{"id":1218,"date":"2014-08-22T15:39:43","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T19:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=1218"},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:39:43","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T19:39:43","slug":"daryl-cowles-and-the-politics-of-meth-in-west-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=1218","title":{"rendered":"Daryl Cowles and the Politics of Meth in West Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anytime you hear a West Virginia politician taking a position on legislation that would adversely impact the interests of a major corporation or industry, just go to the West Virginia Secretary of State\u2019s web site<\/a> and look who is donating to his or her campaign.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Take, for example, West Virginia Senator Doug Facemire (Democrat — Braxton County).<\/p>\n

Facemire was on Hoppy Kercheval\u2019s Talkline show yesterday, arguing for a rollback of oil and gas industry tank regulation that was passed earlier this year in Charleston.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we want to put this undue burden on this industry?\u201d Facemire said.<\/p>\n

Facemire wants a special session of the legislature to take up legislation that would exempt hundreds of tanks from state regulation.<\/p>\n

A quick search finds that oil and gas interests have donated thousands of dollars to Facemire\u2019s campaigns over the years.<\/p>\n

Or take the case of Daryl Cowles (Republican — Morgan County and Hampshire County), the minority whip in the West Virginia House of Delegates.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Cowles came out strongly opposed to legislation that would require a prescription for pseudoephedrine.<\/p>\n

Pseudoephedrine, the medicine that is in Sudafed, is one of the key ingredients in the manufacturing process for crystal methamphetamine.<\/p>\n

The bill would have exempted a type of Sudafed that can\u2019t readily be used to make meth.<\/p>\n

The legislation would cut profits of some big pharmaceutical companies — companies such as Johnson & Johnson, which makes Sudafed.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there was Cowles telling reporters — \u201cWhy should my people have to get a prescription?\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill eventually went down to defeat, succumbing to a lobbying barrage from Big Pharma.<\/p>\n

Cowles\u2019 campaign had taken in more $3,000 from pharmaceutical industry political action committees since he became a delegate in 2006. And then earlier this year, in April 2014, Merck PAC kicked in another $500.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at Cowles\u2019 five Republican colleagues in the House who stood up to Big Pharma and co-sponsored the bill that Cowles\u2019 opposed.<\/p>\n

According to our calculation, since 2006, Big Pharma gave two of them nothing, gave two of them $500 each and gave one of them $1,000.<\/p>\n

So, Big Pharma gave Cowles more than the other five Republicans combined.<\/p>\n

Cowles might actually believe all of the \u201cget government off our backs\u201d rhetoric that he spouts.<\/p>\n

But the big corporations like him and support him because he brings home the bacon.<\/p>\n

He favors mountaintop removal mining. (Coal interests, including former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, have donated thousands to his campaigns<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Cowles is opposed to requiring a prescription for pseudoephedrine. <\/span><\/p>\n

And he\u2019s one of five out of 100 members of the West Virginia House of Delegates who voted against a small raise in West Virginia\u2019s minimum wage.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s not to like?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anytime you hear a West Virginia politician taking a position on legislation that would adversely impact the interests of a major corporation or industry, just go to the West Virginia Secretary of State\u2019s web site and look who is donating … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}