[Applause]
welcome to the United States of
addiction where we make up less than 5%
of the world’s population and yet
consume over 75% of the world’s
medication we are drugged and over
medicated our culture is drawn to
addictive behavior and drugs have become
our favorite pastime
now this isn’t about illegal drugs this
is about the drugs we get from our
doctors drugs we get from our pharmacies
drugs we trust our safe to consume if
they’re on the market legal medicinal
drugs prescription drug abuse is an
epidemic that has been greatly
overshadowed by society stigma of drugs
as well as concealed by our
pharmaceutical industry we’ve started a
war on drugs in a multitude of other
countries and yet somehow forgot to
touch on the war on people coming from
our own industry and attacking our own
people here in the United States of
addiction we’ve all been lied to and we
are all at risk
my name is Samira as you may have heard
some people yellow as I walked out I am
going into pharmacy school in the fall
I work in clinical and retail pharmacy
and I’ve been a lifelong consumer of
medication as we’ve all been we’ve all
taken the Tylenol or Advil or cough
syrup they’re stronger or prescription
pills and that’s fine medication is
supposed to improve our quality of life
we should use it yet too often we’re
misinformed about the drugs we think we
know the drugs we call safe too often
our health isn’t as valuable as the most
profitable medication that can be
prescribed off of us now don’t get me
wrong the goal here today is not to
smear the name of any healthcare
industry we’ve achieved historic feats
in this name of medicine and science
they’ve saved millions across the world
but the greatest healthcare feat we have
yet to achieve as a society of informed
people I love this profession I wouldn’t
be up here if I didn’t I’d probably be
in bed watching Netflix right about now
but I love it because it pushes me to be
better than I am and I watch it enrich
lives every day but from $300 diabetic
supplies to dangerously addictive pills
I also watch this industry take
advantage of us every day if we want to
take back control of our system we have
to understand what gave our power away
now our industry encourages our culture
of drugged
pendants all you have to do is turn on
the TV to see it and we all love those
commercials do you feel exhausted and
worn down all the time
do you find trouble motivating yourself
to even the simplest of tasks if you
have trouble sleeping and even more
trouble waking you get cold when it’s
chilly hungry if you don’t eat if I were
to ask everyone in here the same set of
questions everyone would answer yes at
least once I call these the symptoms of
life and these commercials are deceptive
because they can paint something that’s
normal and natural as part of an illness
that you need this magic pill to fix
their mantra there’s always something to
fix about yourself and pills oil pills
exist to fix you now I used to take
about two painkillers a day I was never
in any physical pain but I’d feel
stressed and pressured by silly things
and I choose the pill because it was a
quick fix
as my tolerance grew two became three
than four than six pills a day this is
like my caffeine but it was always a
temporary fixed and never dealt with the
root of the problem and it was never
quite enough when you take a step back
from the thousands of manipulated
commercials we’re bombarded with you see
a different side of these drugs
prescription drugs harm more people in
the United States then illicit drugs do
according to DEA this is the number of
people that die each year from cocaine
heroin and marijuana abuse combined by
contrast prescription drugs killed
almost consistently twice the number of
people each year the CDC reports that
someone in this country dies
prescription drug abuse every 19 minutes
that’s a little over 500 people a week
the size of this audience and it doesn’t
exactly make sense because our legal
drugs are supposed to be our safe drugs
if you take a look at our FDA approval
process from left to right they undergo
a strenuous application process and
multiple clinical trials before they’re
approved by the FDA now this process can
take over 10 years and over 2.6 billion
dollars per drug and out of all the
drugs that started only about a handful
make it out so that’s a lot of bad drugs
that get weeded out that’s our system
working yet the FDA’s drug recall rate
is at an all-time high we have more
drugs than ever being approved to be on
the market
only to be deemed unsafe and removed
shortly after so my question is what are
the loopholes to our system how did they
flip past the radar now keep in mind
there’s a lot at stake for the drug
companies in this process that’s a lot
of invested time and money that can go
to waste for these for-profit companies
so even if they realize their drug isn’t
as safe or effective as they wanted it
to be they have to push it through the
system somehow to turn a profit they do
this by using what I like to call the
three golden rules of pharma these are
the loopholes these companies have found
across our system that allow them to
miss inform us and turn a profit golden
rule number one regulate the regulation
now the FDA controls the fate of all
proposed drugs as a drug company you
want a very good relationship with the
