Juul shipped 1 million contaminated products: lawsuit

Yahoo – AFP, October 30, 2019

A lawsuit filed in a federal court in California claims that e-cigarette maker Juul
had a culture of disregarding health and safety concerns (AFP Photo/Robyn Beck)

Washington (AFP) - E-cigarette leader Juul shipped around one million mint-flavored pods that were "contaminated," and then failed to inform customers or issue a recall once it realized the problem, according to a lawsuit filed by a former executive.

It comes as the vaping industry is facing tough scrutiny amid a mysterious epidemic of lung conditions linked to e-cigarette use that has killed 34 people and sickened around 1,500 in recent months.

In the lawsuit filed in a federal court in California on Tuesday, ex-senior vice president for finance Siddharth Breja's legal team wrote he was sacked for "whistleblowing" by objecting to the contaminated pods shipment and other unsafe conduct like selling expired or near-expired products.

The claims were termed "baseless" by the company, which told AFP that Breja was terminated "because he failed to demonstrate the leadership qualities needed in his role."

But Breja's suit claimed that the company had a culture of disregarding health and safety concerns, and was led in a "dictatorial manner" by its ex CEO Kevin Burns who stepped down last month.

Breja said he had brought up concerns over a lack of expiration date labeling to Burns, who in an expletive-laden reply said half the firm's customers were "drunk and vaping like mofos" and would not even notice the quality of its pods.

The suit added that in March of this year, Breja learned that approximately 250,000 "Mint Refill Kits," or the equivalent of one million pods, had been contaminated, though the nature of the contamination was not specified.

Overriding his concerns, Juul refused to issue a product recall or issue a public health and safety notice -- despite the fact that Breja was asked to recover approximately $7,000,000 from the supplier of the eLiquid as a refund.

In a statement to AFP, Juul said: "The allegations concerning safety issues with Juul products are equally meritless, and we already investigated the underlying manufacturing issue and determined the product met all applicable specifications."

Breja's attorney Harmeet Dhillon told AFP meanwhile that Juul's admission of a manufacturing issue constituted a violation of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.

"If the product met 'all applicable specifications,' then why did Juul destroy the remainder of the unshipped lot and instruct Mr Breja to obtain a multi-million-dollar refund from its supplier?" she said.

US tobacco merchant Altria is writing down its stake in e-cigarette start-up Juul Labs by a third, or $4.5 billion, as that company contends with a regulatory backlashhttps://t.co/FS9q6gj8z2

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 31 oktober 2019

French MPs okay budget for medical marijuana experiments

Yahoo – AFP, October 25, 2019

Lawmakers in France, one of few European countries to ban medical cannabis use,
has approved the budget for two years of patient experiments many hope will pave
the way for a change in the law (AFP Photo/Pablo PORCIUNCULA BRUNE)

Paris (AFP) - Lawmakers in France, one of few European countries to still ban medical cannabis use, approved the budget Friday for two years of patient experiments that advocates hope will pave the way for a change in the law.

The National Assembly voted for the tests, already given the green light by France's ANSM medicines regulator, to be paid out of the social security budget for 2020.

"I sincerely hope that the experiments can begin in the first quarter of 2020," junior health minister Christelle Dubos said after the vote.

Olivier Veran, a lawmaker from President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party who proposed the budget inclusion, said the experiments could target some 3,000 sick people in France.

They will seek to determine whether cannabis derivatives can alleviate the symptoms of certain illnesses, and in which doses, he said.

Seventeen other European Union members have already authorised cannabis-based therapies, he added.

The tests will be done at a number of hospitals, with people who have serious conditions such as epilepsy, chronic pain, cancer or involuntary muscle contractions associated with multiple sclerosis.

In July, the ANSM gave the go-ahead for the experiments, which will not see patients getting a prescription for an old-fashioned joint.

For the purposes of the research, the cannabis can be ingested in the form of oil capsules, infusions, or drops.

France, which has one of the highest proportions of recreational drug users in Europe, softened penalties on marijuana use, making in punishable only by an on-the-spot fine of 200 euros.

In June, a group of French economists recommended fully legalising the drug, arguing it said would add billions to state coffers.

But Macron's government has consistently ruled out changing the law to allow people to get legally high.

