A Blast From The Past

WITH KIND PERMISSION OF THE EDITOR,

below is an article reprinted from the May 2004 issue of the

Brussels based English language magazine: “THE SPROUT”:

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“KILLING THE GOOSE THAT

LAYS THE GOLDEN EGGS.

A mystery memo, leaked to The Sprout has been circulated amongst
selected British politicians, including European Parliamentarians.

The document purports to be from the ‘Joint Strategy Committee
Chair’ of the U.K. Pharmaceutical ‘Cartel’.

It concerns the industry’s approach to drug addiction and

treatment systems which are in fact, a mainline to profit.

THE ALLEGATIONS PAINT an extraordinary picture of conspiracy on the part of Big Pharma.

The conspiracy is best put when it states that a main industry goal is “to become the only authorised suppliers, producers, distributors and purveyors of all drugs entering and consumed in the U.K. drugs marketplace”.

This implies that the industry – already a monopolist in prescription drugs – is intent upon producing and selling those drugs that are currently illegal. Thus avoiding competition from criminal gangs by concentrating supply of all “street” drugs under industry control.

Could it be possible that Big-Pharma backs moves for legalisation ?

Can the huge professional lobby pushing so hard to legalise drugs really be run by the lethargic minority of ‘stoned’ citizens ? The memo suggests not. It takes money and the use of both overt and covert professional PR people to push through such a measure.

TRACES OF OVERT AND COVERT LOBBYING:

The conspiracy theory is amply illustrated by the history of Mike Trace, who is named in the dossier.

Trace was parachuted by the U.K. Labour Government into the position of Deputy Drugs Tsar in 1997 without reference to his boss Keith Hellawell. He went on to produce a policy document in 1998 ‘Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain’. It called for a “harm reduction” approach to addiction, and led to a considerable increase in the number of NHS prescriptions of methadone.

In 2003 he was seconded to the UN as Head of Demand Reduction at the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime. After 8 weeks he was forced to resign after it became public that he had been advising the Soros foundation as to how to undermine the international conventions on drug trafficking.

His hope was to create a way in which the Conventions would allow drug liberalisation measures, such as the decriminalisation of cannabis, heroin prescription, and injecting rooms as a first step towards George Soros’ goal of “a strictly controlled distributor network through which I would make most drugs, excluding the most dangerous ones like crack, legally available”. Trace now runs the Blenheim Project, a heroin project in London.

Other subtle lobbying goes on via front-groups like DrugScope (a quasi-governmental NGO, almost entirely controlled by the industry) the wooing of medical profession and opinion leaders, and the encouragement of libertarians to campaign for legalisation is good tactics for an industry intent on taking over production and sale of “ALL drugs”.

There is huge profit in being the “only” suppliers of amphetamines, cannabis, heroin and cocaine alongside their current turnover in methadone and other tranquillisers.

The allegations also claim that, after legalisation of all drugs, the pharmaceutical industry will seek to continuously expand drug markets “by all possible international, national and local strategies”.

GOOD BUSINESS SENSE:

 

Such expansion makes good business sense. The expansion of behavioural control drugs is already well under way (paid for by taxpayers).

If drugs like cannabis, heroin and cocaine, etc., were to be legalised, the companies would seek to “maximise the financial contribution of government towards the costs of supplying drugs to a majority of the using population”. If the manufacturers had to rely on the drug users for payment, they would be very unlikely to receive it.

So without the government’s continued willingness to fund supplies to users, there would be no incentive for the industry.

Furthermore industry will ensure that all those organisations and programmes likely to impede:

          a)    their taking total control of all drugs,

          b)    their continued turnover expansion by legalisation

                 and

          c)    their expansion of government financial support,

                 will be “effectively immobilised or side-lined”.

Herbal and alternative medical practices are a competitive ‘nuisance‘, which pharmaceutical marketing chiefs have been trying to get around for years.

They know that highly successful vitamin based and other abstinence therapies are a threat, so to retain control of treatment, such alternative programmes and therapies must be obstructed not only by black media campaigns, but also through legislation.

E.U. LEGISLATIVE SUPPORT FOR DRUGS:

The plan is that the vitamin based and other abstinence therapies will eventually be side-lined by the National Treatment Agency (NTA) Models of Care plan which essentially authorises only psycho-pharmacological treatments. Thus vitamin based treatments will be deprived of official funding.

