saying, "In the end, Mitt Romney's ugly attacks are going to backfire."
Campaigning Tuesday in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which holds its caucuses in March, Santorum asserted that Romney's efforts to pitch himself as a conservative are not authentic.
"Gov. Romney is now casting himself in this new role as a conservative and he has no track record of having ever been elected as one," Santorum said. "That raises a lot of questions for people as to whether, when the primary is over, whether he'll still be a conservative."
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found Santorum leading Romney in popularity. But it also showed Romney
regaining some of the traction he lost with independents.
Jon Cohen writes:
60 percent of Republicans view Romney favorably; it's 61 percent for Santorum. Romney also gets nearly double the number of unfavorable reviews as about one in four Republicans expressed no opinion about Santorum.
Among Republicans, Santorum has jumped from 48 to 61 percent since early January. The increase is entirely among Republicans without college diplomas, echoing some of the main intra-party cleavages between Santorum and Romney. Those with college degrees are unmoved over this period of time, with still largely favorable views of the former senator.
That might be one reason Romney boosters want to bring Santorum down a notch. The pro-Romney Restore our Future super PAC is taking aim at Santorum with a new spot airing in Michigan, Ohio and Arizona focusing on Santorum's votes to increase the debt ceiling. Watch it
here.
PAYROLL PUSH
As the NewsHour went on air Tuesday night, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was presenting a deal on extending the payroll tax cut, payments for doctors that serve Medicare beneficiaries and unemployment insurance benefits to his GOP conference.
The Takeaway's Todd Zwillich outlined the broad parameters of the still-in-the-works deal in a conversation with Judy Woodruff.
Watch.
A Republican aide familiar with the talks told the Morning Line what members are hearing behind closed doors.
"The plan provides temporary tax relief for American families and takes off the table a false political attack the President and congressional Democrats wanted to use all year long -- that somehow Republicans were standing in the way of a middle class tax cut. There are no job-killing tax hikes to pay for more government spending," the aide said.
Among the details the House GOP is still reviewing in a Wednesday morning meeting: Unemployment benefits will last a maximum of 63 weeks in most states, and people getting the money must be searching for a job. Anyone who lost a job because of a failed drug test would be subject to drug screening before getting benefits.
The "doc fix" payment to Medicare doctors would last through the end of the year.
The aide noted that government spending in the deal is "fully offset" with cuts and reforms and said the proposal includes cuts to the president's health care law. But in a signal that Republicans have given in to the political reality that they were losing on the issue, the aide noted that the "underlying policies are flawed."
Democrats still need to sign off on the details, but aides were feeling confident Tuesday night that a deal will indeed be forged. Should everyone at the table agree on Wednesday, members could still vote on Friday and head home for their planned President's Day recess.
However, as President Obama said Tuesday during an appearance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, "[Y]ou can't take anything for granted here in Washington until my signature is actually on it."
2012 LINE ITEMS
Texas officials are acknowledging
the April presidential primary will have to move due to redistricting legal battles. Some are advocating May 22 as the new date.
Santorum mega donor Foster Friess told Politico's Ken Vogel that
he tried to convince Gingrich mega donor Sheldon Adelson to support Santorum and also planned to solicit donations from donors linked to the libertarian billionaire industrialist Koch brothers. Their most recent gathering of major donors, held late last month in Indian Wells, Calif., was attended by both Adelson and Friess. A source close to the Adelsons dismissed the Bloomberg report that Adelson intended to cut off the flow of cash to the pro-Gingrich super PAC, explaining Adelson has not made it known whether he intends to continue contributing to Winning Our Future and would not be influenced by pressure from other donors or candidates. Meanwhile, Gingrich's campaign is considering assisting the fundraising of a supportive super PAC.
A Quinnipiac University poll of released Wednesday
showed Santorum leading Romney 36 percent to 29 percent among Republican voters in Ohio, one of the big Super Tuesday prizes on March 6. The survey also found that President Obama leads all of his potential GOP opponents in the Buckeye State, with Romney posing the toughest challenge.