Drug companies reach settlement ahead of landmark US opioids trial

Yahoo – AFP, Paul HANDLEY, October 21, 2019

Ilene Shapiro (left), executive director of Summit County, Michael O'Malley (center),
the Cuyahoga county prosecutor, and Mark Lanier, a lawyer representing Cuyahoga
and Summit counties, brief the press in Cleveland, Ohio on October 21, 2019 (AFP
Photo/Megan JELINGER)

Cleveland (AFP) - Three leading American drug distributors and an Israeli drugmaker blamed for a deadly US opioid epidemic settled a bellwether civil lawsuit with two Ohio counties Monday, just hours before they were to go on trial, a federal judge announced.

The $260 million deal set the basis for a broader multi-billion dollar potential payout to some 2,700 addiction-ravaged communities nationwide who had signed on to the Cleveland lawsuit, the first in a federal court to address the causes of the crisis.

The suit by Ohio's Summit and Cuyahoga counties was set as a model for the rest of the country, where communities have been seeking funds to address the massive fallout from the crisis.

The addiction epidemic has placed huge burdens on hospitals and emergency services, and on families supporting addicts and caring for children with addicted parents or parents who have died.

Talks for a broader $48 billion package for all the plaintiffs broke down Friday amid differences between some states and smaller communities over the total value and how the money would be distributed.

The settlement involved the three leading US drug distributors -- Cardinal Health, Amerisource Bergen, and McKesson Corp -- and Israel's generic drug manufacturer Teva.

Pharmacy chain Walgreens will continue to go to trial at a later date, said Federal District Judge Dan Polster. A small Ohio distributor also settled in a separate deal.

A study released in October 2019 estimated that the opioid epidemic cost the 

US economy at least $631 billion from 2015 to 2018 (AFP Photo/Eric BARADAT)

Hundreds of thousands of deaths

A trial would have examined allegations that the makers of the prescription painkillers and pharmaceutical distributors pushed billions of pills into communities without due care over two decades, making it excessively easy for patients to become addicted and creating a permanent demand.

The companies reaped tens of billions of dollars in profits while overdose deaths soared above 400,000 over two decades -- more than 70,000 in 2017 alone.

Plaintiffs had amassed large amounts of evidence showing that the companies knew they were fomenting an epidemic of addiction.

Lawyers had brought in addicts and family members of addicts to testify how they had quickly become addicted to the easy-to-obtain, overprescribed painkillers.

"Cuyahoga County has seen thousands of people die over the last several years. It's a tragedy. Summit County is no different," said Cuyahoga prosecutor Michael O'Malley.

"Our hearts go out to the families who have been touched by this," said Ilene Shapiro, the chief executive of Summit County.

"Whatever we can do to help these families rebuild and get as healthy as they can and move foreward is what we are trying to do."

Chart showing US drug overdose death rates by opioid category,
source of opioids, and how they work. (AFP Photo/Gal ROMA)

Not a global settlement

Joe Rice, of the MotleyRice law firm, which represented Summit County, said the settlement could act as a template for the rest of the communities who signed onto the suit.

"We now know how this industry worked," he said. "We still need a global settlement... I think the model is there," he said.

"But we're a long way from being through."

Johnson & Johnson had previously broken away with its own settlement, a $20.4 million deal with the two Ohio counties, which encompass the cities of Cleveland and Akron.

That came after Johnson & Johnson was ordered in August to pay $572 million to compensate Oklahoma state.

Polster, the judge presiding over the case, had pressured all sides for months to come to a deal to avoid a grinding, lengthy trial.

But the parties could not come to an agreement on a proposed settlement valued at $48 billion, including $18 billion in cash, after meetings on Friday.

A study released this week estimated that the opioid epidemic cost the US economy at least $631 billion from 2015 to 2018.

The Society of Actuaries report projects that for this year alone the cost could be $172-214 billion.

Nearly one-third of the 2015-2018 costs was in health care spending for addicts and infants born to addicts.

Some 40 percent was for the costs of early deaths, and the rest was for child and family care programs, criminal justice and lost productivity.

How Purdue's aggressive sales of a painkiller blew up in its face

MSN – AFP, 18 October 2019

Purdue faces hundreds of lawsuits, and has filed for bankruptcy protection,
because of its aggressive marketing and sales of OxyContin (Drew Angerer)

In 2002, Andrew Kolodny, a resident in psychiatry, attended a training session on pain treatment in Philadelphia.

Seventeen years later, he still shakes his head over the surprising enthusiasm of the lecturer, an authority on the topic, for prescribing opioids.

