Valuetainment - “Sold Heroin As Medicine” - Gerald Posner REVEALS How The Government FUELED Big Pharma's Drug Empire

00:00:00.000 I want to start off with pharma so greed lies and the poisoning of America just a couple weeks ago

00:00:05.320 the president announced uh I think it was at the memorial of Charlie Kirkwood there he's talking

00:00:09.680 about tomorrow we're making a big announcement me and Bobby Kennedy and then they released the

00:00:14.120 ties of you know Tylenol to autism and don't take it and a Tylenol tweet retweet comes up from 2017

00:00:20.980 we don't recommend you taking Tylenol when you're pregnant all this other stuff this book as you go

00:00:26.760 through the history of it I'm going to start off with this page seven I'm going to read it to the

00:00:31.160 audience and I want you to go from there okay so page seven until 1900 there was no national medical

00:00:37.320 license law in most states anyone could call themselves a doctor and open a practice and

00:00:43.260 treat patients the lack of basic medical knowledge meant that there were few boundaries for promoting

00:00:48.480 a drug that was the case with the first inexpensive but powerful central nervous system stimulant called

00:00:55.520 cocaine it had been discovered by a German doctor student whose chemistry dissertation was about how he

00:01:03.200 had isolated the pure alkaloid from coca leaves he named the alkaloid cocaine from the Latin ina from

00:01:11.000 it simply means from coca Merck one of the first firms to concentrate on cocaine touted it in products

00:01:17.080 for everything from numbing aesthetics to cure for ingestion and hemorrhoids even as an aid in eye

00:01:24.440 surgery it reduced bleeding by tightening blood vessels cocaine was officially the sanctioned remedy

00:01:29.620 of the United States hay fever association the U.S. surgeon general said cocaine was effective for treating

00:01:36.060 depression tobacco and sold cigars laced with 225 milligrams of cocaine for soothing nerves while

00:01:44.140 dentists held cocaine infused for toothaches a gram of cocaine cost an average of 25 cents at any

00:01:50.500 druggist the largest mail order catalog of the era sears and robux sold a hyper hypodermic syringe a

00:01:57.840 Scottish doctor had invented it only a few decades earlier and a small amount of cocaine for $1.50 the

00:02:03.920 bottom in cocaine based supply remedies meant that over a two-year span folks pay attention to this

00:02:10.220 Merck went from producing less than a pound of cocaine annually to a hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year

00:02:20.120 how far along have we come from cocaine being a drug the doctor used to today no it's it's unbelievable

00:02:27.280 because pbd think about this when you said sears and robux sold a little kit that you could use that

00:02:32.580 was the amazon of its day that was where everybody went that was you know so you were essentially going

00:02:37.080 on the biggest retailer that you could find they sold a packet that would make it easy and cocaine

00:02:41.900 is just one example so what this was the wild west days this was the days you said they knew very little

00:02:47.260 about medicine and what was curing but they did know when a stimulant worked so they knew cocaine

00:02:51.340 worked and what really was the start of the rest of the pharmaceutical companies that we know today

00:02:56.420 by the companies by the way a couple of german cousins in new york city called the pfizers had a

00:03:02.880 twenty five hundred dollar loan and borrowed a thousand dollars for their family and set up a factory to

00:03:06.800 make what morphine because during the civil war they found out there was a tremendous demand for morphine

00:03:11.980 battlefield people are suffering they knew morphine helped kill pain there's questions about quality

00:03:16.980 so the pfizers get going there's a guy called edward robinson squibb he's he's in the military he knows that

00:03:22.640 he starts squibbing company why to make morphine uh you get the same thing from a fellow called eli lilly

00:03:28.800 he knew that there was bad morphine being sent to the front he sends morphine and you get it with welcome and burrows

00:03:35.240 davies all these companies that today are pharmaceutical companies they get their start

00:03:39.400 on an addictive product at a time when you could walk into a store and buy it

00:03:43.040 and that the great thing is bayer bayer aspirin we think about them they had smart guys inside the lab

00:03:49.520 the germans dominated the pharmaceutical company and over a five-year period from 1898 to 1903 their

00:03:56.740 scientists in their labs discovered four different drugs the first one in 1898 is acetaminophen what we

00:04:03.400 call tylenol okay they came up with that pretty amazing and then in 19 1899 they come up with aspirin

00:04:10.260 a wonder drug in 1900 they come up with a better morphine and they name it after the german word for

00:04:19.060 heroic heroish heroin they market it they they trademark heroin in the united states and they sell