FDA this means giving money to review
board members and congressmen that
influence drug legislation as well as
paying above and beyond the required
drug fees in order to speed up their
approval process for your drug the FDA’s
budget exponentially grows each year and
pharma contributions account for over
80% of that growth each year it’s easier
to control regulation against you when
you basically own the agencies take
antidepressants for example now for
millions these drugs are a miracle for
others not so much after concerns about
antidepressants and boosting suicidality
and violence some patients the US fda
held a hearing in 1991 discuss the
safety of antidepressant what troubles
me is that the majority of the 41 FDA
review board members in that hearing had
some financial ties to the companies
that created these drugs there was such
a conflict of interest that they
released the statement titled conflict
of interest that the hearing will deal
with a no specific issue dealing with a
specific product or sponsor meaning that
the drugs are going to be looked at in
very general terms no one drug or
company is going to be targeted and
possibly regulated rule number one
regulate the regulation rule number two
publish only the positive now before
approval the FDA is to see to large
scale positive studies supporting that a
drug is an effective treatment versus a
placebo for a particular ailment
naturally they don’t want to approve a
drug that fails that what it’s supposed
to do so too is the magic number
and since drug companies fund and
conduct their own clinical trials they
control which studies they publish and
which studies they bury this can be
particularly dangerous say we conducted
100 studies and 98 of them showed our
drug had seriously disturbing side
effects we could legally only disclose
the two studies we favored that is being
reckless with our health and it’s not
exactly hypothetical if you look at the
drug prozac in 2005 in 2005 internal
documents about side effect information
and clinical trial data about the pill
prozac were leaked to the media these
documents were dated a year after prozac
was approved to be on the market and
they showed that patients on Prozac are
12 times more likely to commit suicide
through patients on other major
antidepressants and eight times more
likely to commit intentional injuries
prozac had been on the market for almost
two decades at that point without any
warning labels for the side effects
death company knew about but chose to
conceal this is a drug that was also
marketed for children now today the FDA
does require suicide risk warning labels
on all antidepressants take the birth
control yaz and yasmin were found to
increase the risk for blood clotting two
times regular birth control pills
patients on the drugs iPrEx on
antipsychotic medication are three and a
half times more likely to develop
diabetes than patients not on the drug
so I defect information that was
conveniently left out of the original
publication then this is particularly
dangerous because adverse effects to
medication is the fourth leading cause
of death in the United States after
heart disease cancer and Stroke
rule number two publish only the
positive rule number three involve
everyone with a financial interest now
it may take a village to raise a child
but it takes an army to push forward a
drug approval is only half the battle
the other half is selling it in such a
crowded market of extremely similar
drugs you have to make your drug more
appealing for physicians to prescribe
you can buy bribe doctors with free
dinners trips dinner
money more dinners in order to approve
your drug over others you can pay
insurance companies to establish your
drug as their preferred drug for a
diagnosis you can also reward
individuals willing to push forward your
drugs with high-ranking jobs at the very
drug companies for example they’re
evolving door phenomena where you have
FDA officials ending up with
high-ranking jobs at the very drug
companies they help approve drugs for if
you look at the diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders
or DSM for short this is basically the
diagnostic standards for every
psychiatric disorder recognized in the
United States basically a mental
diagnosis has to be in this book before
medication can be approved for its
treatment and what interests me about
this is when you look at the task force
team that puts together this book each
version over 70% of them have financial
ties to the pharmaceutical industry the
more diagnoses they create that existing
drugs can be marketed for the more money
the psychiatrics and drug companies
alike can make rule number three involve
everyone with a financial interest we
have a system that is harming everyone
that is on medication and everyone that
knows someone that is on medication
we’re encouraged to depend on drugs for
our problems and then misinformed about
those very drugs so where do we go from
here well for starters we have to break
the golden rules from a policy
perspective this means regulating the
companies and their contributions to the
FDA publishing all clinical trial data
and adverse effects as well as only
involving individuals known for health
and safety interests not money interest
our medications should not be tied to
someone’s financial agenda there should