"The message was that people are suffering because of an overblown fear, and the correct and compassionate way to treat pain is to prescribe aggressively," Kolodny recalled.

The lecturer, Thomas McLellan, had shown the class a short film examining the case of a man seeking relief from chronic back pain.

The patient had been prescribed a strong regimen of OxyContin, the pain medication produced by Purdue Pharma -- but he wanted more, complaining of crippling agony.

After the film, McClellan asked the doctors in the class for their diagnosis.

"For me and for most of the people in the room, the obvious diagnosis was that this patient became addicted to their medicine," said Kolodny, who is now the co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University's Heller School in Boston.

"The surprise was that the person teaching the class said it's not true addiction. It's a pseudo-addiction."

McLellan insisted the problem facing the seemingly addicted patient was that he was not getting enough drugs, Kolodny recalled.

At the time, the concept of "pseudo-addiction" was being advanced by Purdue Pharma and other laboratories to promote their opioid products.

OxyContin, an anti-pain medication similar to morphine, was introduced to the American market in 1996 with a campaign that swept aside years of caution on the use of opioids, previously reserved for the gravely ill because of their highly addictive nature.

The campaign featured deceptive marketing, controversial sales practices and endorsements from eminent physicians generously remunerated by Purdue Pharma.

But as a result of the singularly aggressive promotion of the prescription drug, both Purdue and the Sackler family, which owns the firm, now face more than 2,300 lawsuits in the United States.

They stand accused of having provoked the nationwide opioid crisis.

Opioids are blamed for more than 400,000 deaths by overdose since 1999, according to recently published data, and on average for more than 130 deaths a day.

Contacted by AFP, Purdue Pharma declined to comment.

Opioid painkillers like these are linked to thousands of overdose deaths 

in the US (Eric Baradat)

A green light

The origins of OxyContin, which has generated more than $35 billion in sales for Purdue, date to 1990.

The laboratory, based in the northeastern US state of Connecticut, was looking for a successor to its popular analgesic MS Contin, a morphine-based medication prescribed mainly to cancer patients but which was facing growing competition from generic drugs.

Purdue developed a painkiller based on oxycodone, a semi-synthetic opioid first concocted in Germany in 1916, with effects comparable to those of MS Contin.

Opioids posed well-known risks of dependence, but the laboratory had an answer: the new drug's beneficial effects would last 12 hours, twice as long as similar medications, meaning a patient would take fewer pills and face reduced danger of addiction.

But even before it reached the market, tests showed that OxyContin's effects did not last as long as originally thought, the Los Angeles Times found in a 2016 investigation.

Still, in December 1995, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Purdue a green light to market OxyContin for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, authorizing its use for a range of ailments, many less serious than cancer.

"At the time of approval, FDA believed the controlled-release formulation of OxyContin would result in less abuse potential, since the drug would be absorbed slowly and there would not be an immediate 'rush' or high," an agency spokesman told AFP.

The FDA's approval drew growing criticism after Curtis Wright, a doctor who led the agency committee that authorized OxyContin, left to take a senior position with Purdue in 1998.

Another troubling development: once the drug was being marketed and aggressively promoted, OxyContin generated a huge black market that Purdue, critics say, ignored or minimized for far too long.

Quantities of pills were procured -- stolen from pharmacies or obtained from unscrupulous doctors -- and ground into powder to be inhaled, which multiplied their euphoric effects, according to a confidential US Justice Department report cited by The New York Times in 2018.

The 80-milligram pills, the most common dose, sell for $65 to $80 on the black market, compared to $6 in pharmacies, according to several doctors questioned by AFP.

An explosion in sales

Despite the warning signals, Purdue continued to present OxyContin as being less addictive than other opioids.

The company's advertising budget surged from $187,500 in 1996 to $4 million in 2001, according to internal documents.

Purdue also built up a so-called "speakers' bureau" -- mainly physicians highly remunerated for attesting to the "miracle" qualities of OxyContin.

Sales exploded -- rocketing from $80 million in 1997 to $2.1 billion only four years later, internal documents showed.

Purdue also enlisted the help of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) and the American Pain Society (APS), two respected professional organizations specializing in pain treatment, to support its campaign to destigmatize opioids.

Purdue helped finance both organizations, and several of their members worked as consultants for the laboratory.

