9 ms·

Is it just me or are we seeing more unabashed evidence of big government and big corporation collusion. The UK has numerous studies touting e-cgis as a more hea

Is it just me or are we seeing more unabashed evidence of big government and big corporation collusion. The UK has numerous studies touting e-cgis as a more healthy than traditional cigarettes, by a quite large margin. This as well as the DEA announcement of Kratom getting Tier 1 drug status (I'm not kidding) proves that big tobacco and pharma dont give 2 #s about your lives or health. I'm starting to lose faith in the US system. Fast.

jerkstate 10y ago
It's not their fault! As Heather Bresch and Martin Shkreli have been telling us, it's their fiduciary duty to their shareholders to manipulate government regulation in order to reap as much profit as possible.
- theseatoms 10y ago
  I don't know if you're being facetious, but this thread of logic seems to be a feature of the system. i.e. sunlight is the best disinfectant, PR feedback loop, etc, etc...
- sevenless 10y ago
  Shkreli was almost admirably honest. Let the wealthy accumulate enough and they'll buy the government. Capitalism without a very tight leash, democracy: choose one.
- witty_username 10y ago
  I would actually agree, to some degree. Sidenote: If you research more, Shkreli does have reasons for the price hike (research). He says that 60-70% of Daraprim is given for free and no one is dying from lack of access. I don't know how true it is, but he doesn't seem like a villain.
  - tristanj 10y ago
    >[Shkreli says that for most people,] Daraprim is given for free That's his PR pitch. Shkreli says he's giving drugs away for free, but really he's not. What's actually happening is his company makes a tax-deductible donation to an org that covers patients' co-pays, and leaves health insurers/Medicaid to cover the other 80% of the cost. Covering the co-pay keeps patients on the drug longer so his company can milk more money from insurers. It's a great moneymaking scheme. Shkreli didn't think of this himself, many drug companies do the same. Like you mentioned, I don't think he's a villain for doing this, he's just a smart guy who saw how drug companies abuse the system and tried to copy them. There's a lot more on this topic in this Bloomberg article http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/the-real-reason-big-pharma-wants-to-help-pay-for-your-prescription http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/the-real-r...
    - witty_username 10y ago
      Well, it's debatable whether that's "abuse". Companies need to make money to fund research (Shkreli says he's trying to find a "2016 version of Daraprim") and pay investors, and if patients aren't hurt, it's not necessarily bad.
      - tristanj 10y ago
        Well, if his actual intent was to help patients who couldn't afford his drug, then he could just sell it to them cheaply. I don't think people would consider that abuse. Instead he chooses make roundabout tax-deductible contributions to a "charity" that covers patients copay's in a legally questionable matter, dumping the cost on their insurer/US government. Is that just some clever money making scheme, or is that abuse? Depends on your perspective. Also, the patients are hurt. Who pays for these drug price hikes? That cost is paid by patients in their higher insurance premiums and American taxpayers in their dollars to Medicaid. Companies that do what Shkreli did make healthcare more expensive for all Americans. The underlying theme is that there are seriously perverse incentives issues in American healthcare that need to be resolved. Until then, some people will make a lot of money.
yarou 10y ago
Doesn't really matter, on the whole. Some shady Chinese pharma lab will create an analogue that is x times more potent, and the drop shipping "legal high" e-commerce sites will start carrying it. If anything, this will cause more deaths than prevent them.
- 10011100 10y ago
  Hmmm, yeah, I thought kratom was part of the whole synthetic cannabinoid [0] crackdown, because homeless people and juggalos were smoking themselves out of their gords? I figured it was all part of the "designer drug" problems that started with bath salts. But honestly, what do I know? All these retarded products remind me of the days when kids would cut class in middle school and smoke Lipton's tea in rolled up pages from a looseleaf notebook. (get off my lawn!) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids
  - oxide 10y ago
    kratom is usually sold as a powdered leaf. you can't smoke it, you can't snort it. you can make a tea out of it if you're diligent. a spoonful is usually swallowed as a powder with a thick juice. it is habit-forming. to an addict it can stop withdrawals in it's tracks, to an opiate naive person it can provide a buzz, nothing extreme and the subsequent withdrawals are also nothing too terrible. to an opiate addict it is, frankly, a life saver. this is something with the potential to free a person of an opiate addiction, provided they want to be free badly enough. it's quite easy to use kratom to replace your drug of choice, not for getting high, it'd be pointless. you simply use the kratom to keep the withdrawals at bay. then, simply get off the kratom after a few weeks of use. you do this because kratom withdrawal is more forgiving than something like heroin. this is impossible with methadone and suboxone. once you go on methadone, you better plan on never getting off. the withdrawals can quite literally last months. people have successfully transitioned from methadone/suboxone to kratom and then quit use of opiates altogether, being free from the prison of withdrawal in a week instead of months. this ban will only serve to worsen the structure fire that is the opiate epidemic.
    - deleted 10y ago
kakarot 10y ago
Kratom was cutting into the heroin profits.
usrusr 10y ago
Not all opposition is collusion. In their fight against e-cigs, big tobacco has an unexpected (and unwitting) ally: anti smoking activists. Less unhealthy would not be healthy enough for them and even if it was, it would literally threaten their cause. When an idea starts leaning towards ideology, anything that would deprive the idea of its base will be met with strong skepticism.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  I don't think anti-smoking groups feel threatened in their existence by e-cigarettes. They actually seem to see them as a useful intermediate step for those who seek to stop smoking. The reason for their opposition is twofold; e-cigarettes appear to act as a gateway drug for people who don't smoke; teenagers in particular. colourful packaging, synthetic fruity flavours; the e-cigarette industry is well aware of this particular demographic. Secondly, there are concerns about the perceived harmlessness of the vapour exhaled. While certainly not as bad as second-hand smoke, the exhaled vapours are not free of unhealthy (even carcinogenic) substances, the effects of which are not fully known. In many parts of the world smoking is no longer accepted inside public buildings and the work place; a huge victory for public health! Quite rightly there is some fear that e-cigarettes are encroaching upon that domain.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    > The reason for their opposition is twofold; e-cigarettes appear to act as a gateway drug for people who don't smoke; teenagers in particular. colourful packaging, synthetic fruity flavours; the e-cigarette industry is well aware of this particular demographic. Reminds me of an event in Norway. There anything above 4.5% beer is only sold via vinmonopolet. Note that it says beer, and thus things like cider was vinmonopolet only. Except that after entering the EEA, various foreign breweries pressed for having anything 4.5% strength sold alongside beer. The response from the teetotalers was that those "tastier" options would attract kids to drinking. None of that happened. For the first year or so after ciders and such were allowed alongside beer, there was a small uptick in sales. But then it went back to the very same numbers as the years before. the most likely explanation is that adults picked up a couple of bottles to check it out, and that was it. No sudden epidemic of drunk kids in gutters ever materialized.
tinus_hn 10y ago
Electronic cigarettes are not 'more healthy' than cigarettes, they are less unhealthy. They are still unhealthy though. They are also easily lumped into the same bunch as tobacco products and their use similarly emits a cloud of nasty smell onto other people. My money is on the future of electronic cigarettes being a very short one.

