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NIDA Pushes Drugs on Addicts

Here are some connections between the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the pharmaceutical industry. As you can clearly see, their intent is not to solve drug addiction, but rather treat its symptoms with more drugs.

NIDA entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Reckitt & Coleman Pharmaceuticals (now Reckitt & Benckiser) in 1999 to develop buprenorphine-based drugs to give to opioid addicts.

In 2002 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval for the buprenorphine-based drugs Subutex and Suboxone, both produced and distributed by Reckitt & Benckiser. Suboxone is now their top-selling drug, according to an investment firm report, and worldwide sales increased from $163 million in 2004 to $220 million in 2005. It's not exactly comforting to know that our tax dollars went directly to the benefit of this company thanks to our government, let alone the false hope these drugs present to addicts seeking permanent recovery. Incidentally, Subutex has become the most injected drug in Finland, according to a study done by their government.

Dr. Nora Volkow became the director of NIDA in May of 2003. Prior to that she spent many years as a brain researcher with the Brookhaven National Laboratory, which gets funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. It has research focus on areas including radiopharmacology and treatment of addiction, among other things.

Developing a medication to treat cocaine addiction has long been a research priority of NIDA's Medications Development Program. According to NIDA, "In the 1980s, Dr. Stephen L. Dewey of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, and a colleague, Dr. Jonathan D. Brodie of the New York University School of Medicine in New York City, were seeking new treatments for schizophrenia. 'Very few people in the mid-1980s looked at interactions between neurotransmitter systems, but rather examined transmitter systems independently,' explains Dr. Dewey. As studies continued over years...the scientists launched a long series of preclinical experiments testing GVG's (vigabatrin) potential as a treatment medication for addiction."

On April 21, 2005 Dr. Volkow provided testimonial support to CPP-109, which is a vigabatrin drug being developed by Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners - which is another publicly-traded drug company. If the drug is approved by the FDA to treat cocaine and methamphetamine addiction, then they, too, will make hundreds off of millions of NIDA's promotion of the drug, just like Reckitt & Benckiser - all with still no solution to the problem and largely funded by our taxpayers' money.

Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners is banking on the approval of CPP-109, and solicited help from Charles O'Keeffe, who was the former President and CEO of Reckitt & Benckiser Pharmaceuticals and member of the advocacy/lobbying group Friends of NIDA. He was credited as being instrumental in getting Congress to pass the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000, which enabled buprenorphine to be prescribed as a Schedule III controlled substance and therefore made available in doctors offices everywhere (unlike methadone). This calculated move is a must-watch, because it's a lesson in the big grea$ed machine and evidence of the scams perpetrated on society at government levels concerning mental health and pharmaceuticals.

Returning to the material on the index page of this site and the top of this page, it can be found that the inner circle of addiction treatment drugs and public policy isn't so big. All that was needed to cap it off was some help from the largest PR firm in the world, which also has specialty branches in health care and government relations, and, viola - the recent HBO series pushing brains and drugs! Oh, and lets not forget the poster-child prescription drug addict/ mental health advocate Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D) RI.

Not so incidentally, Kennedy is on the House Appropriations Committee (which has authority over all of the federal government's discretionary spending), and on his own website he claims he used his position in Congress to increase mental health spending, and was given an award in 2003 by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co.

Stay tuned to the Drug-Free Alliance for more research to come!



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