be no conflict of interest when it comes
to public health now when if you look
across the globe we’re the only ones
facing this problem because of how we
approach health now our process is
considered a gold standard across many
nation within our system we eat chicken
we need to prove that our drug is
tremendously harmful before it can ever
be regulated in addition Missouri is the
only state in the United States without
a prescription drug monitoring program
that is being reckless with our health
on the other hand if you look at the
European Union they
all very precautionary principle if a
drug has even the slightest potential of
harm protective and preventive action is
taken they refused to be reckless with
health that is where we defer and that
is the change we need to make now we can
crack down on these companies and
regulate the system all we want but we
need to take a moment to look at
ourselves because from a cultural
perspective who we allow these loopholes
we feed into the drug commercials and
the drug dependence culture we don’t ask
enough questions about our medications
and we’re quick to exchange a pill for a
problem for a pill no one is happy about
paying absurd front prices for
medication they can they don’t know all
the risks for but not many have the
incentive to protest it’s only when a
drug is harming someone close to us or
is costing us a fortune that we care
about regulating it at all
that is being reckless with our health
now of all the major players of this
game we the citizens stand to lose and
gain the most how are these drug
companies powerful well they create our
duct supplies how are we powerful were
their customers and like any good
business this industry has to cater to
its customers in order to survive and we
have more power there than we truly
realize if you look at the EpiPen
controversy you may have heard about it
spanning on a couple years back that’s
when the price of this life-saving
epinephrine injectable increased by over
600% because it’s company Milan no
longer had competition in the market I
want to walk you through a visual
timeline feed event of the entire
scandal you know the beginning the
reaction was very slow the people that
were effective spoke out but not nearly
enough and more and then more price
hikes went up more people couldn’t
afford the medications even EMTs had to
use syringes instead of the medication
because it was too expensive to even use
professionally now by July online
petitions on websites like change.org
started for Congress to investigate the
price gouging and then the media picked
up the story and from there it blew up
by August 20 tweets a day increased to
500
thousand eventually reaching over ten
thousand tweets a day from doctors and
consumers alike sharing their outrage
and calling for change in the aftermath
Milan released a cheaper generic and CBS
competed by creating an even cheaper
generic in essence we demanded a new
supply and the industry rose to meet our
demands and the EpiPen scandal is by no
means one of a kind and if you look
across our history of Medicine protest
you see the protests for affordable
health care – cancer drugs you see the
protest against the over drugging of
veterans against the use of psychiatric
drugs on children against affordable
access to AIDS treatments there is not a
shortage of battles we have taken on and
have yet to take on and with social
media it’s easier than ever to spread
the word and educate the community
around us in the words of John F Kennedy
only uneducated and informed people will
be a free people we have to understand
how our culture impacts this industry
and how we can protect ourselves and I
suggest we do this by creating our own
set of rules just like they have their
rules we get to have our rules and I
call them the United States of recovery
rules before asking your for taking any
medications ask yourself these set of
questions number one do I need this drug
is this the Pro is this drug treating a
physiological problem or simply a
symptom of life problem rule number two
do I know the side effects of this drug
research your medication
ask your doctor is about the medic about
the side effects of the medication look
under study is published by the FDA
under the European Medicines Agency the
daily med there’s even an application
released by the FDA called orange book
that contains two eye defect information
of almost all fda-approved drugs use
your resources number three is this drug
the best possible option for me what are
my alternatives and with the help of a
health care professional analyzed if the
benefits outweigh the harms for you
personally we don’t have to be reckless
with our health now the United States of
addiction is in their best interest I
mean they’ll have customers
life that way we shouldn’t make it that
easy for them nothing there’s not a pill
for every problem but for the pills that
do need them we are entitled to safe
medications we are entitled to drugs
that will increase our risk for suicide
12 fold or leave us paralyzed we are
also entitled to a drug industry that
won’t look at our children as an
untapped market of customers we are
entitled to feel safe
protected not falsely so even here in
the united states of recovery we are
still entitled to true safety not the
illusion thank you
[Applause]
welcome to the United States of