Eric Russell of the Bangor Daily News writes about the pressure building on the Maine Republican Party
to reconsider its declaration that Romney won Saturday's caucuses. The state GOP had called the race despite Washington County having postponed its caucuses because of a forecast of snow. A review of town-by-town results suggests that other communities might not have had their votes counted.
Given the difficulties experienced by Iowa, Nevada and Maine, the Washington Post's Felicia Sonmez asks the question,
"Should parties say farewell to caucuses?"
Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz writes that redistricting shenanigans in Pennsylvania
could muck up the presidential primary calendar.
The Los Angeles Times' Mark Barbarak and John Hoeffel report that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
has been selected chairman of the Democratic National Convention to be held in Charlotte, N.C., this September.
Gingrich took a break from campaigning Tuesday in California
to visit the San Diego Zoo. As Morning Line readers know, the former House speaker is a
well-known lover of zoos and
zoo animals.
Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times
reports on the "Dogs Against Romney" rally outside the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York on Tuesday. The protest was organized to draw attention to the story of how 25 years ago Romney drove from Boston to Ontario, Canada, with the family's Irish Setter, Seamus, in a carrier strapped to the roof of the car.
TOP TWEETS
SuperPAC parade MT @
HotlineReid Romney Restore Our Future buy: $640k in MI, $121k in AZ, $252k in OH, $184k in TN, $118k in GA & $40k in OK
February 15, 2012
Newt Gingrich feeding a panda at the San Diego Zoo
twitter.com/ccadelago/stat...
February 14, 2012
The Obama campaign buys Google ad for "Westminster Dog Show" to mock Mitt on Mutt-gate.
politico.com/politico44/201...
February 14, 2012
OUTSIDE THE LINES
Roll Call's Emma Dumain writes that some of the Tea Party freshmen on Capitol Hill are finding
"It's not easy to get the government to stop giving you money -- or to give money back the way you want to." She notes, "In the 13 months since they entered office, these Members have found themselves running up against institutional barriers that have kept them from making gestures as seemingly simple as returning cash from their office budgets to the Treasury Department or opting out of the Congressional retirement system."
Club for Growth President Chris Chocola wrote an op-ed in the National Review Tuesday
announcing the PAC's endorsement of Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock in his GOP primary bid to unseat Sen. Richard Lugar.
In the editorial, Chocola cited earmarks as the "final straw" for the the group's decision to endorse the six-term incumbent's rival. (It's a theme Mourdock is using himself in
a new TV ad called "Earmarks."
But even with the Club for Growth endorsement, Murdock faces a stiff headwind. A National Research poll commissioned by Lugar's campaign
showed him leading his challenger 55 percent to 30 percent. Not to mention his $4 million war chest compared with Mourdock's paltry $362,000 in the bank as of Dec. 31.
A WBUR poll released Tuesday
showed a close race for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, with Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren leading Republican Sen. Scott Brown 46 percent to 43 percent. The three-point advantage for Warren is within the poll's margin of error.
The Newseum has an exhibit opening Friday called
"Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press." It explores how the media's coverage of elections has evolved from William McKinley's 1896 front-porch campaign to Barack Obama's web-driven model in 2008. Among the items on display: the "Florida, Florida, Florida" white board used by NBC's Tim Russert on election night 2000 and the suit, flag lapel pin and eyeglasses worn by Tina Fey as Sarah Palin for a "Saturday Night Live" sketch during the 2008 campaign.
The NewsHour tackles Linsanity.
Watch.
NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns contributed to this report.
ON THE TRAIL
All events are listed in Eastern Time.
Rick Santorum campaigns in North Dakota, touring Hess Oil in Tioga at 11 a.m., hosting a Tioga town hall at 1:30 p.m. and holding a rally in Fargo at 8 p.m.
Mitt Romney visits office furniture manufacturer Compatico in Grand Rapids, Mich., for a roundtable on jobs at 5:50 p.m. and a rally at 6:15 p.m.
Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have no public events scheduled.
All future events can be found on our
Political Calendar:
For more political coverage, visit our
politics page.