Underscoring the close relationship, David Haddox, who headed an APS committee that endorsed the increased use of opiates, was hired by Purdue in 1999, where he remained until earlier this year.

Purdue's sales pitch to physicians was probably helped by the fact that pain treatment has long been a neglected branch of medicine, said Gregory Terman, director of the Acute Pain Service at the University of Washington and the APS president from 2015 to 2017.

"Until the opioid crisis, NIH (the National Institutes of Health) had never spent more than one percent of their budget on pain -- the most common reason people go to doctors -- let alone chronic pain, which troubles more than 100 million Americans," he said.

The APS, facing lawsuits over its promotion of opioids and unable to pay its lawyers, filed for bankruptcy in late June.

Primary care doctors "have little training in addiction or pain, and many of them believed the promises" made by Purdue, Stanford University psychiatry professor Keith Humphreys said.

Activists outside the Louvre Museum in Paris protested on July 1, 2019 against 

the museum's links to the Sackler family, major philanthropists, because of their 

ownership of Purdue Pharma and links to the opioid crisis (Stephane de Sakutin)

Legal problems mount

In 2006, the medical world finally awoke to the dangers of OxyContin, jolted by an article by Leonard Paulozzi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who reported that deaths linked to opioids had exploded by 91 percent from 1999 to 2002.

In 2007, for the first time, Purdue Pharma and three of its executives pleaded guilty, in Virginia, to having deceived physicians, patients and regulatory authorities about the risks posed by OxyContin of dependence or abuse. They agreed to pay $635 million in fines.

Yet when Purdue's legal problems grew in the United States and OxyContin sales fell in 2010, the company simply turned to its international subsidiary Mundipharma to promote sales in other parts of the world.

In Europe, where drug ads targeting the general public are banned, Mundipharma aired one in Spain in 2013 drawing attention to the problem of chronic pain and encouraging people to see a doctor and demand treatment.

Asked about that, a Mundipharma spokesperson said only: "We no longer have any such activity today."

The group has also financed seminars for physicians in other countries -- notably Brazil and China -- to promote opioids as effective pain treatment, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2016.

Joseph Pergolizzi, a Florida doctor who the newspaper said had lectured in 2016 at a Mundipharma-sponsored conference in Brazil, rejected any suggestion of deceptive marketing.

"I was invited to a cancer pain conference," he told AFP, adding that he had spoken about "severe cancer pain treatment and what the options are."

Pergolizzi said he had severed all ties to Mundipharma two years ago.

Purdue files for bankruptcy

Purdue has repeatedly stated that OxyContin is only one of several opioid medications on the market, and that it now fights actively against the abuse of such drugs.

It sought bankruptcy protection in mid-September and is now urging the states and cities suing it to agree to its transformation into a trust, with any future profits to be used to alleviate the harm caused by the opioid crisis.

The laboratory has said it is ready to make payments to the plaintiffs totaling $10 billion to $12 billion -- with $3 billion coming from the Sackler family -- if they drop all legal action.

But nearly 25 states, including New York, have rejected the proposal.

The offer from Purdue and the Sacklers falls far short of paying for "the death and destruction they inflicted on the American people," said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

In the US, drug deaths have overtaken homicide, suicide and motor-vehicle accident fatalities since 1999 pic.twitter.com/5xfwIUZZrc

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 18 oktober 2019

Health minister calls for international strategy to combat dementia

DutchNews, October 18, 2019 - By Senay Boztas 

The Dutch junior health minister has called for a global strategy to deal with dementia at a meeting of world experts in Japan. 

Hugo De Jonge likened the growth in this group of neurological conditions to the epidemic of HIV and Aids in the 1980s, and urged countries around the world to invest in research. 

‘Only when it became clear how quickly the epidemic of HIV/Aids was taking hold – it spread like wildfire, taking milions of lives around the globe – did a global awareness emerge,’ he told a World Dementia Council summit in Toyko. ‘A huge sense of urgency arose for international cooperation in HIV/Aids research… 

‘Today, we are on the verge of another epidemic. One that is quite different. This time, it is not young men who are the victims, but mainly older, vulnerable people. This time, it is not a disease that attacks our immune systems, but our brain, our memory, our personality, ourselves.’ 

He added that as in the early days of HIV and Aids, scientists do not know what causes dementia, the name given to a group of conditions that affect the brain, including Alzheimer’s. ‘Let us be honest, what we have been prepared to invest in dementia research so far is next to nothing,’ he added. 

