Huffington Post writer Matt Simon took some time off of his writing to ask Rudy Giuliani a question about Oxycontin at a recent town hall meeting. Simon asked Giuliani, “The New York Times reported in June that last summer you served as lead counsel for Purdue Pharma, the makers of Oxycontin who lied to the government about the narcotic’s addictive qualities. (I have a copy of that article with me today.) Given that Oxycontin, AKA “Hillbilly Heroin” killed hundreds of people a year and marijuana kills nobody, what sense did it make to arrest over 800,000 Americans last year for marijuana, which doesn’t kill anybody? Isn’t 2.3 million enough people behind bars in this country?” That’s a good question, but Giuliani in typical fashion danced around the question, and didn’t even answer it. Guliani responded by saying, “Well, the work that my law firm and my security firm did for Purdue was very valuable work. We helped them secure the whole situation because one of things that happens with any of these controlled substances, they get stolen. And we put together a system to reduce dramatically the amount of stealing that took place. We increased the accountability of it.” Then Giuliani makes up some figure to back himself up. “And the medicine that you’re talking about has a valid purpose for 99… I don’t know the exact… 99% plus people who use it. And then it gets diverted,” according to Giuliani. He just makes up figures, pulls them out of the air. 99% wasn’t even good enough, he had to go to 99% plus. I don’t think that oxycontin got the name “hillbilly heroin” by only being abused by less than 1% of the people using it. Oxycontin is a very addictive and dangerous drug. Ask Rush Limbaugh, who abused the drug to the extent that he almost lost his hearing. That was funny, since his radio listeners actually had sympathy for Limbaugh when all he had to do was cut back on eating so many oxycontins and his hearing came back. But Giuliani wasn’t finished making up answers and said his wife was a nurse and therefore; an expert on drugs. “And my understanding of marijuana, and I’ve checked with the FDA and my wife, who is a nurse and has a lot of training in that area,” Giuliani said. “.. is that every single thing that you want to do with marijuana, you can accomplish with a whole host of already existing medicines.” The only difference is that Pharmacy companies can make a ton of money off of drugs like oxycontin regardless of the bad side effects, whereas; you can grow pot in your back yard right next to your tomatoes. There is absolutely no money in it for the drug companies since God created marijuana a long time ago, and we used to have acres of it growing in this country. I am not sure if Mrs. Giuliani is a practicing nurse, but I don’t think that makes her an expert on the uses of drugs. Giuliani is a lobbyist for a major drug company, and I am sure that makes his statements on the subject highly suspect.
Alan Cosgrove
Here is Matt Simon asking Rudy Giuliani the question and his response from a town hall meeting 11/05/07;