Sign up here to receive the Morning Line in your inbox every morning.
Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.
Follow the politics team
on Twitter:
@cbellantoni,
@burlij,
@elizsummers.
It ends a nasty confrontation between Dan and Rachel Allgyer, Amish dairy farmers with operations based in Pennsylvania where commercial sales of raw milk are legal, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA , which caught Rainbow making deliveries inside Maryland and the District of Columbia.
A spokesman for FDA praised the judge's action, pointing to past warnings ignored by Rainbow Acres to cease interstate sales of raw milk.
FDA's investigation began in 2009 when one of its Baltimore-based agents joined a club, via the Internet, that promised delivery of Rainbow Acres raw milk to a Maryland home.
While some states allow raw milk sales, federal law prohibits it from interstate commerce. FDA's controversial investigation of Rainbow Acres included an undercover string operation and a pre-dawn raid.
Since the controversy began, the Amish dairy farmer picked up many supporters in a campaign with national implications. The most prominent was Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the raw milk drinker who happens to be a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President.
Before FDA's case against Allgyers played out, Paul proposed a bill to make interstate sales of raw milk legal. Paul never said he was getting raw milk from the Amish dairy, but during the course of the dispute it came out that a Washington D.C.-based Grassfed On the Hill Buying Club was being supplied by Rainbow Acres.
Deliveries to about 500 club members meant crossing the state and district lines that make up the Washington D.C. metropolitan area.
The buying group's statement confirmed that Rainbow Acres is closing down in reaction to the order by federal Judge Lawrence F. Stengel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, based in Philadelphia.
"Dan and Rachel Allgyer have determined that they will discontinue service to our group and close down the farm," the buyer's club said in a statement. "Dan has served many of us for more than six years and he is very saddened to have to make this decision but the stress and strain that his family has been under for the past few years due to the case and no the decision leaves them with no choice."
The twin violations of mislabeling the milk and use of interstate commerce to make sales were enough for Judge Stengel to sign the permanent injunction against the Lancaster-based dairy.
Stengel, a former Lancaster Catholic High School teacher who was appointed to the federal court in 2004 by President George W. Bush, warned the Allgyers that if they resumed operations, the next time the court would impose fines equalling the FDA's investigative costs.
After that, Rainbow Acres told customers it was out of business. Its supporters continue to point out its raw milk was never found to be contaminated. The same multistate area, however, is currently experiencing a Campylobacter outbreak associated with another Pennsylvania raw milk dairy farm.
Dana Thornton had previously rejected the state's offer of PTI, saying she 'didn't do anything wrong.' when she allegedly made the page to humiliate the Parsippany cop
Dana Thornton of Belleville appears in court in Morris County in this November file photo. Thornton, who allegedly created a Facebook page in the name of her former boyfriend, wants to enter the state's Pretrial Intervention program.
MORRIS COUNTY — A Belleville woman accused of creating a fake Facebook page to humiliate her ex-boyfriend – a Parsippany police detective – has changed her mind about her legal strategy.
Dana Thornton, 41, who is accused of identity theft, is seeking admission into the state’s Pretrial Intervention program, which could result in a dismissal of the charge, her new attorney, Vincent Sanzone, said today.
Thornton had previously rejected the state’s offer of PTI, saying she “didn’t do anything wrong.” That rejection was at the heart of a disagreement with her former attorney, Richie Roberts, who withdrew from the case in December saying Thornton “refused to follow my advice” and enter the program.
Thornton declined to comment on why she changed her mind. She allegedly created the Facebook page in the name of Parsippany narcotics detective Michael Lasalandra on which the impersonated officer admitted using drugs, having herpes and going to prostitutes. He was listed as saying, “I’m a sick piece of scum with a gun.”
Sanzone said today that he sees no reason his client won’t get into PTI.
“She has already applied for PTI and been accepted,” he said. “We’re going to work it out with the prosecutor’s office.”
But Thornton isn’t guaranteed admission into the program, according to officials.