Citing research from Alzheimer’s Disease International, De Jonge said that if everyone diagnosed with dementia across the world lived in one place, it would be as populous as Spain – the 28th largest country in the world. 

De Jonge will call for other G20 countries to invest more in dementia research at a meeting in Japan this weekend, inviting them to a conference in the Netherlands next year to talk about global co-operation. 

Dutch and foreign experts said it was high time for urgent action, with 280,000 people living with dementia in the Netherlands alone and numbers expected to rise dramatically as the population ages. 

Prof Philip Scheltens, director of the Alzheimer Centre at Amsterdam’s UMC teaching hospital, said that annual funding in the Netherlands had recently doubled to €16 million but that this was a drop in the ocean: ‘We still have no medicine for dementia and we need to go back to the drawing board,’ he said. ‘The worldwide budget must go up.’ 

A spokesman for the Dutch health department told DutchNews.nl that it was not only about increasing funding for treatment or searching for a cure, but also working out how people with dementia can remain in society rather than care homes where possible – the message of a Samen Dementievriendelijk campaign, with training videos on how to recognise and deal with people with dementia.

Related Articles:

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  The Biggest Filter that Hinders Truth is Your Biased Knowledge

The biggest filter of humanity, the one that keeps Humans from actual truth, believe it or not, is called knowledge. We speak of that which humanity perceives currently as knowledge. That which you do not know is, therefore, future knowledge. Now, every single scientist understands the difference - every single one - for they know what is coming is going to teach them what they don't know yet. This is part of the scientific process. Even so, they take what they know, or think they know, and completely let it temper the experiments for what they don't know. They base the future on what they know or believe, even though they know better!

A medical doctor will look in the past and he'll remember being taught about a time when humans would report to the barbershop for healing. That's when they would actually bleed people for healing. By the way, that's the reason for the barber pole having the red stripe on it - it's the tradition of barbers doing the bleeding. So back then, you went to get healed in the barbershop by being bled! This, of course, led to many deaths because there was no understanding of germs, sterilization or today's common sense. Doctors know this, and they laugh at how far you all have come from this. So doctors absolutely know that what is coming will someday be actually laughable, yet they are also absolutely and completely closed to what it might be. They just think it will be an advancement of what they currently know.  ….”

“..  Medicine - Where It's Going

I want to show you some other areas to consider. There are several categories that we'd like to talk about, but they're not in a specific order except for the last one. So let's talk about medicine. What is future medicine going to look like?

The most elegant predictions of medicine fall short of what's really coming. What you have today is a high-tech approach to designer chemistry. Now, since the body is made up of chemistry, it makes sense to look at this chemistry and work with it. It makes total sense to discover how it reacts to disease and then design cures with more chemistry. It's absolutely normal what you have done, but it's going to reach an end very soon. Because the future of medicine is physics, dear ones, not chemistry.

You're going to start understanding and developing new medical physics. You will discover that medi-physics is going to literally speak to cellular structure and give it instructions, without one chemical involved. There's always a reaction to chemistry, isn't there? There's always a side effect. When you push one thing, something else reacts, doesn't it? How do you like it so far? Your most elegant chemical designs, the ones that are helping with the worst diseases on the planet, all have side effects - and some of those side effects are death! I say to you, how do you like it so far?

Does it really seem elegant to you? Or perhaps it's just a more sophisticated way of bleeding in the barbershop? Dear ones, that's how you're going to look at it someday! You're going to slap your heads and say, "Remember the day when we did everything with chemistry and drugs?"

Right now, these kinds of changes have already started in several areas. There are discoveries being made that are healing some of the most heart-breaking diseases you have. I reveal one, because it's not a secret. I will always give you information that is either being worked on or has been postulated through free choice on this planet. That is the guideline of channelling. We can't give it to you. You've got to develop it yourself. However, we can put you in an energy that has a faster discovery potential - that is to say, discoveries become more obvious.

Alzheimer's is heart breaking. There are millions on this planet who develop this condition, more all the time. You're living longer and a plaque-like material that literally obfuscates your memory within the brain is becoming more common. It clings to certain parts of your brain, encrusting and restricting it, imprisoning the Human's ability to remember and eventually process information at all. The result is death, slow death. It's caused by your environment, a fact which will be discovered eventually. Your long-lived Ancients didn't have it.

