Rep Dana Criswell on The Opioid Epidemic and Childhood Vaccinations
Below is an article from Representative Dana Criswell of Mississippi. Opioid addiction and death and vaccine injury do not care what side of the aisle you sit on, or what flag you wave or what flag you burn or whether your state is red or blue. I love that Representative Criswell represents OLIVE BRANCH, MS district. We need an olive branch of peace to brush away the hatred and vitriole shown toward those who express concerns about vaccine safety. Mississippi has only the medical exemption for vaccination. The state does not have a Religious or Philosophical exemption.
The Opioid Epidemic and Childhood Vaccinations
Today we are experiencing a crisis in the U.S. and especially in Mississippi. Deaths from heroin and prescription painkillers are increasing each year by a factor of 10. The number one killer of people under the age of 50 is opioid overdose. More people die from drug overdose than they do from gun violence or car wrecks.
Here are some facts about the opioid epidemic:
- Prescription drug overdoses account for nearly 60% of all drug overdose deaths. Of those deaths, 73% came from opioids.
- Mississippi doctors are a leading prescriber of opioid painkillers with the equivalent of approximately 70 opioid pills for every man, woman, and child in 2016.
- The number of painkiller prescriptions in Mississippi makes us the fifth highest per capita in the nation, with 1.07 prescriptions per person.
- In the state of Mississippi, there were 563 reported drug overdose deaths from 2013-2016 (MS Bureau of Narcotics). Of these, 481 deaths were related to opioid abuse
One of the most disturbing facts is the role pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and doctors played in this epidemic. Those we trusted to tell us the truth, to care for our well being and to protect us, have betrayed us. In the book, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones outlines how pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals and government health agencies contributed to this crisis.
In Dreamland we learn that pharmaceutical companies abandoned science and ignored facts to promote the wholesale use of opioid pain medication, making for themselves billions of dollars. We learn that doctors ignored lessons taught in medical school to accommodate demanding patients, and they accepted the pharmaceutical companies bad science because it was easier than taking the time to research and learn the truth. We also learn that government health agencies ignored facts and accepted fake science, often leading to agency heads receiving top positions in those very companies. While all of this was happening the average person was trading back pain for a doctor prescribed opioid addiction that may eventually kill them.
Much of our national addiction to opioid pain medication and heroin could have been avoided if someone had spoken up and someone had listened, but our medical professionals ostracized anyone who questioned their actions until it was too late and now many are suffering and dying.
Today we are told by the same pharmaceutical companies that lead us into the opioid crisis that every vaccine is safe. Those same companies that faked science to make billions of dollars on opioid painkillers have convinced the government to protect them from lawsuits over vaccine injuries and to increase the required number of vaccines from 11 in 1996 to over 50 today. They are making billions of dollars selling those vaccines.
Here are some facts about vaccines:
- In 1986, Congress passed a law where pharmaceutical companies can not be held liable for any injury to a child resulting from a vaccine
Dear Loraine,
Doctors created this profit making scheme. They sold out to Pharma decades ago. A lunch here, a vacation there, theater and sport tickets, funding for conferences, accepting biased industry speakers and "educational" materials at those conferences, accepting biased industry written and published medical school textbooks, accepting millions in funding that built their organization's headquarters, allowing industry to take over medical and scientific research, accepting gifts, favors, trinkets, kickbacks of every kind. They were paid to look the other way while Satan took control and the great majority looked the other way without a second thought as long as their pockets were lined. That's what brought us to where we are today. Medicine sold its soul.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 18, 2017 at 12:43 PM
What a great article!!
Posted by: Twyla | September 18, 2017 at 01:14 AM
Maybe we should reconsider advertising prescription medications. This seems advisable to me. Today a patient asked me about getting an TV advertised medication. I replied, "The doctor will prescribe the medications that your condition warrants." This patient fired back with, "They just told me to request this medication from my doctor." She was pointing to the TV in her room. Pharmaceutical Companies know what they are doing advertising directly to patients. This behavior was considered drug seeking in the past. Now, doctors are criticized if they do not give good, "customer satisfaction." I feel sorry for doctors caught up in this profit making scheme. I am sure at times they feel they can not win.
Posted by: Loraine Fishel | September 17, 2017 at 06:11 PM
Representative Criswell's congressional email address is:
[email protected]
Since he is strongly on record as to vaccines's dangers, I would hope he is trying to change Mississippi's draconian stance that only permit "medical exemption" for the State's children. I for one will email him on this.
Posted by: david m burd | September 17, 2017 at 07:37 AM
MontanaNAR; Yes.
It is a layer, on top of layer, on top of layer of catastrophic events destroying America.
Peeling it back of why so many are in pain needing pain relievers and under it all is auto immunity, under it that is vaccines.
There really is s something special about poppy seed stuff, and inflammation. Not only it is a pain reliever, but it really effects your mood.
Posted by: Benedetta | September 16, 2017 at 11:34 PM
Sorry.. last sentence in my comment should have read:
...and why the options for pain relief are so limited.
Posted by: MontanaNAR | September 16, 2017 at 04:47 PM
Vaccine injury can cause chronic inflammatory pain. And, yes, it would be great to "cure" the cause of the inflammation.
However, Big Pharma and their lackeys at the CDC-NIH-FDA do not care about a cure and then only offer a small handful of pain relievers, which include opioids.
Opioids offer a genuine relief to many people who would have no quality of life whatsoever if they did not have the ability to somehow decrease their pain. These people are not addicted to opioids; they are dependent on them.
Most of today's articles about the "opioid epidemic" position opioid medications as a weakness of the user. Somebody should be asking why there are so many millions of people in awful pain who need strong pain killers and why aren't the options for pain relief are so limited.
Posted by: MontanaNAR | September 16, 2017 at 04:45 PM
Linda1, you are bang on about the docs prescribing OxyContin etc after any surgeries. They give it to anyone and in quantity.
Posted by: Canadian | September 16, 2017 at 12:47 PM
I don't know what the protocol is now, but as recent as a decade ago, a routine wisdom tooth extraction came with orders to take a generous supply of hydrocodone with no warning as to how to safely use it. An uneducated parent or young adult would follow the doctor's order and become an addict. It's that simple and that stupid.
I take issue with the Congressman's suggestion that doctors are giving in to demanding patients by prescribing these drugs. Doctors in partnership with Pharma deliberately over prescribed and pushed these drugs on innocent people who came to them for help. The crippling of America was a deliberate act.
Posted by: Linda1 | September 16, 2017 at 09:43 AM
Thanks to this intellectually honest congressman. We need so many more like him to pass legislation to protect Americans from the excesses of the pharmaceutical, chemical, agricultural, food, medical and insurance industries.
We must also equip our teens with the inquiry and reasoning skills to deal with controversial social health issues they confront today and when they become independent adults. I helped developed and taught such a course in high school some decades ago. It is described in the following op-ed:
http://loudounnow.com/2016/07/22/op-ed-engaging-teens-to-confront-social-and-health-challenges/
Posted by: Barry Stern | September 16, 2017 at 09:04 AM
Excellent piece! Thanks for posting it. Those of us who are paying attention and doing our research realize that both political parties are at fault for creating and maintaining the holocaust of vaccine injury. The man behind the curtain is the one orchestrating this partisan war between Left and Right in the media, in an attempt to distract us from what they are doing. I think fewer and fewer Americans are buying it any longer. Hopefully Rep. Criswell has the President's ear.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | September 16, 2017 at 08:39 AM