During a hearing today in Superior Court in Morristown, Judge David Ironson gave Thornton and her attorney 30 days “to provide information about a potential PTI request.” He scheduled another court date for March 19.
Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Weber said the state will decide whether to put Thornton in PTI “depending on the kind of information we get. We don’t want to put her in PTI and then have her flunk out.”
Weber is also new to the case. Robert Schwartz, a former assistant prosecutor who had been handling the case but recently left the office, had said the state would not be making any more plea offers after Thornton previously rejected PTI.
PTI is a probation program which requires a defendant to meet with a probation officer regularly, stay out of legal trouble and meet other court-set conditions over a specific period of time. Charges are dismissed if a defendant successfully completes PTI.
During today’s hearing, Judge Ironson told Thornton that mail sent by court officials to Thornton’s post office box in Belleville had been returned, saying that is not her address.
“That’s where I get my mail,” Thornton replied, asking to see the returned items. Ironson said the court would continue to send mail to that address.
Two men have been charged after police discovered two illegal drug laboratories in Sydney's south-west yesterday.
Police say they have charged a senior member of the Hells Angels bikie gang over the discovery of two illegal drug laboratories earlier this week.
To outsiders, Sweden is known as a model economy; home to successful export-orientated companies and haven of social peace and justice. Yet, recent revelations around grievances in the privatised health and elderly care sectors make of Sweden mainly an excellent example of the worst excesses that the profit-motive can lead to in formerly state-run sectors.
Over the past two or three decades Sweden has indeed had the doubtful privilege of being quoted by the ultra-conservative US Heritage Foundation as an example for pension reform and the country has privatised large parts of the social services sector including primary education. Certainly one of the most extreme examples of market-optimism and anti-statism comes from the Stockholm County Council. Between 1998 and 2002, when a centre-right alliance controlled the county, public property for SEK 30bn has been sold off in the region of Stockholm and 25% of the social services have been outsourced to private providers. Deregulation and privatisation have particularly touched the health system including care for the elderly. By 2008 all of Stockholm’s major hospitals had become public limited companies (plc and 100% of Stockholm county’s wards were in private hands. The outcome of this situation provides an impressive and depressing summary of everything that critics of neoliberalism think is wrong with private provision of public services.
Shortly after the first wards in Stockholm were sold to private providers it became clear that the privatisation did not have the promised effect of brining down costs for the county council. Rather than decreasing, the costs of health services rose by as much as 12% in one year, leaving the council with a deficit of SEK 2.4bn by 2004, while the now private wards made handsome profits. Even more disturbingly: the shareholders of the now incorporated wards – in many cases the formerly council-employed GPs – paid themselves dividends amounting to as much as a million SEK per year (Dagens Nyheter March 3, 2007 . The source of these profits in the health service sector were tax payers’ money because the County Council continues to pay the health bills of its citizens. Former county council employees became thus entrepreneurs and tax-made millionaires within a couple of years after privatisation.
Soon, critical voices started to make themselves heard. The Council was accused of selling off the wards basically at the inventory price – not including any goodwill as would be the case in a takeover of a business by another. The Council justified this sellout of state property as a subsidy to start-up companies, which the new private wards were considered to be.
Yet, by 2007, the Stockholm County Council saw a need for action in face of increasing costs. The problem was quickly diagnosed, a solution found and the stage set for the second act of this Nordic drama: The raising costs were explained not by the increasing profits that went into private pockets, but by a lack of competition. There were simply not enough private providers on the ‘market’ and competition was not fierce enough. The Stockholm County Council elaborated hence a new programme called “Ward Choice Stockholm”. In a strive to bring down costs, Ward Choice Stockholm – that entered into force on January 1, 2008 – aimed at stimulating competition between health care providers, by cutting subsidies and making payment of services dependent on some simple metrics. The new metric that would determine how much the Council paid health care providers was the number of patients that they treated in a given period of time. Higher payments for socio-economic underprivileged areas – where language problems and other problems related to poverty make treatments more difficult and hence time consuming – were scrapped. This put pressure on health care providers to lower costs as best they could. Among the measures used by the private providers to attract new ‘customers’ were longer opening hours (evening opening , a free health check-up on registration (worth SEK 200 and freebees for new ‘clients’.
