Suboxone Crisis Prop36 Video

At first glance, Proposition 36 appears to address drug addiction through increased incarceration of nonviolent offenders. But beneath this surface-level solution lies a disturbing mandate: prisoners are given a drug called Subbox that drug companies say is "addiction treatment" but it's actually an addictive opiate that is more likely to perpetuate addiction than to help users stay off opiates. Subbox is given to individuals who recently quit using drugs based on drug company's claims that it's a medication that will help reduce cravings. Drug companies claim that Subbox is an effective treatment, despite their own research that found that Subbox "tended to keep users on opiates with the majority of users relapsing within a few months and returning to street drugs."

Based on misleading information from drug companies, Subbox has become ubiquitous in America's addiction treatment system and is likely a primary reason the opiate crisis keeps escalating. In 2020 Congress directed that all federal prisons were required to give Subbox, an addictive opiate, to prisoners who requested it. Prisoners are given Subbox, synthesized heroin, to use daily during their sentences and they'll likely be released as addicted to a drug known to lead to harder drugs.

Because of extensive lobbying by drug companies, Subbox is given to recently detoxed persons of all ages, not only at prisons, but at all public facilities, including drug rehabilitation and detox programs. Recipients are told only that it's medical treatment that will help reduce cravings. What recipients aren't told is that Subbox is an addictive opiate that won't help them get off drugs and is often harder to withdraw from than heroin or other opiates.

Because transitioning to stronger drugs increases the fatality rate significantly, aggressive promotion of Subbox might explain why hundreds of Americans die every day from opiate use while other countries that focus on drug rehabilitation, have had relatively flat addiction rates over the last 20 years. Prisons, rehabs and detoxes were traditionally the most likely places where individuals were successfully able to quit using drugs. It's as if drug companies knew this.

More than 80% of the world's opiates are used by Americans. Prop 36 will primarily benefit drug companies and the prison industry if Subbox continues to be pushed in public facilities despite evidence that it's making the opiate crisis worse.

The tragic case of actor Matthew Perry illustrates these dangers. Perry died while using Subbox when he combined it with another normally safe drug ketamine. Initially Perry said he considered himself to be on a "medication" and only later realized he'd been put on another addictive opiate. In his book, he had warned that Subbox was "the worst drug ever" and should never be given for more than three days, noting that drug rehabilitation centers often prescribed addictive drugs without disclosing their true nature or serious side effects. Subbox is often misused by doubling up on doses, injecting it or using it with other drugs, similar to its predecessor OxyContin, although judges often mandate drug testing that encourages Subbox for defendants because of a severe shortage of affordable rehabs.  Alcohol and cannabis are violations, but Subbox, synthesized heroin is allowed.

Much of the public is unaware that Subbox is the second opiate created by Richard Sackler the man who started the opiate epidemic. Sackler aggressively and deceptively marketed his first opiate OxyContin, as safe and non-addictive to the general public resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. When charges were filed against Sackler in connection to the many fatalities, court documents show that Sackler directed his company to turbo-charge sales of OxyContin.

Sackler's marketing consultants shadowed salespeople into doctors' offices, ensuring aggressive promotion continued even as the death toll mounted. Doctors were given large bonuses for prescribing opiates. Another court document exposed a memo between executives at his company, celebrating the high failure rate of Subbox, as meaning more profit due to repeat customers. I'll repeat: Sackler executives celebrated Subbox's high failure rate as meaning higher profits due to repeat customers.

Sackler eventually arranged for a judge to give him complete immunity from legal consequences and a fine amounting to less than 1% of OxyContin profits. The payoff was already lined up: Judge Drain immediately quit the bench for a lucrative position with a Sackler-affiliated company according to Patrick Radden-Keefe, author of Empire of Pain, the book the Netflix series Painkiller was based on.

Public outrage forced the Supreme Court to vacate the obscene ruling and it's currently being reviewed. Meanwhile Sackler secured FDA approval for Subbox, his next weapon of mass addiction and is marketing it even more aggressively than OxyContin. This time taxpayers are picking up the tab to market and administer Subbox despite its proven tendency to keep users addicted.

The FDA approval process reveals an even more sinister level of corruption. The same marketing consultants who worked for Sackler's Purdue Pharma simultaneously advised the FDA. These consultants went beyond just promoting the drug. They proposed a death bounty - $40,000 to pharmacies for each overdose victim. This wasn't a mistake. It was murder for profit. The marketing company was also fined.