jerkstate 10y ago

It's not their fault! As Heather Bresch and Martin Shkreli have been telling us, it's their fiduciary duty to their shareholders to manipulate government regulation in order to reap as much profit as possible.

theseatoms 10y ago
I don't know if you're being facetious, but this thread of logic seems to be a feature of the system. i.e. sunlight is the best disinfectant, PR feedback loop, etc, etc...
sevenless 10y ago
Shkreli was almost admirably honest. Let the wealthy accumulate enough and they'll buy the government. Capitalism without a very tight leash, democracy: choose one.
witty_username 10y ago
I would actually agree, to some degree. Sidenote: If you research more, Shkreli does have reasons for the price hike (research). He says that 60-70% of Daraprim is given for free and no one is dying from lack of access. I don't know how true it is, but he doesn't seem like a villain.
- tristanj 10y ago
  >[Shkreli says that for most people,] Daraprim is given for free That's his PR pitch. Shkreli says he's giving drugs away for free, but really he's not. What's actually happening is his company makes a tax-deductible donation to an org that covers patients' co-pays, and leaves health insurers/Medicaid to cover the other 80% of the cost. Covering the co-pay keeps patients on the drug longer so his company can milk more money from insurers. It's a great moneymaking scheme. Shkreli didn't think of this himself, many drug companies do the same. Like you mentioned, I don't think he's a villain for doing this, he's just a smart guy who saw how drug companies abuse the system and tried to copy them. There's a lot more on this topic in this Bloomberg article http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/the-real-reason-big-pharma-wants-to-help-pay-for-your-prescription http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/the-real-r...
  - witty_username 10y ago
    Well, it's debatable whether that's "abuse". Companies need to make money to fund research (Shkreli says he's trying to find a "2016 version of Daraprim") and pay investors, and if patients aren't hurt, it's not necessarily bad.
    - tristanj 10y ago
      Well, if his actual intent was to help patients who couldn't afford his drug, then he could just sell it to them cheaply. I don't think people would consider that abuse. Instead he chooses make roundabout tax-deductible contributions to a "charity" that covers patients copay's in a legally questionable matter, dumping the cost on their insurer/US government. Is that just some clever money making scheme, or is that abuse? Depends on your perspective. Also, the patients are hurt. Who pays for these drug price hikes? That cost is paid by patients in their higher insurance premiums and American taxpayers in their dollars to Medicaid. Companies that do what Shkreli did make healthcare more expensive for all Americans. The underlying theme is that there are seriously perverse incentives issues in American healthcare that need to be resolved. Until then, some people will make a lot of money.

