Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters with the Washington Post, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz have uncovered how America's drug distribution companies facilitated the opioid epidemic. In the first half, they discussed how the DEA lost the fight to lobbyists and lawmakers, resulting in record-breaking drug overdose deaths. It wasn't just the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma that were responsible, Higham pointed out-- there was a whole constellation of companies-- including household names like Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, Johnson and Johnson, that sent 100 billion tablets of painkillers across the country, addicting millions of Americans. A drug company called Mallinckrodt (based in Missouri) was the largest manufacturer of oxycodone in the US, he added, and the DEA referred to them as a "drug kingpin." Despite significant settlements, families of opioid overdose victims are now demanding to know why no criminal charges have been filed against any executives in the opioid industry.
While prescriptions for the painkillers are now harder to come by, the American opioid industry set the table for the Mexican drug cartels, which currently send hundreds of millions of fentanyl pills masquerading as prescription oxycodone tablets into the US. Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin, said Horwitz, who noted that a small amount of fentanyl can kill a person if they aren't used to the potent dose. She expressed concern that young people at parties might take counterfeit pills and wouldn't know they were getting fentanyl which could lead to their overdose or death. There are so many accidental deaths from fentanyl in the US that it's equivalent to a 737 jet crashing and killing two hundred people every day, she lamented.
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In the latter half, author and retired professor Anthony Hamilton shared mind enhancement techniques which can result in greater happiness and prosperity. Our minds are like a time machine, he commented, with memories a connection to the past, and goals and daydreams, a pathway to the future. Researchers using an fMRI to study brain function discovered that past memories and future daydreams both look the same in the brain, he noted. We can use our "inner senses" to look outside the present and see other areas of time, and this is really the source of our creative power, "but it has to be harnessed, focused, and controlled," he said.
The "Law of Attraction" is a way to sharpen your attention or focus, and can be done through visualization, creating a dream board, writing down goals, or repeating affirmations like "I am now attracting the perfect opportunity," he detailed. It works by energizing the brain's reticular activating system, triggering the mind to pay attention to something and be attuned to specific possibilities, he explained. Hamilton outlined his "Magic Carpet" concept, in which a person makes a list of their past successes or high points and then closes their eyes and recalls that event and the associated feelings, which can be brought into the present. He also spoke about a technique to revisit past failures, in which you view the situation as though in third person, and learn positive things about the experience, which can transform the negativity.
News segment guest: John M. Curtis