Meanwhile, affordable recovery programs receive minimal funding and turn away countless individuals seeking help. Public programs are nearly impossible to get access. Programs that don't allow opiates to be used during treatment, to get off opiates, receive zero public funding. Public rehabs and detoxes have been defunded during a deadly opiate epidemic based on misleading pharmaceutical industry claims that an opiate like Subbox is a more effective treatment than drug rehabilitation.

Another consequence of deceptive claims by drug companies is that because of the severe shortage of affordable rehab programs, judges no longer mandate drug rehabilitation for defendants but instead require drug testing that allows opiates like Subbox, synthesized heroin while ironically prohibiting legal substances like alcohol and cannabis.

The contrast with other nations is stark. Countries around the world - from China and Mexico to those in Europe and the Middle East - all focus on separating addicts from drugs and offering comprehensive drug rehabilitation. The United States stands virtually alone in putting people on an alternative opiate and allowing drug advertising. New Zealand is the only other exception that allows drug advertising.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Americans consume 80% of the world's opiates and hundreds of people die every day from addiction. Subs is so accessible it's become a street drug known simply as 'subs'.

Unfortunately, the billions of dollars that Sackler and drug companies were fined for deceptive marketing of OxyContin have had much of the money boomerang back into their pockets, channeled through "Harm Reduction Organizations" that primarily exist to market 'subs' and lobby politicians. Harm reduction organizations are seen as drug company front groups. They receive huge amounts of public funding, including the settlement payouts. In other countries, this money would go to drug rehabilitation. Here, it's used to push a drug that makes the crisis worse.

Doctors featured in ads by Harm Reduction Organizations have recommended Subs for headaches and depression and claim some people are "born with an inherent need for opiates" – a blatant falsehood disproven by the famous "Rat Park" experiment and others, which show addiction is driven by environment, not biology.

The solution isn't complicated – it just isn't profitable for the wrong people. We need to not allow drug users to openly use and sell drugs on the street addicting others. Give users the option of 30 to 90 days in jail or 30 to 90 days in a residential rehab program followed by 12 to 18 months of drug testing and ideally a supportive environment with others in recovery. Patients can work and lead normal lives but are required to stay off drugs including 'subs'.

We need drug rehabilitation facilities held accountable for actual recovery, not just profit. We need comprehensive aftercare programs with genuine sober living environments. We need drug testing protocols that can't be gamed with store bought urine. We need real oversight of treatment facilities.

People who want to stay on opiates who aren't in custody, can receive opiates like subs and methadone, carefully administered in clinic settings as in other countries. Prisoners not suffering debilitating pain should not receive addictive taxpayer funded recreational opiates while serving their sentences.

Sentences for non-violent drug law offenders should be minimal and require drug rehabilitation. Comprehensive drug rehabilitation in prisons needs to be mandated and accountable.

My 2012 book exposed how the justice system deliberately targets small-time users, and rarely provides adequate drug rehabilitation programs. Most prison drug rehabilitation programs are often nothing but facades of a recovery effort. Prisoners don’t need to be given opiates. Serious drug problems are rare because inmates make just fifty cents an hour, and drugs were simply too expensive.

The solution requires a fundamental shift in approach. Addiction to deadly drugs must be viewed as a mental disorder, with addicts seen as individuals who are a danger to themselves and others.

I've been investigating and interviewing persons connected to the medical and recovery industry for two years as a parent who experienced the nightmare of addiction with my young adult child. My son was desperate to get off drugs, two of his friends had committed suicide because they were so overwhelmed with the despair of addiction. We tried for months to get into an affordable program but they were completely filled.

With no other choice and not understanding the true dangers at the time, we attempted the withdrawal process at home, without any medical support. He experienced severe muscle spasms and continuous projectile vomiting. On the second day, as I held his head in my arms, his whole body began shaking violently. His face turned chalk white, and in that terrifying moment, I realized he was having a stroke. The following few days he was semi-comatose and didn't speak.

I feared I'd never hear him speak again. Fortunately, he began to slowly talk coherently three days later, and was happy the drugs were finally out of his system. We began calling again trying to find a program to get therapeutic support to help in the process of staying off drugs and at last got an opening at a program I'd tearfully called many times over the preceding months.

We wanted to believe the grueling ordeal we'd struggled with for so long, seemed to finally be coming to an end. But a new chapter had just begun. Immediately after entering the program he was pressured to start taking a medication that he was told would help him relax. Counselors said that everyone in the program was taking the medication called Subbox.

We looked up information on it and everything we could read was glowing praise of Subbox as an 'effective treatment'. Nothing was mentioned about it being an addictive opiate that perpetuated addiction, was often harder to quit than other opiates or heroin, and that it often caused severe and rapid tooth decay and chronic constipation. Days later, he felt sick and his teeth hurt when the effect of the Subbox wore off and he realized he'd been put on another addictive opiate. Counselors told him the doctor would gladly increase his dose.