As so often, free competition between private providers did not lead to innovative solutions – other than freebees on registration – but greatly favoured the economically and politically powerful over other market participants.
Thus, in an open letter published in the Dagens Nyheter (DN – close to the liberal Folkpartiet – five GPs accused Filippa Reinfeldt – then Stockholm’s conservative County Commissioner of Health Services and wife of Sweden’s PM, Fredrik Reinfeldt – of favouring major players in the industry by attending their opening ceremony of a new ward (DN 21 October 2008 . The health care provider in question was Carema Care one of the four largest – and stock market listed – health care providers in Sweden.
Yet, from the Council’s perspective the increased competition soon started to bear fruits: in 2008 a private drug abuse clinic – Maria Beroendecentrum – lost a bid for renewal of its contract with Stockholm’s County Council to Carema Care. During Maria Beroendecentrum’s appeal over the regional Parliament’s decision to favour Carema’s bid, Folkparti county counsellor Birgitta Rydberg explained that the council was actually happy with how Maria Beroendecentrum had run the facility, but that Carema Care had promised to run the same facility for SEK 35m less (DN November 8, 2011 . This is a striking example that oftentimes competitive markets do not create a level playing field for perfect competition among equal participants, but that political influence or economic power (size help a lot in order to have an even leveller playing field for oneself.
To be sure one could argue that Carema Care, as a very large provider of health care services, simply was able to run said ward more efficiently due to economies of scale. A powerful argument indeed. Yet, over the past months it has increasingly become apparent that the reason for Carema Care’s competitive pricing may have a wholly different source than economies of scale: Since early October 2011, Dagens Nyheter run a series of articles about alleged shortcomings in the caring standards at two of Carema Care’s nursing homes in Stockholm. DN had been granted access to reports from nurses in different elderly care homes run by Carema Care complaining about working conditions and the standard of the facilities. The complaints concerned mainly cost cutting in terms of not replacing staff, cutting the budget to buy such basic necessities as toilet paper, soap and incontinence pads. The company had also ‘made redundant’ cleaning staff at one home, asking caring staff to do the cleaning themselves. The only exception being the day before announced inspections when a professional cleaning service provider would be brought in.
The reports on caring standards at Carema Care have grown worse by the day ever since: from rather harmless cost-saving schemes such as the introduction of a sensor in patient’s incontinence pads that allowed it to reduce the number of incontinence pads used by measuring the degree of dampness of the diaper [sic!], to cases where a patient had to sleep on the floor for several weeks because her bed was broken and could not be replaced, to truly horrific cases where the ward personal was aware of continuous sexual assaults on one elderly patient by another patient, but did nothing to prevent these assaults over a number of months!
Carema cannot fundamentally reject most of these claims. In a first reaction to the story about an elderly women sleeping on the floor, Kerstin Stalskog the company’s responsible for elderly care – in a statement full of (unintended irony – declared that there was no lack of beds in the concerned home, but that the ‘customer’ [sic!] had chosen to sleep on the floor (DN November 3, 2011 . (It remains an open question whether that is the sort of choice that free-marketers had in mind when they introduced ‘Ward Choice Stockholm’.
Carema Care has since created a weblog in order to address the numerous issues raised against it. The company now denies that a patient had to sleep on the floor and points out that the company had known about many of the grievances revealed by DN and it had started to take measures to improve the situation. Yet, a documentary on a public TV channel about the company, further added to the list of grievances. Revealing notably that a secret bonus programme was in place, which incentivised the managers of Carema’s homes to compete with other divisions in bringing down costs. (Carema has since announced that the bonus programme in its ‘elderly care’ division would be put on hold and a new system will be adopted based on quality indicators rather than costs .