00:04:26.260 it as a cure for morphine addiction it's fantastic stop yeah no no i'm kidding you not and it does of

00:04:33.000 course cure for morphine addiction you'll give up morphine you'll go to heroin they also sold it

00:04:36.940 to to be able for babies for cough and then in 1903 at the end of this five-year period they came

00:04:43.800 up with the first barbiturate phenobarbital which they also had so now think of this they've got

00:04:48.560 tylenol they've got aspect they've got heroin they've got phenobarbital and they made decision

00:04:53.720 not to put one on the market because inside their laboratories with laboratory rats one of them was

00:04:59.280 showing all types of harms guess which one tylenol they did not put acetaminophen on the market they

00:05:05.300 marketed phenobarbital no prescriptions required they marketed heroin and and they ended up marking

00:05:11.120 aspirin and what changed the whole bit so you think you know okay so the united states 1906 we

00:05:16.620 passed a you know food and drug act pure food and drug act that didn't stop drugs from being sold like

00:05:21.980 heroin and cocaine it just said you had to put on the label what was in the bottle before that you

00:05:26.960 could have elixir and just say it's going to make you wonderful strong muscular you you used to work

00:05:32.140 out of the gym used to work at bally's or wherever else now you could take an elixir and go in there

00:05:36.220 and you'd be superman you know what now they had to tell you on the label what was in there after

00:05:40.520 but what really changed it was 1914 they passed an act the harrison act and they banned narcotic

00:05:45.740 importation and they really did to stop the chinese from bringing in opium and all but once they

00:05:50.640 stopped the the importation of drugs then pharma went cold turkey they had to say oh we can't sell

00:05:56.580 anymore morphine we can't sell heroin we can't do all of that they had to look around for other drugs

00:06:02.000 they found they found one in insulin up the canadian researchers found but it's really not until world

00:06:07.620 war ii when penicillin comes around it's an industry looking for a product and this you'll like because

00:06:13.060 you're such a business guy that when moody's starts to cover american industries for the first time

00:06:19.780 around 1915 pharmaceuticals is not even a category it's such a small industry that's not even listed

00:06:26.880 it's a subset of the chemical industry so it doesn't become its own industry until near 1930 so we think

00:06:33.540 of big pharma as this giant it is it's a multi-billion dollar business but just a hundred years ago it was

00:06:39.220 nothing so 1930 1915 moody's comes out by 1930 it's an industry prior to that it's not seen as an industry

00:06:47.180 it's seen as a subset of chemicals so by when did people start becoming licensed to practice you know

00:06:54.220 being a doctor medicine so the the states varied there was no federal law no trump executive order

00:07:01.220 that said everyone's got to have a you know doctor's degree tomorrow so you'd start to see states license

00:07:06.380 slowly the idea and then of course once the state started license a group of very fellow smart guys got

00:07:12.880 together and said hey you know what we should sort of be the doctor's group the ama let's form a council

00:07:18.560 that everybody has to get to and we'll lobby the states together and we'll go ahead and do it so that

00:07:23.360 really happens but it's not until the 1930s late 30s that you get the first law from congress that says

00:07:28.880 you have to have a prescription for for anything that is a narcotic based drug but you still need

00:07:35.520 prescriptions for anything else which is really remarkable and there's a little law passed by the way at the

00:07:40.320 end of the 1930s which is really interesting the fda there are about 30 drugs that are in existence at

00:07:46.080 this point you don't even really have penicillin yet and they passed a law that said by the way doctors

00:07:50.720 when they get their license they're smart and there aren't many drugs out there so if a drug's approved

00:07:55.040 for something a doctor can prescribe it off label for whatever they want that made sense when there were

00:08:00.960 like a dozen drugs now we have like three thousand drugs that law still exists and half of all the

00:08:07.440 prescriptions in the united states every year that are written are written off label doctors

00:08:12.160 describe it decide they're going to use it for something else so we think of the fda process

00:08:16.720 you go through this multi-billion dollar process to get approval you get approved for a certain purpose

00:08:21.200 then doctor can ignore and use for whatever else so doctors for instance uh take a drug that's used for

00:08:27.280 the sexual castration of sex offenders um and they're prescribing it on the side for pediatric uh

00:08:34.640 converting children and stopping puberty and blocking puberty that's an off-label application

00:08:40.480 of the drug it's one of the greatest loopholes in the united states in the drug industry and botox when

00:08:46.480 botox first started it was actually for a sort of an eye situation where you your muscle would not start