I learned that programs were underfunded because of the billions of dollars diverted to drug companies through Harm Reduction Organizations to promote Subbox. Harm Reduction Organizations aggressively promoted the false claim that abstinence based drug rehabilitation doesn't work and the absurd concept that chronic daily use of opiates was little different than taking insulin for diabetes.

Meanwhile Sackler is targeting other countries pushing opiate use. Emboldened by his ability to evade justice in America, Sackler has planted over 40,000 articles promoting opiates in Colombia alone. The media stays silent, muzzled by drug company stockholder influence and advertising dollars.

During the years I'd spent searching for answers I found that organizations appearing to be resources for families, turned out to be little more than front organizations advocating Subbox and discrediting therapeutic programs that educated former users about coping skills to stay off drugs. Many of the websites and ads in the US appeared formidable with a dot-org at the end although they primarily pushed using opiates like Subbox instead of comprehensive rehab.

I'm hoping my effort will reach even one other parent and spare a family from going through the nightmare of addiction. Please pass this onto others struggling with opiate dependency.

Long-term drug rehabilitation programs that track their graduates for over five years show success rates above 75%. Yes, many people need multiple attempts, and relapses happen - but the programs work. This stands in dramatic contrast to Subox's failure rate of close to 80%, yet billions in taxpayer dollars continue funding marketing and administration of 'subs', while the media remains largely silent, publishing only articles promoting Subs as "more effective than drug rehabilitation."

Opiates are known to be able to rewire the brain and impaired logic causing users to do things they normally wouldn't do by suppressing their emotions and exaggerating fears. Brain imaging doesn't just "suggest" impacts – it shows exactly how opiates violently affect the brain, deliberately destroying a person's ability to make clear decisions about their addiction. This isn't an unfortunate side effect – it's exactly what the drugs were engineered to do.

Oregon's tragic experiment with decriminalization proves the point: without adequate drug rehabilitation resources, fatalities tripled as thousands were turned away from overcrowded programs.

Compare this to other countries' approaches. Holland's comprehensive treatment model actually works to improve addicts' circumstances. Other nations using methadone, control it strictly in clinical settings – they're not letting drug companies turn their citizens into profits. They treat addiction as the mental health crisis it is, combining compassion with strict controls to actually help people recover.

The withdrawal process from opiates can be lethal. Without anti-seizure medications, patients risk brain damage, seizures, and strokes. Yet California and other states deliberately force "cold turkey" withdrawal – not for medical reasons, but to meet Subbox's cynical requirement for "clean" drug tests before starting taking it. They're literally risking patients' lives to hook them on a new drug.

The "Harm Reduction Organizations" are another cynical deception. These pharmaceutical industry fronts, hiding behind dot-org websites, use tax dollars to provide "shooting galleries" in many cities for intravenous drug users to protect them from what they feel is potential negative stigmatization. Studies prove that drug use is increased in surrounding areas but local officials who try to prevent shooting galleries end up targeted in the local press for depriving people of clean needles. Other countries like Canada simply put Narcan in vending machines and give easier access to needles without requiring going to taxpayer-funded 'shooting galleries'.

Subs does have its benefits as a maintenance drug similar to methadone. Methadone like 'subs' doesn't help people get off opiates but is given to individuals who want to stay on drugs but function at a higher level. There's a crucial difference. Methadone is carefully controlled in clinics by medical professionals to prevent misuse. But Subbox is so easily accessible that it's commonly sold on the street to buy stronger drugs.

Another tragic consequence of Sackler's exploitative marketing of OxyContin is that people with real, debilitating pain now find it hard to get the medication they truly need.

A number of years ago the drug Vioxx was known to cause fatalities, but stayed on the market for years until a lawsuit showed that 38,000 people had died from heart attacks from taking the drug. The company was fined when it was proven that they'd known about the many fatalities yet kept selling the drug for two years.

Every eleven minutes someone dies in the US from opiate abuse. The question isn't whether we know how to stop these deaths – it's whether we'll choose to do so. And right now, with Proposition 36 on the ballot, that choice is in your hands. Visit TruthAboutSubs.com to learn more about what's really behind this proposition. Share this video with everyone you know who cares about protecting our community from this deadly crisis. Together, we can stop this deadly cycle of addiction for profit before it claims more lives. Subscribe to our channel for more revealing truths about America's opiate crisis that the media won't tell you.