The reason why these grievances went unnoticed for so long, has to do for one with the fact that Carema Care had a reputation among its employees of doing anything to keep staff in line. In at least two cases, it sued former employees for break of professional secrecy. Moreover, the public authorities contributed their bit to hush up any complaints from Carema’s employees or inspecting nurses did they dare speak up. Dangens Nyether reported that at least in one case a report by an inspector was altered in order to embellish the situation described. Entire paragraphs had been cancelled and others had been rewritten.
Why should the
The Carema Care scandal illustrates in impressive fashion the discrepancy between what market-believers promise when they initiate privatisations and deregulation policies and what the actual reality of competition is. To be sure, for 3i’s, Triton’s and KKR’s investors the deal was by a very far shot worth the while…but the belief in efficient markets and that individual actors’ selfish and profit-seeking behaviour in a market place will ultimately lead to optimal outcomes for societies as a whole seem laughable at best and dangerously cynical at worst in face of the transformation of healthcare in Sweden. The Carema case – which also touches other major healthcare providers such as Attendo – shows once again that privatisations are mainly about transferring public money to private individuals.
|
|||
February 14, 2012
Editors The Pulse of Natural Health. Thisnewsletter is copyrighted material (© 2012 by Alliance for Natural Health USA but we hope you will forward, copy, or reprint it without prior authorization.Just remember to note the source and date, and please link to original contenton the ANH-USA website. The information in The Pulse of Natural Health is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice. Readers are advised to consult a qualified professional about any issue regarding their health and well-being. |
Follow ANH-USA on ANH-USA Vice President Deborah Ray has been bringing quality health information to radio listeners since 1982 and has been consistently named among the top 100 most important talk radio hosts in America by |
|
| |
The legal case against former Victorian drug squad detective Paul Dale may be moved to a higher court.
A spine surgeon who was spearheading the development of a new artificial disc decided to use it to help a colleague with back pain. When he inserted the device, the patient's original pain went away but now he had pain in a new area. The patient sued, and the judge in the case ruled the surgeon had failed to follow his own recommendations for inserting the disc. The patient was awarded $650,000 plus legal costs.
Virginia spine surgeon Hallett H. Mathews, MD, was principal investigator for the Maverick, Medtronic's artificial disc that was going through the FDA clearance process at the time. Highly regarded by colleagues, Dr. Mathews had served on the board of directors of the North American Spine Society. When Connecticut spine surgeon Eric M. Garver, MD, told him he was suffering from chronic pain in his back and left leg, Dr. Mathews agreed to personally insert the Maverick disc in him.
The new device made the pain go away, but afterwards Dr. Garver started experiencing pain in a new area on the other side of his body. Patrick Mastroianni, MD, a Connecticut neurosurgeon who operated on Dr. Garver 2 weeks after the original surgery, said he retrieved a bone fragment the size of an olive that was lodged next to the disc and appeared to be pressing against the nerve root in his spine.
Removing the fragment alleviated some of Dr. Garver's pain, but the pain still could not be controlled, even by taking multiple drugs every day. Dr. Garver blamed Dr. Mathews and sued him in state court. Dr. Mathews would not settle the case, insisting he had been careful when inserting the artificial disc and had not violated the standard of care. Furthermore, he disagreed that he had left the bone fragment behind and also questioned whether it was causing the pain.
The judge disagreed with Dr. Mathews's version of the facts and ruled that he had violated his own standard of care. The standard for inserting the Maverick, formulated in part by the defendant himself, required that the disc space be "meticulously cleared of materials that might be driven into nerves behind the disc space by insertion of the artificial disc," the judge wrote.
Thomas Albro, an attorney for Dr. Garver, said Dr. Mathews had helped his client, but only to a point. "He had been suffering significant pain and Dr. Mathews successfully relieved it," the attorney said. "The problem was there was new pain after surgery." Michael Goodman, an attorney for Dr. Mathews, declined to comment.
After years of planning, the Maverick never reached the U.S. market. Before it could complete the FDA clearance process, Medtronic's competitor, Synthes, won a patent infringement lawsuit against Medtronic over the Maverick. Medtronic, which had been selling the Maverick around the world, withdrew it from all markets.
No comments:
Post a Comment