It goes on to say that “additionally, the work already underway in Brussels and Strasbourg, for outlawing large dose format natural vitamin supplies, will not only soon start bringing these ‘non-conforming’ treatments to a halt, but will also put the European and U.K. supply of vitamins into “pharmaceutical hands on a small dose, high-priced profitable daily supply basis retailed only by established high street chemists and other allied or controlled pharmaceutical outlets”.

The legalisation is not about medicine or health, but is unadulterated commercial tactics of the type used by the same companies in the drug ‘treatment’ field, and it takes only a cursory glance at that legislation to recognise the truth of the memo’s warnings.

However, the memo makes it clear that the real truth is that the pharmaceutical lobbyists are intent only on the killing off of successful competition and, in view of the fact that the internal workings of the E.U. did not allow this legislation to be presented for full and proper discussion or amendment by a wholly representative group, it looks as if the memo is again correct.

It explains how the political environment has been convinced of Pharma’s position.

The self-proclaimed and politically perceived “experts” on drugs have considerable influence over almost all interested agencies.

It also gives credit to DrugScope for building significant influence within the above organisations and particularly to Roger Howard and ‘friends’ as well as well as psychiatric colleagues.

The writer mentions indirect pharmaceutical influence over the Drug Education Practitioners Forum, the Police Foundation, Liberty, the National Children’s Forum, Release, Transform and more numerous groups.

He (or she) also points out that DrugScope now virtually controls the All Party Parliamentary Drugs Misuse Group, the National Drugs Help-Line and even some Ministers.

All of this is backed by facts.

TAXES PAY THE INDUSTRY £300 M PER YEAR:

It doesn’t take an expert to calculate that lifetime prescribing of a pharmaceutical drug for every heroin / methadone addict in the country is a costly business. Each prescription methadone user receives at least one dose per day = 365 doses per year. The U.K. population is some 60 million of which about 10% depend on drugs – mainly cannabis. If only 5% of these drug users are on opiates, then some 300,000 are on heroin / methadone, and this is borne out by Home Office statistics.

Two-thirds are estimated to be on prescription methadone, so 200,000 supplied each day. 200,000 x 365 = 73 million doses per year. A dose costs £4.00. The total cost is nearly £300 million per year, 70% of which is paid to pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies.

This is confirmed by the fact that nearly £2 billion is spent on drugs interventions in the U.K. alone.

It might include the extra NHS attention which most drug users need, plus the hugely time and money wasting (jobs for the boys) psychiatric screening, assessing, referring and re-assessing which goes on before an addict receives actual treatment.

This does not include the benefits which a majority of prescription methadone users receive. In addition, 80% of prescription methadone recipients use another drug once a week and 44% use heroin once a day.

As a result, many continue to commit acquisitive crime to fund their continuing heroin habit – another burden for the taxpayer and the society at large.

INFORMED CHOICE FOR CHILDREN, “JUST SAY YES”:

The memo writer claims that the industry will continue to reinforce their marketing operations directed at youth, and states that ‘harm reduction’, ‘informed CHOICE’, ‘responsible drug USE’ and ‘safe drug USE’ will thus remain the main planks in schools PR campaigns.

It is clear to anyone, who takes the trouble to investigate, that this ‘drug education’ agenda promotes drug usage as basically inevitable, and so essentially permits it on an apparently controlled basis.

The conclusions which the memo draws regarding deliberate and calculated action against real prevention training are therefore clearly justifiable.

There is a reference to DrugScope’s covert development of the NTA, and we are told that by having a senior DrugScope employee appointed as that agency’s first Director of Personnel, they were able to appoint the rest of the NTA senior staff and so finished up with an influential government agency staffed exclusively by psycho-pharmaceutical protagonists and allies.

This seems to be Annette Dale-Perera who, after completing her staff establishment work, now heads up the team installing the Models of Care ‘framework’ which seems intended to maintain and reinforce the status-quo psycho-pharmacological treatment monopoly.

DrugScope has responded by announcing that the document is “laughable” and threatening legal action in their latest magazine DrugLink, against whom they of course do not know.

The memo makes no claims of illegal actions and is obviously a hard-hitting satire but in light of the pharmaceutical industry’s reputed heavy handed past handling of its critics, the memo writer has been rather brave to have mounted such a comprehensive and wide ranging attack against that industry.

As it stands almost all its statements are demonstrably true and its conclusions make sense.

But will it be enough to wake up the public to what is going on behind their backs?

Is what is suggested the result of deliberate planning or is it all just pure coincidence ?”

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(End of The Sprout Article)

Hereunder is the memo the subject of that article, with the content,
but not the layout, just as we received it:

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I don’t know who sent this to me, and of course I didn’t copy it to you ! J.