It's going to be cured with physics. Your science is starting to find out that the plaque-like substance has a resonance that allows it to be weakened with sound. High-frequency sound, tuned to a certain frequency and amplitude, will cause the sheaths to weaken, dissolve, and come off. There's a lot of research to do yet, but it's a Eureka! moment - realizing that physics alone, without chemistry, can change the structure of biology. This is with no side effects whatsoever. It's coming, it's coming.

There are those working with fresh umbilical cord stem cells right now who are using pure physics to guide the stem cells to a specific destination in the body in order to repair failing systems. Dear ones, the future of health and healing is not through better chemistry, yet medicine is still waiting for better pills! Did you connect the dots and realize that all biology is physics based? There is magnetics, leverage, the energy of consciousness, electricity and much more within cellular structure. With physics alone, you can "tune in" to disease and destroy it! You can fine-tune your system with cooperative resonances and extend life with benevolent, physical assistance. Sixteen years ago, I told you this when I spoke of the Temple of Rejuvenation. I described the super-cooling needed to do it and the temperatures needed to work with it (-55C). This is physics!

Now, the false expectation of greater chemistry for the future is totally caused from the filter of knowledge. What you have and know then gives you your expectation of what is going to take place. It literally blocks you from seeing some of the potentials that you may have.  ….”

Kryon Q&A

Question (2004): Dearest Kryon: I've read the question and answer on people with diseases of the mind - for example, Alzheimers and dementia. But I have more questions. You say that people have chosen this path and that the lessons are for us. As I work with these people, I'm wondering if there is any stage where there could be a reversal of the condition, and if so, with what methods? The people in the hostel are so drugged up, and there's a mind-set with the authorities that no "alternate" therapies work - although they're using colored lights. (Sadly, the diversional therapist told me she doesn't know what color therapy is.)

From a spiritual point of view, what is the best way to work with these people - talk to them as though they were normal, or go along with their imaginings? I've been told that they need to be kept quiet, especially toward evening. However, I've found that with one woman who mostly paces saying very little, the more childlike I am (dancing and singing makes her happy), the more she talks. I could go on and on - could you please enlighten me further?

Answer: I will answer the second part first. Love those who are in this condition. Find out what makes them smile... and then make them smile. The best you can do in a facilitation of this condition is to somehow create joy. Even in their confusion they can laugh at situations and be creative. They'll also remember you better as the one who creates this emotion. Each is very different, but in general, try to find their "happy" button and push it as often as you can. They will remember that.

Right now you're perched upon some important discoveries that will be able to reverse these conditions to a large degree. But just as the paraplegic who regains their nerve connections must than relearn how to walk, suffering much pain, there will be this attribute with a regeneration of the mind. Even if new cells are created, they won't necessarily have the old memories, but they can be trained to be healthy and be ready for new memories.

So someday these will have the ability to halt the progress of the degeneration of cells that are being taken, and instead grow new pathways around them. Some will be able to "reconnect" to certain kinds of memories (like recognition) but will have to relearn what the association of recognition actually means. So history and events might have to be studied and relearned... sometimes even things like reading, also. The pain will be that the individual will regain mental health and will realize exactly what has happened.

Your stem-cell research is very important, and you're reaching a point where you'll be able to use birth cells that aren't embryonic, but every bit as potent for research... thereby sidestepping all moral issues. Look for this in the next few years. 

Pope warns overeating is 'avenue of personal destruction'

France24 – AFP, 16 October 2019

Vatican City (AFP) - The pope on Wednesday contrasted the world's 820 million hungry people with those who turn food into "an avenue of personal destruction" through overeating, in comments to mark World Food Day.

Pope Francis noted that the "distorted relationship between food and nutrition" has left almost 700 million people overweight, "victims of improper dietary habits".

"We are in fact witnessing how food is ceasing to be a means of subsistence and turning into an avenue of personal destruction," the pontiff said in a message to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

People suffer from diabetes and heart disease because of overeating, but also from anorexia and bulimia through deliberate undereating, the pope said.

He called for "the cultivation of lifestyles inspired by gratitude for the gifts we have received and the adoption of a spirit of temperance (and) moderation."

"By adopting such a lifestyle, we will grow in a fraternal solidarity that seeks the common good and avoids the individualism and egocentrism that serve only to generate hunger and social inequality."

