A “medicine chest” or a Pandora’s box: Is NJ politics addicted to Big Pharma?

The first in a lengthy examination.

By Rubashov

Former Governor Chris Christie has famously called New Jersey the “Medicine Chest of the World.” That “Medicine Chest” is known by another name too – “Big Pharma”.

Ordinary citizens once felt they had the freedom to question Big Pharma. That was before the pandemic – and the enormous pressures from establishment media and an intense regime of unquestioning censorship by social media giants. Political practitioners of neo-Marxism came up with pejoratives for skeptics – which were used to make social outcasts of those who expressed doubt. People lost friends, family, jobs – the means to life – over their failure to conform.

The obedience to Big Pharma’s line turned everything America had learned from the Opioid Scandal on its head. The clock had been turned back to the days of “just shut up and take your medicine.”

As a candidate for President, Chris Christie – or his campaign’s pollsters – must be aware that this newfound conformity hasn’t worn comfortably with the American public. Christie pointedly railed against Big Pharma’s advertising regime when he announced his candidacy in June.

Later that month, Bloomberg’s Gregory Korte wrote an interesting story about Chris Christie’s ties to Big Pharma. Korte’s reporting reinforces the commonsense approach to politicians that advises voters to ignore their words and follow the money:

…the former New Jersey governor made no mention of his role in the pharmaceutical industry, where he serves on the board of Pacira BioSciences Inc., a maker of pain management drugs marketed as opioid alternatives in television ads.

Pacira’s 30-second ad doesn’t reference the company’s brand names, instead directing consumers to a website to “learn more about non-opioid options for managing pain after surgery.” The ad has been running since at least 2020 and continues to appear intermittently, according to tracking firm AdImpact.

Christie joined Pacira as a consultant after leaving the governor’s mansion in 2018. He made $801,000 before joining the company’s board in 2019. Shareholders at Pacira’s annual meeting in Tampa, Florida, were expected to reelect Christie to a new three-year term on Tuesday. Board members make $325,072 a year.

(NOTE: Pacira’s website currently lists Chris Christie as a member of its Board of Directors, https://www.pacira.com/about-board-of-directors)

…He leveraged those ties in 2017, when he served as chair of a blue-ribbon commission on opioid addiction under former President Donald Trump, the man he now seeks to dislodge as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president.

Among the drug executives he invited to testify was Pacira CEO David Stack, who told the commission that federal Medicare reimbursement policies should give doctors more incentives to prescribe non-opioid pain drugs.

Pacira’s recommendation was part of Christie’s report to Trump. “We should incentivize insurers and the government to pay for non-opioid treatments for pain beginning right in the operating room and at every treatment step along the way,” Christie wrote.

Christie’s letter had the potential to be a “game-changer” for Pacira, wrote Randall Stanicky, then an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

In 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published a new rule that specifically changed how it reimburses hospitals for Pacira’s flagship product, Exparel, which accounts for the bulk of its sales. Previously, the drug was classified as a surgical supply, with the price bundled into the cost of the procedure. The agency, citing the commission’s recommendations, allowed hospitals to charge Medicare separately for the medication.

Pacira didn’t return requests for comment.

Christie was also a registered lobbyist in 2020 and 2021, representing a range of hospitals, drugstores and pharmaceutical companies including diabetes drugmaker Novo Nordisk, which paid him $120,000 to lobby on Medicare drug coverage.

Novo Nordisk is the same Big Pharma corporation that employs the company Assembly candidate Mike Inganamort is a partner in to do its ESG compliance work. ESG is short for Environmental, Social and Governance. In the words of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, ESG is “a direct threat to our American way of life.” But if you want the short version of how ESG actually works, take a moment to watch this video from the Heritage Foundation, America’s largest conservative think tank:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8SP8DTy_v8

Yes, the point we are making is that Big Pharma is very much in the forefront of Woke corporate social engineering. Some argue they do that to keep consumer advocates on the Left off their backs when they produce products – as they frequently do – that do things like giving women ovarian cancer.

The Opioid Scandal – or Opioid Epidemic if you prefer – is back before the public again. This time as a Netflix series called “Painkiller”. Journalist and author Barry Meier wrote about it in yesterday’s edition of The Free Press, editor Bari Weiss’ excellent source of old-school journalism.

Barry Meier is an investigative reporter who wrote for the New York Times. He was a member of the Times team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. In 2003, he authored a truly great book that every knowledgeable citizen should read: “Pain Killer: A Wonder Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death.” In 2018, a new edition was published as “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic.”

Here are some excerpts from yesterday’s column:

My book documents how Purdue turned OxyContin, a drug valuable for treating severe pain caused by cancer or chronic health issues, into a billion-dollar blockbuster by launching the biggest-ever pharmaceutical marketing campaign for a powerful and potentially addictive narcotic.

It was built on the lie, pushed by Purdue’s sales team, that OxyContin’s special formulation made it safe to use for back pain, dental pain, and other common problems. In fact, a single tablet of OxyContin contained up to sixteen times the amount of oxycodone, a powerful narcotic, than found in traditional painkillers.

Purdue’s promotional strategies included falsely claiming to well-meaning doctors that scientific studies showed the risk of patient addiction from OxyContin was “less than one percent.” Such studies didn’t exist, but Purdue and its medical allies engaged in an ideological “War on Pain” by cherry-picking data from clinical trials and distorting their findings. The company also used its money to buy influence, by hiring physicians to promote OxyContin, giving money to law enforcement organizations, and making contributions to professional medical groups.

A U.S. attorney in Maine who first sounded the alarm in that state soon went on Purdue’s payroll, as did the FDA official who, at the company’s urging, approved the specious labeling claim that OxyContin’s time-release formula might reduce its potential to be abused. While researching Pain Killer, I discovered the founder of the Sackler dynasty, Dr. Arthur Sackler, developed many of these techniques in the 1950s when he pioneered the prescription drug advertising industry.

Read the whole story on The Free Press here: https://www.thefp.com/

And here's the Netflix series: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11816814/

“It was a thoughtless, mindless action… It’s really disturbing to think that the kids were targeted.”

Dr. Paul Saxton, Fort Lee School District

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

George Orwell

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