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

                                                             (N.B. ‘G.T.L.G.’ likely means:
                                                           “Goose That Lays Golden”)

FROM:     THE JOINT STRATEGY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN

TO:         U.K. CARTEL MEMBER CEOs ONLY

SUBJECT: REPORT ON THE ‘G.T.L.G. EGGS’ PLAN REVISIONS

                                                                         DATE:      December 2003


Dear Friends and Colleagues,

        The following summarises the present status of the above plan after
        incorporation of the revisions agreed upon by the Committee at the end
        of our recent week-end conference. 

The twin goals of the plan remain unchanged. Namely: 

i) that our industry and its allies will be the only authorised suppliers, producers, distributors and purveyors of all drugs entering and consumed in the U.K. drugs marketplace, and

ii) that the market is to be continuously expanded by all possible international, national and local strategies.

1) The main aims of the plan are therefore confirmed as:

a) To take total control of the supply, production, distribution, marketing and sale of all drugs consumed in the U.K. drugs marketplace.

b) To maintain current turnover levels whilst working towards a continuing expansion of the main forms of drug use – medical, behavioural control and recreational.

c) To maximise the financial contribution of government towards the costs of supplying drugs to a majority of the using population, and,

d) To ensure that all those organisations and programmes, likely to impede a), b) & c) above, are effectively immobilised or side-lined.

2) Because 1a) & b) above include all currently illicit drugs, then the legalisation of all illicit drugs is a primary target of our policies. This will not only avoid competition from illegal suppliers by placing the supplying of all drugs under our ethical control, but will also expand usage of such drugs at competitive prices.

3) Because 1a) above also includes those legally licensed and / or prescribed drugs over which we already exercise control, every effort is being made to avoid the entry and / or expansion into the marketplace of alternative natural or nutritional substances from non-pharmaceutical producers. At the same time research on less controversial replacements for the flagging benzo ranges also continues.

4) The requirement under 1a) above, for us to take total control of the U.K. drugs marketplace, has of course resulted in a necessity for us to be able to equally control or strongly influence the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Department for Education and Skills, the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society amongst others.

This in turn has given us considerable influence over the National Health Service, H.M.Prison Service, the Probationary Service, the National Treatment Agency, the AdvisoryCouncil on the Misuse of Drugs, and the Drug Prevention Advisory Service.

Much of the credit for this good work must go to the amalgamation and re-organisingof DrugScope by Roger Howard which, combined with the influence of our friends at Alcohol Concern (who share offices with DrugScope), and our psychiatric colleaguesat Denmark Hill, is now achieving very significant influence over all those sectors of U.K establishment decision-making directly or indirectly concerned with the control or usage of drugs of all types. The Drug Education Practitioners Forum, the PoliceFoundation, Liberty, the National Children’s Forum, Release and Transform are but a few excellent examples of our indirect influence over more numerous groups.
        
         Amongst other successes, DrugScope now virtually controls the All Party Parliamentary Drugs Misuse Group, the National Drugs Help-Line and various Ministers, and because of these allies and other contacts was able to be by far the biggest contributor of evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

5) Because 1b) above includes the maintenance of current turnover levels, all forms of cure or rehabilitation treatment (other than those based on the use of habit management drugs) must eventually be legislated out of operation.

Civil servants and successive UK governments have been fully convinced, by our psychiatric colleagues and our expanding DrugScope PR operation, that drug addiction is an incurable congenital mental condition which ‘fortunately’ psychiatrists and other physicians can manage in the community with pharmacological treatments.

As a consequence we will continue to use our psychiatric and government departmental connections to ensure that all treatment must be on a maintenance basis prescribing regular doses (normally daily) of habit management drugs – mainly paid for by the taxpayer via the NHS.

6) Because 1b) above also includes expansion, in order to maintain the flow of new users entering the marketplace, all efforts at effective prevention training by other organisations continue to be ridiculed, ‘exposed’ and generally side-lined by DrugScope and their libertarian allies so as to rob them of funding. The main aim of our strategy will continue to be our development of youth and child drug use by all means possible. The young are much easier to influence and of course have a longer ’customer life’ than adults.

We will therefore continue to reinforce those of our marketing operations directed at UK youth and their parents. ‘Harm reduction’, ‘informed choice’, ‘responsible drug use’ and ‘safe drug use’ will thus remain the main planks in school PR campaigns. This drug education agenda promotes drug usage as basically inevitable, and so essentially permits it on an apparently controlled basis. Some members expressed concern that ‘prevention’ training was again expanding in the schools system, but a recent DrugScope report to the Committee described the start (in DrugScope’s Associated DrugLink magazine) of a successful media attack on two main prevention organisations – NDPA and NN. Details of further funding for this work were also agreed. (See financial report attached.)

