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5.30
General Social Trend #7:
  
  The growing dependence on synthetic drugs  
  One of the great changes of society over the past forty years has been the campaign of transference and ultimate domination of global pharmaceutical companies in the production of synthetic pain killers compared to traditional plant based opiates.  
  For thousands of years, communities around the world have grown and harvested their medicine plants alongside their food crops. Hardy and tough plants such as hemp (marijuana) have been relatively easy to grow and have been a source of very cheap, reliable pain killers along with the poppy (morphine) and a host of other naturally grown plants.  
  However, in the space of a couple of generations, mostly American and some European based consortiums have succeeded in ensuring virtually every nation on Earth has banned the growing, importation and use of naturally grown pain killer crops in preference to the highly expensive, tightly controlled supply of patented pain killers and other drugs.  
5.30.1 The massive size and value of the US controlled pharmaceutical industry  
  The global pharmaceutical industry is vast, at around $350 billion in annual sales. North America (US around 50% of total world market), Europe and Japan together accounted for 88 per cent of the worldwide market. Of that, 70% of sales were synthetic pain killers.  
  While the total synthetic drug market continues to grow at around 5 to 10%, the size of the US market has started to decline, mainly because of the long term health side effects and ensuing law suits against various synthetic pain killers that have been found to have potentially lethal side effects. Many Americans no longer trust these multi-billion dollar synthetic drug manufacturers’ promises on the safety of their drugs.  
  At the same time, it has emerged in the past four years that many hundreds of thousands of Americans and people around the world have become addicted to synthetic pain killers, much like addicts to prohibited drugs. However, unlike heroin or marijuana addicts, the supply of these pain killers have been much easier to source, and sometimes promoted.  
5.30.2 Prohibited drug trade  
  The prohibited drug trade is the production, traffic and consumption of drugs that have been made illegal by the majority of governments of the world. These principally concern the agriculture crops of opium, cocaine (coca plant) and marijuana (hemp plant). It also includes the increasing market for synthetic opiates.  
  While virtually all of these drugs have been legal at some time in every country and the global coverage of prohibition has only effectively existed in practice for the past twenty years.  
  Today, the prohibited (illegal) drug trade is vast, accounting for over $240 billion in annual world trade (around 2.6% of total world trade) and slightly under the legalized monopoly of synthetic drugs. However, unlike legally traded commodities, no effective direct government revenue is gained from this traffic.  
  Of all illegal drugs, approximately $150 billion and around 4 million Kg of opium resin continues to be produced each year, mainly the mountainous Asian nations, predominately Afghanistan. This in turn fuels the $25 billion heroin industry per year. Cocaine (around 835,000 Kg at around $22 billion), Marijuana (2 million Kg and around $12 billion), Hashish (230,000 Kg and around $4 billion) are the other traditional drug crops now produced illegally by organized crime.  
  Significantly, methyl amphetamines, largely produced from converting legal synthetic drugs such as flu pills into illegal drugs has grown quickly to account worldwide trade of around 640,000 Kg and $17 billion.  
5.30.3 Effects of handing legal control of synthetic drug manufacturing and supply to US and European Drug Companies  
  The effect of enforcing the legal monopoly of synthetic drug manufacturing companies of the world’s market of pain killers has been as devastating distortion of the world’s resources, individual health and well being.  
  Most cruelly, it has denied many of the poorest countries in Africa and Asia the right to grow and supply their citizens with cheap, safe pain killers. Instead, drug companies have for the past ten years been dumping old stock, which provides next to no effective relief along with potentially lethal side effects on the poor nations of the world, while receiving foreign aid dollars for their efforts.  
  At the same time, taxpayers in developed nations have watched as billions of dollars have been diverted to enforce the legal monopoly of drug companies, occasionally smash “illegal” drug cartels and jail millions of people found to be using, or selling drugs not manufactured by American and European drug companies.  
  American politicians funded and supported by drug companies have now jailed over 2 million of their fellow citizens, of which 70% relate in some way to drug crimes.  
  Meanwhile, billions of dollars in “illegal” drug trade is untaxed and available across the world to help fund terrorist and radical organizations, organized crime and bribe hundreds of thousands of officials around the world.  
5.30.4 The looming synthetic time bomb  
  In an added perversion, the most recent looming crisis is the dramatic rise in the use of methyl amphetamines, a market of illegal drugs essentially made possible because of the monopoly of multi-national synthetic drug manufacturers of flu and cough medicines as well as other pain killers.  
  What makes this latest drug craze of greater concern is that along with virtually all synthetic classes of drugs produced by the multi-national drug companies, there are severe side effects in long term use, most notably severe psychosis and violence.  
  The drug “ice”, a refined form of methyl amphetamines has been found to be responsible for some of the most shocking violent crime in major urban American and European cities since it became popular.  
  At the same time, the very American and European companies that forced law makers around the world to make their drugs the only legally available pain killers are now faced with a disaster of their own making as class actions in America and elsewhere are tipped to cost the industry tens of billions in compensation for the misery, death and permanent health injuries their drugs caused thousands of unfortunate users.  
  In the end, naturally grown, side effect free opiate drugs might be permitted to be grown again as pharmaceutical companies are sued out of the business of making pain killers after all.  
     
     
 
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