All illegal drugs in Mexico could be decriminalized in radical government plan

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/illegal-drugs-in-mexico-could-be-decriminalized-in-government-plan.html

• A five-year policy document by the Mexican government has included a plan to decriminalize illegal drugs.
• President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said lifting prohibition was the only real way to curb drug use.
• It is estimated that Mexico’s drug gangs rake in as much as $29 billion a year from the United States.

President Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during a press conference at Palacio Nacional on August 20, 2018 in Mexico City, Mexico. Obrador met with President Pena Nieto to discuss the transition between them. 

Mexico has drafted plans to decriminalize all currently illegal drugs after admitting that the current “war on drugs” is endangering public safety.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sketched out the country’s radical change of plan in his administration’s National Development Plan for 2019-2024, released last week.

Under a new approach, drugs would not become legal, but arrests would be replaced by enforcing medical treatments including detoxification programs and attempts to break addictions.

“The only real possibility of reducing the levels of drug consumption is to lift the ban on those that are currently illegal,” Obrador’s policy statement read, “and redirect the resources currently destined to combat their transfer and apply them in programs— massive, but personalized—of reinsertion and detoxification.”

In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed more than 6,500 Mexican soldiers to battle drug traffickers in what is seen as the beginning of the country’s modern “war on drugs.”

A 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service has estimated that since that year, 150,000 people have died because of organized gang killings.

Obrador’s statement has described Mexico’s current prohibitionist strategy as unsustainable and a danger to everyday Mexicans.

“Public safety strategies applied by previous administrations have been catastrophic: far from resolving or mitigating the catastrophe has sharpened it.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has estimated that as much as $29 billion in cash flows across the border to Mexican drug gangs each year.

Trump: We’ll bring ‘illegals’ to sanctuary city areas   3:12 PM ET Fri, 12 April 2019 | 03:59

Last month, President Donald Trump said he would give Mexico a year to stem the flow of illegal drugs and migrants over the southern border or he would impose auto tariffs, and potentially close the border.

Those comments rowed back from an earlier threat by Trump to close the border in April this year.

In Europe, Portugal decriminalized drug possession in 2001 and has maintained a non-prohibition stance ever since. A study conducted in 2015 by the CATO Institute suggested that while rates of heroin use in Portugal had not declined, drug-related outcomes — such as deaths due to drug usage and sexually transmitted diseases — had decreased sharply.

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Pharmacoeconomics (4) from Loren Pierce on Vimeo.

I have a specific  example of how these PBM’s … in our case … Silver Scripts/Caremark which is part of CVS Health.  Barb has a prescription that she has taken for 10+ yrs

This particular medication has always required a PA (Prior Authorization) from Silver Scripts, and they wanted a $600+ copay meaning that it was a Tier 4 medication. Which means that the total price of the 90 day prescription was in the $1500+ arena.

I asked the independent pharmacy that we patronize what their “cash price” was and it was $325.00. I started making some phone calls and found that a BIG BOX store would fill the prescription for CASH for $88.00

And  the third time that I got it filled at the same BIG BOX store .. the CASH PRICE was $44.00.

It use to be that the pt was suppose to be charged the PBM contracted price in this particular case .. the copay would be abt 40% of a total price of abt $1500.00  ($600.00) OR the pharmacy’s CASH PRICE and in the first case would be $325.00. Maybe they have changed the contracts so that they can EXTRACT extra money out of pts.. especially those on Medicare Part D… most who are trying to make ends meet on their social security check.

In reality on this particular medications, CVS/Caremark/Silver Scripts was actually charging me – the pt – more than the cost of the medication – they actually had a POSITIVE CASH FLOW when we had that particular Rx filled, and we no longer had to screw around with a PRIOR AUTHORIZATION BS… every year.. when Barb had taken this chronic medication for over a DECADE.

To me, the “savings” from the Medicare Part D program is more “smoke and mirrors” than any real savings to Medicare pts.

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Cancer patients should be treated by their doctors, not pharmacy benefit managers

http://https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/09/pharmacy-benefit-managers-cancer-treatment

When I must tell a patient that she or he has cancer, that diagnosis comes with the explicit promise that I will provide timely treatment, including medicines aimed at curing cancer or extending life as long as possible.

But an insidious interloper now often comes between me and my patients. I’m talking about pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the middlemen that have introduced a bureaucratic and nightmarish system of delays and denials into filling prescriptions.

I’m not alone.

An oncologist in Florida determined that her patient with metastatic kidney cancer needed to start taking a standard, first-line oral medication. But the patient’s pharmacy benefit manager decided it knew better and refused to authorize the medication unless a surgeon first performed surgery to remove a tumor on the patient’s kidney — despite the fact that the patient’s surgeon had already determined that the procedure was too risky and the patient wasn’t a candidate for surgery, something the surgeon had previously told the PBM.

For three months, the patient’s oncologist and surgeon appealed the pharmacy benefit manager’s denial so the patient could receive the treatment he desperately needed. Although the PBM ultimately relented, the patient will never get those three months back. For anyone battling cancer, delaying treatment and allowing the disease to progress by even a week can mean the difference between life and death.