"It is a cruel, unjust and paradoxical reality that, today, there is food for everyone and yet not everyone has access to it, and that in some areas of the world food is wasted, discarded and consumed in excess."

Minister gets tough on opioid abuse, sets up police team to look at illegal trade

DutchNews, October 11, 2019 

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Healthcare minister Bruno Bruins is bringing in new measures to reduce the use of heavy opioid painkillers in the Netherlands, and tackle the illegal trade in pills. 

The aim is to inform people better about the risk of using the painkillers for a longer period. ‘The unnecessary and irresponsible use of heavy painkillers has to stop,’ Bruins said in a briefing for MPs. ‘We do not want to end up like America.’ 

On Friday the minister launched a website opiaten.nl to tell people about the risks, and he also plans to tighten up the guidelines for prescribing the drugs with doctors and drugs companies. 

In addition, a team of police, justice ministry and health ministry experts will look into the illegal trade, including street dealing and illegal imports. Drugs such as oxycodene and fentanyl, which are highly addictive, often end up on the black market. 

‘We currently have a very fragmented view of the illegal trade,’ researcher Marcel Bonvy told the Volkskrant. ‘But the fact they crop up all over the place would suggest it is substantial.’ 

Hospital 

Earlier this year, Leiden University researchers said the number of people ending up in hospital after using heavy painkillers soared by almost 50% within four years and more people were dying of accidental overdoses in the Netherlands. 

Some 200,000 people in the Netherlands have been using painkillers such as oxycodene for a longer period of time. 

The opioid crisis in the US, where some 17% of the population were prescribed the drugs in 2017, has now reached epidemic proportions, with thousands of deaths a year. Two drugs companies have now been ordered to pay billions of dollars in compensation.

Lung specialists step up calls for ban on ‘harmful’ e-cigarettes

DutchNews, October 7, 2019

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Dutch lung specialists have called for a total ban on e-cigarettes on the grounds that they cause lung disease and do nothing to prevent smoking. 

‘We want a complete ban on e-cigarettes in the Netherlands,  Leon van Toorn, of lung specialists’ association NVALT told AD. The association, which last month conducted a survey among its member to gauge the extent of the problem in the Netherlands, said the number of Dutch people reporting lung problems after vaping has risen from three to eight. 

One patient had to be admitted to intensive care because of the severity of his symptoms. None of the patients had had lung problems before. 

Van Toorn said he had attended a conference in Madrid last week which warned against vaping. ‘It showed convincingly that we can under no circumstances recommend the use of e-cigarettes,’ he said.

‘There is no scientific proof whatsoever for the claim that it is 95% less damaging that cigarettes and it looks as if only a very tiny number of people have stopped smoking by taking up vaping.’ 

Junior health minister Paul Blokhuis said in a response that the data the specialists have gathered will be included in the ongoing investigation into the safety of e-cigarettes. A total ban is not on the cards at the moment, Blokhuis said, because he is bound by European rules. 

The American Center for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded 1080 cases of lung disease and 21 deaths associated with vaping. It is not known which of the ingredients being inhaled is causing the disease, although in a number of cases THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, may have played a part. There have not been any incidences of disease on this scale in Europe so far, the paper said.

J&J agrees $20.4 mn payment in Ohio opioid case

Yahoo – AFP, October 2, 2019

Johnson & Johnson agreed a $20.4 million settlement over allegedly fueling
the opioid addiction crisis in Ohio (AFP Photo/Mark RALSTON)

Washington (AFP) - US healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday announced it had reached a $20.4 million settlement to avoid a much-anticipated trial in Ohio for allegedly fueling the opioid addiction crisis.

Several drugmakers have agreed deals ahead of the trial, due to open this month, which is seen as a national test case for many billions of dollars in settlements.

Millions of Americans sunk into addiction after using potent opioid painkillers that companies churned out and doctors freely prescribed over the past two decades.

The Johnson & Johnson agreement was with two Ohio counties ravaged by the opioid crisis -- Cuyahoga and Summit.

The settlement "resolves all of the counties' claims with no admission of liability and removes the company from the federal trial," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement.

The company added it wanted to avoid the "uncertainty of a trial" and said it continues "to seek meaningful progress in addressing the nation's opioid crisis."

In August, an Oklahoma judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million in damages for its role in fostering opioid addiction.

The company was accused of aggressive promotion of prescription painkillers and downplaying or hiding risk of addiction.

