As IF we needed more reason to clean out the incumbents! Just shy of halfway down this page, on the right are images/graphs that show the gross amount of money being sunk into politicians pockets. In 2006, $815 mil. was split on a state/federal level at the rate of Democrats 45% and Republicans 54%. Just more proof to me that true party lines no longer exist! If you don’t have time to research the candidates on your own ballot, I highly recommend you join the movement, make it simple and vote OUT all incumbents! If we don’t take a stand now, we may NEVER get this kind of chance again – and our government will only get wealthier entirely at OUR expense. I’ve written about drugs, money and politics several times!
Prescription opioids are the synthetic cousins of heroin and morphine, prescribed to relieve pain. Sales of the drugs have boomed — quadrupling from 1999 to 2010 — and overdose deaths rose just as fast, totaling 165,000 this millennium. Last year, 227 million opioid prescriptions were doled out in the U.S., enough to hand a bottle of pills to nine out of every 10 American adults.
The drugmakers’ revenues are robust, too: Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin and one of the largest opioid producers by sales, pulled in an estimated $2.4 BILLION from opioids last year alone, according to estimates from health care information company IMS Health.
That’s even AFTER executives pleaded guilty to misleading the public about OxyContin’s risk of addiction in 2007 and the company agreed to pay more than $600 million in fines.
Gayla – follow me @Gayla and on Facebook
