Lee Fang contends that Big Pharma (and painkiller interests) are bankrolling anti-marijuana campaigns:
People in the United States, a country in which painkillers are routinely overprescribed, now consume more than 84 percent of the entire worldwide supply of oxycodone and almost 100 percent of hydrocodone opioids. In Kentucky, to take just one example, about one in fourteen people is misusing prescription painkillers, and nearly 1,000 Kentucky residents are dying every year.
So it’s more than a little odd that [the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America (CADCA)] and the other groups leading the fight against relaxing marijuana laws, including the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids (formerly the Partnership for a Drug-Free America), derive a significant portion of their budget from opioid manufacturers and other pharmaceutical companies. According to critics, this funding has shaped the organization’s policy goals: CADCA takes a softer approach toward prescription-drug abuse, limiting its advocacy to a call for more educational programs, and has failed to join the efforts to change prescription guidelines in order to curb abuse. In contrast, CADCA and the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids have adopted a hard-line approach to marijuana, opposing even limited legalization and supporting increased police powers.
Jon Walker adds:
After reading this article it is worth drawing attention to the interesting correlation between medical marijuana states and prescriptions for opioid pain relievers. On average opioid prescription rates are noticeably lower in states that have medical marijuana laws. Of course correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. That said, it is also worth noting for-profit companies rarely give significant sums of money to politically active groups purely out of the goodness of their hearts.
We ran a map yesterday showing which states have the greatest dependency on prescription painkillers.
The Dish 