yarou 10y ago

Doesn't really matter, on the whole. Some shady Chinese pharma lab will create an analogue that is x times more potent, and the drop shipping "legal high" e-commerce sites will start carrying it. If anything, this will cause more deaths than prevent them.

10011100 10y ago
Hmmm, yeah, I thought kratom was part of the whole synthetic cannabinoid [0] crackdown, because homeless people and juggalos were smoking themselves out of their gords? I figured it was all part of the "designer drug" problems that started with bath salts. But honestly, what do I know? All these retarded products remind me of the days when kids would cut class in middle school and smoke Lipton's tea in rolled up pages from a looseleaf notebook. (get off my lawn!) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids
- oxide 10y ago
  kratom is usually sold as a powdered leaf. you can't smoke it, you can't snort it. you can make a tea out of it if you're diligent. a spoonful is usually swallowed as a powder with a thick juice. it is habit-forming. to an addict it can stop withdrawals in it's tracks, to an opiate naive person it can provide a buzz, nothing extreme and the subsequent withdrawals are also nothing too terrible. to an opiate addict it is, frankly, a life saver. this is something with the potential to free a person of an opiate addiction, provided they want to be free badly enough. it's quite easy to use kratom to replace your drug of choice, not for getting high, it'd be pointless. you simply use the kratom to keep the withdrawals at bay. then, simply get off the kratom after a few weeks of use. you do this because kratom withdrawal is more forgiving than something like heroin. this is impossible with methadone and suboxone. once you go on methadone, you better plan on never getting off. the withdrawals can quite literally last months. people have successfully transitioned from methadone/suboxone to kratom and then quit use of opiates altogether, being free from the prison of withdrawal in a week instead of months. this ban will only serve to worsen the structure fire that is the opiate epidemic.
  - deleted 10y ago

kakarot 10y ago

Kratom was cutting into the heroin profits.

usrusr 10y ago

Not all opposition is collusion. In their fight against e-cigs, big tobacco has an unexpected (and unwitting) ally: anti smoking activists. Less unhealthy would not be healthy enough for them and even if it was, it would literally threaten their cause. When an idea starts leaning towards ideology, anything that would deprive the idea of its base will be met with strong skepticism.

Freak_NL 10y ago
I don't think anti-smoking groups feel threatened in their existence by e-cigarettes. They actually seem to see them as a useful intermediate step for those who seek to stop smoking. The reason for their opposition is twofold; e-cigarettes appear to act as a gateway drug for people who don't smoke; teenagers in particular. colourful packaging, synthetic fruity flavours; the e-cigarette industry is well aware of this particular demographic. Secondly, there are concerns about the perceived harmlessness of the vapour exhaled. While certainly not as bad as second-hand smoke, the exhaled vapours are not free of unhealthy (even carcinogenic) substances, the effects of which are not fully known. In many parts of the world smoking is no longer accepted inside public buildings and the work place; a huge victory for public health! Quite rightly there is some fear that e-cigarettes are encroaching upon that domain.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  > The reason for their opposition is twofold; e-cigarettes appear to act as a gateway drug for people who don't smoke; teenagers in particular. colourful packaging, synthetic fruity flavours; the e-cigarette industry is well aware of this particular demographic. Reminds me of an event in Norway. There anything above 4.5% beer is only sold via vinmonopolet. Note that it says beer, and thus things like cider was vinmonopolet only. Except that after entering the EEA, various foreign breweries pressed for having anything 4.5% strength sold alongside beer. The response from the teetotalers was that those "tastier" options would attract kids to drinking. None of that happened. For the first year or so after ciders and such were allowed alongside beer, there was a small uptick in sales. But then it went back to the very same numbers as the years before. the most likely explanation is that adults picked up a couple of bottles to check it out, and that was it. No sudden epidemic of drunk kids in gutters ever materialized.

tinus_hn 10y ago

Electronic cigarettes are not 'more healthy' than cigarettes, they are less unhealthy. They are still unhealthy though. They are also easily lumped into the same bunch as tobacco products and their use similarly emits a cloud of nasty smell onto other people. My money is on the future of electronic cigarettes being a very short one.