There’s the story of a young mother in Tennessee who was beating the odds against stage 4 pancreatic cancer but was left with a dangerously suppressed immune system. She was forced to delay critical treatment because the medicine she needed was on backorder at her pharmacy benefit manager’s mail-order pharmacy and the company wouldn’t pay for her to get it from her doctor’s office.

Working with cancer care providers across the country, the Community Oncology Alliance has compiled hundreds of these horror stories. They demonstrate time and again how pharmacy benefit managers come between patients and their doctors, with little regard for the pain and suffering they inflict.

Pharmacy benefit managers were supposed to help bring down the cost of drugs by negotiating with competing drug companies and by “encouraging consumers to use the most cost-effective drugs.” But they have done the opposite, fueling higher drug prices through manufacturer rebates and by extorting fees from pharmacy providers.

Those rebates and fees were the focus of a Senate Finance Committee hearing featuring top executives of five pharmacy benefit managers last month. The chair of the committee, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, noted that “the current system is so opaque that it’s easy to see why there are many questions about PBMs’ motives and practices.”

For health care professionals on the front lines of delivering timely care to people with cancer, there is no debate about the need for transparency: Pharmacy benefit managers are a roadblock to potentially lifesaving cancer care. For many of our patients, the groundbreaking cancer drugs they see in headlines are often out of reach because of PBM practices that restrict or delay access. While they won’t admit it, there is no doubt that every dollar a pharmacy benefit manager saves by stopping or redirecting a prescription means more upside for their profits.

The pharmacy benefit manager business model is built on a lucrative and shadowy network of drug manufacturer rebates and pharmacy fees squeezed from every level of the health care system. Congress is right to look into these rebates and fees to better understand exactly what roles pharmacy benefit managers play in the complex economics of drug prices.

A veneer of governmental indifference seems to be helping pharmacy benefit managers protect their egregious profits. But the system isn’t working for patients with cancer or the millions of other Americans who struggle to overcome red tape to get the medications they need.

Americans deserve better from our health care system and we should be able to count on our elected officials to support affordable, convenient, cutting-edge, patient-centered care. This includes access to the cancer therapies they need, when and where they need them.

The White House, members of Congress, policymakers, and the American public should ask themselves this important question: If your mom was facing breast cancer or your son had brain cancer, do you want a pharmacy benefit manager determining their care, or their doctor?

Jeff Vacirca, M.D., is CEO of New York Cancer and Blood Specialists and the immediate past president of the Community Oncology Alliance. The author reports being medical director of ION Solutions and on the board of directors of OneOncology, Odonate, and Spectrum Pharmaceuticals.

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In a huge victory for patients and pharmacists, Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed two PBM anti-steering bills into law yesterday. HB 233 is a bill that prohibits pharmacies from profiting off of prescriptions “steered” from their PBM and insurance affiliates, and HB 323 restricts PBM and insurer patient “steering,” strengthens anti-mandatory mail order, adds additional audit protections, prohibits PBMs from knowingly misleading patients, and restricts mining of patient data. These bills are the first in the nation of their kind to become law. Congratulations to the Georgia Pharmacy Association and all the Georgia pharmacists who worked hard to get these bills passed.

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https://www.facebook.com/jenningssheriff/photos/a.2135502443167571/2312972582087222/?type=3&theater

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http://www.ncpanet.org/home/find-your-local-pharmacy

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FDA is on our side   they need to to have a better head count and understand this is millions not thousands  as a recent paper reported

also they need to know other drugs are being abruptly tapered

maybe you could spread the word?

i think this would work:

info@fda.gov  as a portal

brief messages:

1. name, state, phone number (so they can verify)  I trust them
2. pick one disease
3. was tapered off without consent when    list all meds   tapered

one paragraph  mainly want then to count the replies and list the other drugs being tapered

 ideas for other groups to contact?

what do you thinks

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Great-grandmother with CBD oil arrested at Disney World

https://www.foxnews.com/travel/grandmother-cbd-arrested-disney-world

Disney World may be the most magical place on Earth, but it turned into a legal nightmare for a great-grandmother with arthritis.

A 69-year-old woman was arrested at a Disney World checkpoint when an Orange County Deputy found CBD oil in her purse. She then spent 12 hours behind bars before being released on a $2,000 bond.

Hester Jordan Burkhalter, a great-grandmother from North Carolina, began using CBD oil for her arthritis after her doctor recommended it, Fox 35 in Orlando reported. She even had a note from the medical professional in her purse at the time of arrest, but it didn’t matter.

Burkhalter told Fox 35 that she had been planning on the trip for two years. “I have really bad arthritis in my legs, in my arms and in my shoulder,” she said. “I use (CBD oil) for the pain because it helps.” When she was stopped by security outside of the Magic Kingdom, however, she was arrested. “I’ve never had one speeding ticket in my life.”

Despite the fact that it’s sold on store shelves across the state, CBD oil is still technically illegal in the state of Florida (unless the user has a prescription). This has created a confusing situation in the Sunshine State.

Jennifer Synnamon, a Florida attorney, told Fox 35, “a little drop of oil, with the CBD, is a felony. Meanwhile, you can have up to 19.9 grams of leaf-marijuana, and it’s a first-degree misdemeanor.”

While the Orange County Sheriff’s Office told Fox 35 that their deputy was just following the law, the charges against Burkhalter eventually dropped.

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