7) Because of the demand for expansion and government financial contribution expressed in both 1b) and 1c) above, there must also be a reinforcement of direct psychiatric medical intervention in UK schools, based on the prescription of Prozac, Ritalin and other behavioural control drugs to suitably selected children.

New psychiatric illnesses recently developed and published in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are paving the way to the introduction of further drugs into our schools prescription programme.

Steps are also being taken to introduce the same new psychiatrically sponsored conditions into the Mental and Behavioural Disorders Section of the next edition of the World Health Organisation ICD (the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems).

Distribution of behavioural control drugs by prescription to selected groups is possibly our most valuable programme currently running. We avoid the costly and fragmented process of marketing to individuals, each newly enrolled education authority or school bringing us worthwhile numbers of new patients for which government pays. And because we start at the bottom of the age range, each user has the maximum customer life ahead of him, whilst up to the age of 16 within the schools system we enjoy direct control over each patient.

8) Because 1c) above requires the maximisation of the financial contribution of government towards the cost of supplying drugs to a majority of the using population, the treatment of existing and new problem drug users must be kept in psycho-pharmaceutical hands in order to ensure maximum turnover of addiction management drugs such as methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone, etc.

As a result, funds for recent plans by the government to increase the number of places for rehabilitation of drug users must be kept in the hands of those providers of treatment based exclusively on the administration of habit management drugs. As these were essentially Trace contacts and as he could still be useful, the idea is being fostered amongst them and elsewhere that he was given a very raw deal.

In addition our PR people will continue to cultivate Drug Action Team Co-ordinators and Chairmen, to ensure that the DAT funds are not misdirected into other non psycho-pharmacological channels.

In this regard, the National Treatment Agency’s nearly completed “Models of Care” plan intended to eliminate (officially) all non-pharmacological treatments – is about to start achieving this second stage of what we expected from DrugScope’s covert development of this agency.

By having as the first stage a senior DrugScope employee appointed as the Agency’s establishment-phase Director of Personnel, the goal of having a government agency staffed nearly exclusively by allies was fully achieved.

Fortunately, the Mike Trace fiasco has done little to upset our plans for the NTA as he was already destined for the international scene.

However it is clear that something must be done about MP and SD at the Mail, who must be brought into line with their other press colleagues.

9) Because 1d) calls for the immobilisation of organisations and programmes likely to impede 1a), b) & c) above, and because the most likely threats will come

          i) from prevention based training programmes and

          ii) from vitamin based and other abstinence therapies, such programmes and therapies must be obstructed not only by black media campaigns, but also by appropriate UK and European legislation.

Prevention based training programmes for schoolchildren (as well as PTAs) will soon be handled into obscurity by the ‘Blueprint’ plan, which is being developed by a regional director of the Home Office Drug Prevention Advisory service. Here again we are fortunate to have a DrugScope trained ally in a sensitive and influential post, so that drug education in ‘harm reduction’, ‘informed choice’, ‘responsible drug use’ and ‘safe drug use’ will; soon become an integral and unassailable part of DfES curricula. At the same time, our continuing derision of ‘prevention training’ will again ensure that such prevention programmes receive no official funding and that they will also be looked upon as politically incorrect by charitable and other fund providers.

The vitamin based and other abstinence therapies are being handled in two ways. The NTA Models of Care plan will essentially authorise only our psycho-pharmacological treatments. Those treatments which do not base themselves on the dispensing of habit management and / or other drugs will thus be deprived of official funding.

Additionally the work already under way in Brussels and Strasbourg, for outlawing large dose format natural vitamin supplies, will not only soon start bringing these non-conforming treatments to a halt, but will also put the European and UK supplying of vitamins into our hands on a small dose profitable daily supply basis retailed only by established high street chemists and other allied or controlled pharmaceutical outlets.

10) The National Treatment Outcome Research Study (NTORS) being carried out by our Denmark Hill psychiatric colleagues has of course been proving successful at holding political curiosity at bay for a considerable time, and the final fifth year report is now due for publication – if it is not already circulating as a confidential pre-release briefing to our various allies in the bureaucracy.

