the dope report

Who actually buys counterfeit drugs over the Internet? A bunch of limp-dicked morons is who. The counterfeit drug market on the Internet will hit $75 billion in 2010, up almost 100 percent in five years, much of it fake Viagra to Europe. That’s the word from the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

About 2.3 million penis poppers are sold a month, mostly without prescription, and the Journal discovered 150 patients admitted to hospitals in Singapore after taking counterfeit Viagra. The fake pills actually contained a powerful diabetes drug that put seven in a coma, and killed four. Pfizer found Internet Viagra contained amphetamine, caffeine and printer ink had been used to colour some samples blue.

Also, fifty-one children died in Bangladesh of kidney failure from taking counterfeit cough syrup that was actually antifreeze. [Wiley]

With finals upons us, it pays to study hard:

Modafinil was never meant for people like me. It was invented to stop narcoleptics falling asleep, then adapted to let soldiers stay up all night. But gradually it was noticed that as well as increasing wakefulness, the drug imp­roved concentration. I first sought my own hit after realising that four or five of my friends were using it to help them revise. With finals looming, they wanted to boost their concentration and fight the urge to slack off.

[More Intelligent Life via Harper’s]

The DOJ giveth and the DOJ taketh away:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/—American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and its subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc. (hereinafter together “Pfizer”) have agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products, the Justice Department announced today.

Pharmacia & Upjohn Company has agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead. Bextra is an anti-inflammatory drug that Pfizer pulled from the market in 2005. ...

In addition, Pfizer has agreed to pay $1 billion to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that the company illegally promoted four drugs Bextra; Geodon, an anti-psychotic drug; Zyvox, an antibiotic; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug … The civil settlement also resolves allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe these, as well as other, drugs. The federal share of the civil settlement is $668,514,830 and the state Medicaid share of the civil settlement is $331,485,170. This is the largest civil fraud settlement in history against a pharmaceutical company.

Remember when we called it that prescription drugs killed M.J. the way they kill millions in America? Well, the story gets better.

M.J. was on some seriously good shit and the deal behind it is so absurd that you have to laugh. M.J. died from an injection of the anesthetic Propofol – which makes you instantly go to sleep. As long as someone monitors your breathing, you stay asleep until the drug wears off. Bonus!: Propofol users report a hazy, delirious high as they come out of it, but there’s no real side effects or hangover. And drug tests don’t look for it.

This sounds like the best drug of all time!

In a nod to the pitfalls of religious repression, Utah has become the nation’s leader in the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs. There were 317 deaths related to non-illicit drug use in the state during 2008, that is far more than the number of people who died from using illegal drugs and for the first time exceeds the amount of fatalities from car accidents. It may not be definitive that this abuse stems from the serious discouragement of mind altering substances on all levels by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but even the Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has directly correlated Mormon culture with the staggering statistics.

I’m not sure I’m supposed to be taking all this head lice medication with these birth control pills, and I’m definitely not heartened to see the AP reporting Sunday that major drugmaking factories in America have legally dumped 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that serve more than 51 million people – fundamentally effecting the ecosystem as well as human tissue.

The AP investigation found trace amounts of antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones like lithium, nitroglycerin, and estrogen during their ongoing journalistic masterstroke. The dirty details:

• 8 million pounds of the skin bleaching cream hydroquinone
• 3 million pounds of nicotine compounds that can be used in quit-smoking patches
• 10,000 pounds of the antibiotic tetracycline hydrochlorids
• treatments for head lice and worms.

The best part is,—