An untimely goodbye
Dr. Jay R. Cavanaugh died suddenly today. According to his bio in Under The Influence, he served as a gubernatorial appointee to the California Board of Pharmacy from 1980-90. During his tenure he helped create and supervise the Boards enforcement program to stem the flood of pharmaceutical sedatives and narcotics to the black market. Cavanaugh received his baccalaureate degree in Biology from California State University, Northridge and his doctorate in Biological Chemistry from Tulane University. Our condolences to his friends and family.

His work watch dogging the pharmaceutical industry deserves to be remembered. From Reckless Disregard:

There are several mass murderers loose in America. Collectively they kill more innocent men, women, and children than all the drunk drivers, illicit drug pushers, and gang bangers combined.

This collection of serial killers with reckless disregard of human life, extinguishes the hopes and lives of over 100,000 Americans every year. In the past decade they are responsible for over one million innocents yet not only have they not faced justice, they have enriched themselves with profits that would make Bill Gates envious.

...Collectively these pitiless people have engaged in the longest running and most destructive continuing criminal enterprise in history. Who are they? They are nameless and faceless executives who hide behind the alleged respectability of names like Eli Lily, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Co., Pfizer, and many more. At least the psychotics Manson and Gacy were aware at some level that they were killers. Not the drug companies. To them, the deaths are nothing more than the unavoidable collateral damage in the war on disease and the pursuit of earnings.

...While the suffering from hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of adverse reactions, millions addicted, and economic havoc is damning, it is only one half of the coin. The other half is the active support and participation of the pharmaceutical industry in the so called war on drugs. Obviously they don't support war on their own drugs, only those of their competition.

Their biggest threat being medical marijuana which threatens their profits since anyone could conceivably grow it themselves - hence the focus of the drug war on the least harmful substance. Cavanaugh goes on to point out that the US government spends millions to vilify cannabis while endorsing pharma drugs with toxic side effects that make billions in profits for the pharma corps. Read it all and then read his other work, The New Salem and also The Mouse That Coughed - the sad tale of Stuart Little, pot addict.

Drug policy reform lost a good man today. May he rest in peace.