Whilst from a technical viewpoint it is expected to have a mixed reception in certain quarters, along with CARAT and DT&TOs, it has achieved its basic PR objectives and provided the time necessary to develop the NTA and to see our further entrenchment in the Drug Action Team (DAT) network. This has been made even more vital by the recent government channelling of new and additional drug treatment finance via the various DATS, and DrugScope have outlined their plans for maximising control of this spending via the NTA.

11) Payments to physicians for prescribing drugs possibly harmful to the patient (such as methadone) are still needed to persuade reluctant G.Ps to ‘assess’ the value of these products to their local community. Members should therefore ensure that their local NHS and political contacts are fully aware that these payments are vital to current drug treatment modalities, even though item 12) below may eventually be helpful in this regard.

12) The project for the public to be able to purchase prescription drugs – without need of a prescription – over the internet is going according to plan, with these new sales now beginning to escalate, and thus far there has been no government protest or action from any of the countries being reached.

Members wishing to examine the excellent prices this method of distribution can command may do so by visiting the outlet at pharmulnimbsy@ox.ac.uk. They should also bear in mind that because such supplies are direct to the public, all the mark-ups and margins on this distribution line accrue directly to the manufacturing companies supplying the products.

Clearly a new form of distribution which also gives greater consumer control, as a result of which reports on such trading will now be issued monthly to members.

13) For those interested, transcripts of the main papers presented at the conference are available to Committee Members, as follows:

*       A) Liberalisation, Decriminalisation and Legalisation Plans and Progress.

*       B) The DrugScope Annual Progress Report and Update.

*       C) Plans to Take Advantage of the Impending NTORS Completion (and for a parallel long-                    term follow-up campaign in the drug education sector).

*       D) The Latest from the Denmark Hill Diary and Other Psychiatric Allies.

*       E) Networking Within the WHO, the NGOs and Europe.

*       F) New Product Design Directions & Opportunities Amongst the Young.

*       G) Beyond the Benzos. Opportunities Amongst Adults and the Elderly.

*       H) Improving Political and Media Control – U.K. Ally Entertaining Plans.

*       I) Covert Conference Support Plans – Current & Future Financing.

*       J) Useful Individuals and Organisations – Who to Contact for What.

*       K) Mergers – Is Inter Company Co-operation Now Making them Obsolete?

*       L) The Magic Bullet – Why a Search for Addiction Cures is Not Advised.

*       M) Financing Our Fifth Column Allies. (Mike Trace and Co’s New Roles.)

*       N) The UK’s Role in Europe and Vice Versa – Plans for Vienna.

*       O) Raw Material Supplies: Is buying from the Drug Barons the Answer?

*       P) The NHS and the NTA – Can the Tail Wag the Dog?

*       Q) Security: Recent Threats and Proposals for their Handling.

14)    I would respectfully remind Members that the current quarter’s ‘Protection and Expansion Fund’ donations are due with me not later than the last day of this month and year, and I would in any event like to report that these are all to hand at the next scheduled meeting with GS’s Open Society Institute.

15)     Finally: Our Next Committee Meeting:

The suggested venue is again Berchtesgaden, and the month is March.  As agreed at the conference, I await lists of two acceptable March weekends from each Member to enable me to finalise a date convenient to a majority.

J. S. C. Chairman.

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(end of memo received by The Sprout, ourselves and numerous others)

 
        Bearing in mind that, contrary to what their PR says, pharmaceutical companies are not charities . . . . what is your verdict?

1) Can this “confidential” memo really be some form of practical joke?  Jokers love an audience and usually stay around for the laughs and for their applause, so why has the writer not made him or her self known and claimed the credit?

2) Can this “confidential” memo perhaps be a hoax perpetrated by someone with a genuine grudge against the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry?  We know that many involuntary addicts (and others like “The Prozac Victims Group”) who were prescribed into addiction, do hold rather large grudges - with what they consider to be good reason - against the psycho-pharmaceutical fraternity. But these are most often quite elderly ladies on tranquillisers, benzos, etc., who would not normally have the intimate knowledge of the drug scene demonstrated by the writer of that memo.

3) Can this “confidential” memo be a fictitious document written by some anonymous senior employee experienced in, but disillusioned with, the psycho-pharm industry, who feels that the guilt of his employers can no longer be hidden and that it must be exposed so that something humanely effective can be done about it?

4) Or can this “confidential” memo perhaps be a copy of a real inter-committee memo the contents of which some such employee felt had to be “whistle-blown” for the greater good of the community at large.

Most observers feel it came from the third or fourth possible source indicated above but that more importantly, it does reveal a genuine state of affairs which must be addressed !


S.A.F.E. Is A Not-For-Profit Community Support Group Formed In 1975,


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