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KCSB-FM
A collection of community radio reports on the issues arising from big pharmaceutical corporations controlling medicines. Find out why some industry observers are calling Big Pharma "rapacious, red-fanged capitalism personified" (29 minutes)
This week on Sprouts, we take a look at the massive industry that provides therapeutic and preventative drugs. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable on the planet, yet they provide a good service, don't they? Why are some industry observers describing Big Pharma as "rapacious, red-fanged capitalism personified?"
We turned to grassroots radio reporters around the country for stories about Big Pharma and the issues that its business practices raise in our local communities.
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The Real Drug Abusers by Fred Leavitt
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Molly Talcott, of KCSB community radio station in Santa Barbara California, wanted the big picture. She turned to professor of psychology Fred Leavitt, author of the recent book - The Real Drug Abusers for his overview.
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Therapeutic Marijuana?
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Cannabis Sativa, more popularly known as Marijuana has been a popular psychoactive agent of peoples everywhere it grows. Pain and nausea relief and a number of other medicinal uses have also characterized is use over human history. The drug is listed in the world's oldest surviving list of medical drugs, a Chinese pharmacopoeia compiled nearly 2,000 years ago, yet only recently has cannabis received serious attention by pharmaceutical houses. Now, GW Pharmaceuticals and Bayer Healthcare are marketing Sativex®, a cannabis-based medicinal extract product, in Canada and the UK. Dean Becker of the Cultural Baggage radio program in Houston Texas takes a look at the controversy behind using marijuana as a legitimate pharmaceutical.
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Prescription Drug Costs Fought in Minnesota
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Federal price controls keep drug costs down in Canada, and many seniors all along the border are venturing to the Great White North in a quest for affordable medication. This trend has triggered drug companies to instate export restrictions on its Canadian distributors in an effort to protect their profits in the US's free-market haven.
Recently, Minnesota's State Attorney General Mike Hatch requested a Hennepin County judge order pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to turn over documents relating to an industry boycott of Canadian online pharmacies. Hatch is investigating whether or not the world’s second largest drug company violated the State’s antitrust laws and illegally restrained trade by forcing Canadian companies to comply with its boycott demands, while conspiring with other drug companies to block Canadian drug sales. This legal offensive is the first of its kind in the United States. From Minneapolis reporting from KFAI, Ann Alquist and Adam Leonard filed this report.
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Biopharming gets the go-ahead in Colorado
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In an earlier edition of Sprouts, we brought you news of a project in Colorado aiming to raise 30 acres of corn genetically modified to produce a pharmaceutical product, at the time, concerns were being raised by agricultural, environmental and rural groups, who were calling for a moratorium on the planting of biopharmaceutical crops in Colorado. Since then, the Colorado department of agriculture has approved the project and planting is set to occur in the next growing season. We wanted to provide an update to the story and to provide the responses of the Colorado Department of Agriculture to the criticisms of citizen's groups. Kath Kurtz, Diane Horn, and the Voices for Global Justice Collective have provided interviews for this piece - a debate about biopharmaceuticals.
Tune in for next week’s Sprouts and in the meantime check us out on the web at sproutsradio.org, where you can hear this program and all of our previous shows and give us your feedback.
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