addiction where we make up less than 5%
of the world’s population and yet
consume over 75% of the world’s
medication we are drugged and over
medicated our culture is drawn to
addictive behavior and drugs have become
our favorite pastime
now this isn’t about illegal drugs this
is about the drugs we get from our
doctors drugs we get from our pharmacies
drugs we trust our safe to consume if
they’re on the market legal medicinal
drugs prescription drug abuse is an
epidemic that has been greatly
overshadowed by society stigma of drugs
as well as concealed by our
pharmaceutical industry we’ve started a
war on drugs in a multitude of other
countries and yet somehow forgot to
touch on the war on people coming from
our own industry and attacking our own
people here in the United States of
addiction we’ve all been lied to and we
are all at risk
my name is Samira as you may have heard
some people yellow as I walked out I am
going into pharmacy school in the fall
I work in clinical and retail pharmacy
and I’ve been a lifelong consumer of
medication as we’ve all been we’ve all
taken the Tylenol or Advil or cough
syrup they’re stronger or prescription
pills and that’s fine medication is
supposed to improve our quality of life
we should use it yet too often we’re
misinformed about the drugs we think we
know the drugs we call safe too often
our health isn’t as valuable as the most
profitable medication that can be
prescribed off of us now don’t get me
wrong the goal here today is not to
smear the name of any healthcare
industry we’ve achieved historic feats
in this name of medicine and science
they’ve saved millions across the world
but the greatest healthcare feat we have
yet to achieve as a society of informed
people I love this profession I wouldn’t
be up here if I didn’t I’d probably be
in bed watching Netflix right about now
but I love it because it pushes me to be
better than I am and I watch it enrich
lives every day but from $300 diabetic
supplies to dangerously addictive pills
I also watch this industry take
advantage of us every day if we want to
take back control of our system we have
to understand what gave our power away
now our industry encourages our culture
of drugged
pendants all you have to do is turn on
the TV to see it and we all love those
commercials do you feel exhausted and
worn down all the time
do you find trouble motivating yourself
to even the simplest of tasks if you
have trouble sleeping and even more
trouble waking you get cold when it’s
chilly hungry if you don’t eat if I were
to ask everyone in here the same set of
questions everyone would answer yes at
least once I call these the symptoms of
life and these commercials are deceptive
because they can paint something that’s
normal and natural as part of an illness
that you need this magic pill to fix
their mantra there’s always something to
fix about yourself and pills oil pills
exist to fix you now I used to take
about two painkillers a day I was never
in any physical pain but I’d feel
stressed and pressured by silly things
and I choose the pill because it was a
quick fix
as my tolerance grew two became three
than four than six pills a day this is
like my caffeine but it was always a
temporary fixed and never dealt with the
root of the problem and it was never
quite enough when you take a step back
from the thousands of manipulated
commercials we’re bombarded with you see
a different side of these drugs
prescription drugs harm more people in
the United States then illicit drugs do
according to DEA this is the number of
people that die each year from cocaine
heroin and marijuana abuse combined by
contrast prescription drugs killed
almost consistently twice the number of
people each year the CDC reports that
someone in this country dies
prescription drug abuse every 19 minutes
that’s a little over 500 people a week
the size of this audience and it doesn’t
exactly make sense because our legal
drugs are supposed to be our safe drugs
if you take a look at our FDA approval
process from left to right they undergo
a strenuous application process and
multiple clinical trials before they’re
approved by the FDA now this process can
take over 10 years and over 2.6 billion
dollars per drug and out of all the
drugs that started only about a handful
make it out so that’s a lot of bad drugs
that get weeded out that’s our system
working yet the FDA’s drug recall rate
is at an all-time high we have more
drugs than ever being approved to be on
the market
only to be deemed unsafe and removed
shortly after so my question is what are
the loopholes to our system how did they
flip past the radar now keep in mind
there’s a lot at stake for the drug
companies in this process that’s a lot
of invested time and money that can go
to waste for these for-profit companies
so even if they realize their drug isn’t
as safe or effective as they wanted it
to be they have to push it through the
system somehow to turn a profit they do
this by using what I like to call the
three golden rules of pharma these are
the loopholes these companies have found
across our system that allow them to
miss inform us and turn a profit golden
rule number one regulate the regulation
now the FDA controls the fate of all
proposed drugs as a drug company you
want a very good relationship with the
FDA this means giving money to review