The US opioid epidemic has caused hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths.

Thousands of lawsuits have been lodged by states, cities, towns and Native American tribes seeking money to pay for overwhelmed health and social systems, families unable to care for themselves, and babies born addicted to the drugs.

Final puffs for France's last tobacco factory

Yahoo – AFP, Nathalie ALONSO, October 2, 2019

Eric Tabanou, director of the France Tabac, factory in the Dordogne region of
southwest France, said keeping the country's last tobacco processing site
open became unviable. (AFP Photo/Mehdi FEDOUACH)

Sarlat-la-Caneda (France) (AFP) - Gerard Chanquoi looks sadly at the conveyor belts of France's sole remaining tobacco processing factory as they whirl for the last times ahead of its final closure, a victim of changed economic times and a different public health landscape.

Anti-smoking campaigners may cheer its demise, but for its workers and local tobacco growers, the closure of the France Tabac factory after 34 years of operation is a devastating blow to the Dordogne region of southwest France.

"It's a fine mess," lamented Chanquoi, 61, who has worked for over 30 years at the factory in the town of Sarlat-la-Caneda.

"It makes you well up a bit, it's hard. I am at the end of my career, but for my friends... who have a decade of career ahead of them, it is tough," he added.

In its heyday after opening in 1985 in one of France's main tobacco growing regions, the factory was a mainstay of the local economy, extending over 10 hectares (25 acres) and processing 20,000 tonnes of tobacco leaves from France and Europe every year.

"Our know-how is recognised across all of Europe," said Chanquoi, looking ruefully at an almost empty warehouse where only years ago bundles of processed tobacco would have stretched to the ceiling.

"This used to be a hive of activity."

The homegrown tobacco used in cigarettes like Gauloises, beloved of French film icons and philosophers, used to be a symbol of France.

But the country's last cigarette factory, la Seita in Riom in the Puy-de-Dome region, closed in 2017 and the Gauloises brand is now produced in Poland.

Inspecting tobacco leaves at the France Tabac plant, 

which will close down for good this month. (AFP Photo/

Mehdi FEDOUACH)

The number of smokers in France remains above the average for a developed country, with 32 percent of adults aged between 18-75 smoking in 2018, according to official figures.

But the number of people describing themselves as daily smokers has fallen sharply in recent years as the price of cigarettes has risen.

'Doomed'

The production line at the factory in Sarlat-le-Caneda finally came to a halt just before midday on Monday. Some workers remain in the plant this week for a final clean-up before a meeting with the director next week ahead of being laid-off.

The factory's director Eric Tabanou said that announcing the closure to the employees was painful, while insisting there was no other option.

"We stood up in front of 200 employees. It was dramatic... The factory was on borrowed time, the end was inevitable," Tabanou said.

Trouble began in 2010 when the European Union announced that, as part of its drive to cut smoking, tobacco producers would no longer receive subsidies from the bloc.

"Tobacco production diminished from year to year and certain products were not in line with the demands of the market," Tabanou said.

"Also, we had to submit to increased competition from tobacco manufacturers who would do anything to save a single cent."

In 2016, the factory was processing over 5,300 tonnes of tobacco a year, far below the 20,000 tonnes processed in the 2000s.

Patrick Maury, a tobacco grower in Mazeyrolles, France, said he hopes to 

find new buyers for his crop. (AFP Photo/Mehdi FEDOUACH)

"French production makes up just one percent of Europe's output, and it is doomed," Tabanou said.

French tobacco will now be processed outside the country, notably in Croatia.

"It is the turning of a page in our agricultural history," Jean-Jacques de Peretti, the mayor of Sarlat-la-Caneda, said when the closure was announced in late August.

'New opportunities'

But some producers hope that all is not lost, and say they will focus on the high-end market and also producing the raw material needed to create vaping cartridges.

"It is a tough blow, but we will try and find new opportunities," said Patrick Maury, who grows tobacco and also runs a dairy farm in Mazeyrolles, around 35 kilometres from Sarlat.

"Along with my son, we need this crop to live, it makes up 40 percent of our revenues," he said.

Laurent Testut, head of the local Perigord Tabac cooperative, said the industry had managed to adapt before, for example by moving to lighter tobacco blends in line with changing tastes and regulations.

"We risk having to come closer to world prices, but it is up to us to focus on production niches. We have some leads already," he said.