00:08:53.120 twitching that's what they got the original approval for and then some doctors notice hey it looks like it

00:08:58.400 uh lessens the effects of wrinkles on faces people started to prescribe that around the country

00:09:04.560 allergan who was the company who owned it they didn't care they were making more billions and

00:09:08.320 billions of dollars from it so you know we think that the drugs that are being prescribed are safe for

00:09:12.880 use uh more or less yeah i want to come back to that puberty blocker here in a minute but let's stay on this

00:09:17.840 here when when did merc realize cocaine is uh when did cocaine become illegal in america where doctors

00:09:24.560 couldn't prescribe it it really doctors can't really prescribe cocaine from 1914 and on 1914 and

00:09:30.720 on and what caused it what changed the harrison yeah it it blocks it across the board what happened

00:09:37.680 for them to say you can't do it okay so what happened is if they weren't focused specifically

00:09:41.840 on cocaine they were focused on all of these what i call narcotics and stimulants however what it means

00:09:47.200 is pharmaceutical companies are very very look at they don't just fold their hands up and say oh my god

00:09:53.280 you don't let us prescribe cocaine anymore so now we have to find another drug they find ways to be

00:09:57.920 able to put that same stimulant methamphetamines or whatever else into other drugs so in world war ii

00:10:03.520 we were giving tens and tens of thousands of bennies um to pilots who were flying because we wanted

00:10:09.520 them to be able to have long flights and never fall asleep when they were bombing dresden or firebombing

00:10:15.600 tokyo or hitting the enemy lines we wanted to make sure they were getting drowsy the germans were

00:10:20.000 doing the same thing and as a matter of fact by the 1960s the biggest you know we we all know

00:10:25.200 about oxycon and those drugs in the 1960s the drug of choice was diet clinics people were giving out

00:10:30.400 essentially what they called black beauties or real speed it was all pharmaceutical based doctors the

00:10:36.080 same way in broward years ago they used to be pill mills for the opioids there were doctors pills and diet

00:10:43.280 centers back in the 1960s where women would go to lose weight and people would get it all officially

00:10:49.920 the equivalent of cocaine but in a different product having the same purpose for a different uh

00:10:56.080 tool they always find a way to remark it interesting so i remember in the 80s and 90s it was ephedrine i

00:11:01.040 don't know if you remember ephedrine was a hot item wrestlers were taking it you know bodybuilders were

00:11:05.520 taking it it was you're going to get cut up and it was a product by uh i don't know what it was

00:11:10.800 what you i'll remember the name of the yellow jackets or it was gnc would sell this thing ripped

00:11:16.160 fuel i think it was i i remember i remember that i was going to a gym in new york and although i have

00:11:22.400 no size i wanted to be ripped and cut up and i do remember the gnc product and ephedra was it was

00:11:28.720 was well but ephedra fell into one of those great loopholes which is supplements so we have all of this

00:11:36.320 regulation on drugs and what you can do right you have to pass these tests but with supplements

00:11:41.760 you can sort of say whatever you want it's the wild west still so you can have uh the uh you know

00:11:47.600 all of the semerellin all these uh you know items today that you go onto instagram and you answer one

00:11:54.240 ad and the next thing you know you've seen 16 different products that are claiming you're going

00:11:57.200 to be smarter better uh you know in two minutes your hair is going to grow you're going to have less

00:12:02.880 wrinkles you're going to be uh alive and thinking like a 20 year old when you're 90 years old

00:12:08.160 those are supplements totally unregulated got it okay so yeah because ephedra was a super super hot

00:12:14.640 item and you'd go to the gym everyone's taking it you know your wrestlers were taking it it was a

00:12:19.360 very very hot item hi i'm gerald posner i'm an investigative reporter i've written 13 books about

00:12:24.560 everything from chasing nazi war criminals to the heroin trade to 9 11 to saudis to fundamentalists and

00:12:30.720 uh to the drug industry and to money inside the vatican you can ask me just about everything

00:12:36.080 on my next get reach out to me and talk to me about 9 11 find out what's happening in terms of the

00:12:40.640 epstein files if you want to find out what's happened in the recent trump assassination attempt

00:12:45.520 by crooks i'm looking into that as well i've got a whole series of things including the transgender

00:12:51.440 industry on children that are on my hot list so send me some questions if you enjoy this video you

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Valuetainment - October 11, 2025

“Sold Heroin As Medicine” - Gerald Posner REVEALS How The Government FUELED Big Pharma's Drug Empire

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