Wealth Inequality, Profiteering & Oppression: The Opioid Crisis as a Profiteering Outcome & A Tribute to Sinead O’Connor Tonight, we wanted to talk about the overall arching theme of BLID and that is how wealth inequality is recklessly driving our country and the world to a premature end. Wealth inequality and what we have referred to from time to time, in the service of oppression. But what does oppression mean? For simplification it is just the unfair advantages that some have and have manipulated throughout history to create such unfair wealth accumulation differences. And with such differences comes power that enables it to continue to consolidate and evolve new methods to replicate its advantage, all, while calling it democracy and pursuit of liberty. Yet, It does so in the larger context of prioritizing profiteering over democracy. Whether it is through the promotion if war and conflict as our past two shows focused on, or a broken healthcare system, or as our focus tonight will be, on how our government has enabled pharmaceutical giants to profiteer in such a way that led to the opiate crisis that faces our country today. A crisis we falsely blame on drug cartels. BLID seeks to bring light to the interaction of these two concepts tonight. Wealth inequality and oppression and share yet another dimension of profiteering, that of pharmaceutical giants. Tonight, we start with a well-documented discussion of life expectancy differences among the haves and have-nots if you will. How media and our government have failed to point us to the its real causes and instead blamed it on Covid, the opioid crisis and increased violence of suicide and mental health challenges facing millions. We then circle back to show how unregulated and underregulated Pharma giants paved the way for the opioid crisis that concerns us so much in this moment of our history. We end the show with a dedication to Sinead OConnor because BLID believes she was and is such a beautiful soul… Siempre fieles, Pgatos 7/31/23 pgatos00@gmail.com