board members and congressmen that
influence drug legislation as well as
paying above and beyond the required
drug fees in order to speed up their
approval process for your drug the FDA’s
budget exponentially grows each year and
pharma contributions account for over
80% of that growth each year it’s easier
to control regulation against you when
you basically own the agencies take
antidepressants for example now for
millions these drugs are a miracle for
others not so much after concerns about
antidepressants and boosting suicidality
and violence some patients the US fda
held a hearing in 1991 discuss the
safety of antidepressant what troubles
me is that the majority of the 41 FDA
review board members in that hearing had
some financial ties to the companies
that created these drugs there was such
a conflict of interest that they
released the statement titled conflict
of interest that the hearing will deal
with a no specific issue dealing with a
specific product or sponsor meaning that
the drugs are going to be looked at in
very general terms no one drug or
company is going to be targeted and
possibly regulated rule number one
regulate the regulation rule number two
publish only the positive now before
approval the FDA is to see to large
scale positive studies supporting that a
drug is an effective treatment versus a
placebo for a particular ailment
naturally they don’t want to approve a
drug that fails that what it’s supposed
to do so too is the magic number
and since drug companies fund and
conduct their own clinical trials they
control which studies they publish and
which studies they bury this can be
particularly dangerous say we conducted
100 studies and 98 of them showed our
drug had seriously disturbing side
effects we could legally only disclose
the two studies we favored that is being
reckless with our health and it’s not
exactly hypothetical if you look at the
drug prozac in 2005 in 2005 internal
documents about side effect information
and clinical trial data about the pill
prozac were leaked to the media these
documents were dated a year after prozac
was approved to be on the market and
they showed that patients on Prozac are
12 times more likely to commit suicide
through patients on other major
antidepressants and eight times more
likely to commit intentional injuries
prozac had been on the market for almost
two decades at that point without any
warning labels for the side effects
death company knew about but chose to
conceal this is a drug that was also
marketed for children now today the FDA
does require suicide risk warning labels
on all antidepressants take the birth
control yaz and yasmin were found to
increase the risk for blood clotting two
times regular birth control pills
patients on the drugs iPrEx on
antipsychotic medication are three and a
half times more likely to develop
diabetes than patients not on the drug
so I defect information that was
conveniently left out of the original
publication then this is particularly
dangerous because adverse effects to
medication is the fourth leading cause
of death in the United States after
heart disease cancer and Stroke
rule number two publish only the
positive rule number three involve
everyone with a financial interest now
it may take a village to raise a child
but it takes an army to push forward a
drug approval is only half the battle
the other half is selling it in such a
crowded market of extremely similar
drugs you have to make your drug more
appealing for physicians to prescribe
you can buy bribe doctors with free
dinners trips dinner
money more dinners in order to approve
your drug over others you can pay
insurance companies to establish your
drug as their preferred drug for a
diagnosis you can also reward
individuals willing to push forward your
drugs with high-ranking jobs at the very
drug companies for example they’re
evolving door phenomena where you have
FDA officials ending up with
high-ranking jobs at the very drug
companies they help approve drugs for if
you look at the diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders
or DSM for short this is basically the
diagnostic standards for every
psychiatric disorder recognized in the
United States basically a mental
diagnosis has to be in this book before
medication can be approved for its
treatment and what interests me about
this is when you look at the task force
team that puts together this book each
version over 70% of them have financial
ties to the pharmaceutical industry the
more diagnoses they create that existing
drugs can be marketed for the more money
the psychiatrics and drug companies
alike can make rule number three involve
everyone with a financial interest we
have a system that is harming everyone
that is on medication and everyone that
knows someone that is on medication
we’re encouraged to depend on drugs for
our problems and then misinformed about
those very drugs so where do we go from
here well for starters we have to break
the golden rules from a policy
perspective this means regulating the
companies and their contributions to the
FDA publishing all clinical trial data
and adverse effects as well as only
involving individuals known for health
and safety interests not money interest
our medications should not be tied to
someone’s financial agenda there should
be no conflict of interest when it comes
