stevegoldner

What a great question! Since I no longer manufacture methadone [i sold that company many years ago], i can answer you completely candidly. I think every person involved in providing solutions to problems has to do their very best to make it the best solution possible. That is why my formulation was made in a way that it could not be abused and therefore my formulation is not part of these increased deaths. Certainly a solution provider has a duty of care. And so does the solution user. I think every drug, like every car and truck on the road, is a potentially very harmful item. The user of the drug, like the user of the car, has to be careful and follow all the rules of the road and with drugs, take it only under a doc's care, and still there will be unfortunate incidents and people will get hurt. Should we castigate the truck manufacturers because they make them so big? I don't think so. Do we know if the increased methadone deaths were during therapy or during inappropriate abuse just to get high? And was the increase deaths due to increase in use of methadone, to help people get off opioid addiction?

I think someone has to police the creators of drugs that can hurt people. Then properly made drugs are available to people who want and need them. FDA does a pretty good, but not perfect job of that.

Who decides that people needs these drugs? That's easy! First the person who goes and asks for it. Then the doc has to be the medical professional and do the right thing for that patient. The drug company should just be providing a tool to help the person and never do anything that harms the patient.

Yes, the active ingredient, methadone hydrochloride was synthetically made by another drug company. We took that pure methadone and made a special formulation that people could safely use, bottled and shipped it to methadone treatment centers. Just like we will buy cannabis from farmers, create a consistent extract with certain active ingredients, make it into a safe and effective formulation to help people and pets suffering from pain or other problems.

Marijuana as a smokable product is not going to be federally legal in the near future. But the scientifically useful parts of cannabis, like THC/CBD and other compounds absolutely will be federally legal in the near future. Meanwhile the recreational use of marijuana will go on as a state by state activity until someone from a non-marijuana legal state sues the federal government for infringing their 'equal rights' and that will make another landmark Supreme Court case. But that's not the near future.

You have the right idea, methadone was never going to solve all the issues, just help someone get out of the streets and have a better chance. Sorry that it is also addictive, i did the best i could when i was 23 years old and just starting out to help formulate drugs to help people. Now I'm intent on using cannabis and that should be a much better outcome. We will all be able to see in the years to come, if we can get this drug company off the ground.