to public health now when if you look
across the globe we’re the only ones
facing this problem because of how we
approach health now our process is
considered a gold standard across many
nation within our system we eat chicken
we need to prove that our drug is
tremendously harmful before it can ever
be regulated in addition Missouri is the
only state in the United States without
a prescription drug monitoring program
that is being reckless with our health
on the other hand if you look at the
European Union they
all very precautionary principle if a
drug has even the slightest potential of
harm protective and preventive action is
taken they refused to be reckless with
health that is where we defer and that
is the change we need to make now we can
crack down on these companies and
regulate the system all we want but we
need to take a moment to look at
ourselves because from a cultural
perspective who we allow these loopholes
we feed into the drug commercials and
the drug dependence culture we don’t ask
enough questions about our medications
and we’re quick to exchange a pill for a
problem for a pill no one is happy about
paying absurd front prices for
medication they can they don’t know all
the risks for but not many have the
incentive to protest it’s only when a
drug is harming someone close to us or
is costing us a fortune that we care
about regulating it at all
that is being reckless with our health
now of all the major players of this
game we the citizens stand to lose and
gain the most how are these drug
companies powerful well they create our
duct supplies how are we powerful were
their customers and like any good
business this industry has to cater to
its customers in order to survive and we
have more power there than we truly
realize if you look at the EpiPen
controversy you may have heard about it
spanning on a couple years back that’s
when the price of this life-saving
epinephrine injectable increased by over
600% because it’s company Milan no
longer had competition in the market I
want to walk you through a visual
timeline feed event of the entire
scandal you know the beginning the
reaction was very slow the people that
were effective spoke out but not nearly
enough and more and then more price
hikes went up more people couldn’t
afford the medications even EMTs had to
use syringes instead of the medication
because it was too expensive to even use
professionally now by July online
petitions on websites like change.org
started for Congress to investigate the
price gouging and then the media picked
up the story and from there it blew up
by August 20 tweets a day increased to
500
thousand eventually reaching over ten
thousand tweets a day from doctors and
consumers alike sharing their outrage
and calling for change in the aftermath
Milan released a cheaper generic and CBS
competed by creating an even cheaper
generic in essence we demanded a new
supply and the industry rose to meet our
demands and the EpiPen scandal is by no
means one of a kind and if you look
across our history of Medicine protest
you see the protests for affordable
health care – cancer drugs you see the
protest against the over drugging of
veterans against the use of psychiatric
drugs on children against affordable
access to AIDS treatments there is not a
shortage of battles we have taken on and
have yet to take on and with social
media it’s easier than ever to spread
the word and educate the community
around us in the words of John F Kennedy
only uneducated and informed people will
be a free people we have to understand
how our culture impacts this industry
and how we can protect ourselves and I
suggest we do this by creating our own
set of rules just like they have their
rules we get to have our rules and I
call them the United States of recovery
rules before asking your for taking any
medications ask yourself these set of
questions number one do I need this drug
is this the Pro is this drug treating a
physiological problem or simply a
symptom of life problem rule number two
do I know the side effects of this drug
research your medication
ask your doctor is about the medic about
the side effects of the medication look
under study is published by the FDA
under the European Medicines Agency the
daily med there’s even an application
released by the FDA called orange book
that contains two eye defect information
of almost all fda-approved drugs use
your resources number three is this drug
the best possible option for me what are
my alternatives and with the help of a
health care professional analyzed if the
benefits outweigh the harms for you
personally we don’t have to be reckless
with our health now the United States of
addiction is in their best interest I
mean they’ll have customers
life that way we shouldn’t make it that
easy for them nothing there’s not a pill
for every problem but for the pills that
do need them we are entitled to safe
medications we are entitled to drugs
that will increase our risk for suicide
12 fold or leave us paralyzed we are
also entitled to a drug industry that
won’t look at our children as an
untapped market of customers we are
entitled to feel safe
protected not falsely so even here in
the united states of recovery we are
still entitled to true safety not the
illusion thank you
[Applause]
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