During the recent process of ratifying the Cures Act, Elizabeth Warren took to the Senate floor twice to criticize the bill as a windfall for the drug companies who had succeeded in getting drug standards lowered to perilous levels. Also, last minute, a requirement for doctors to report all payments from the drug companies was excised from the bill. But the scariest part of the Cures Act may be the part that authorizes for the creation of federally funded centers for the forced treatment of the mentally ill – centers that eerily echo the creation of the same sort of centers in pre-Nazi Germany where treatment degenerated into killings under the supervision of German psychiatrists.

Now that the Cures Act has become law, U.S. victims of mental illness can be involuntarily committed more easily than before and this will enable the drug companies to profit handsomely while they cure nothing with their dangerous drugs. Meanwhile, the mentally ill will be subjected to conditions worse than prison because they will not only be locked up, but they will be drugged and forcibly restrained. Meanwhile, options like the Finnish Open Dialogue model of recovery will receive no funding at all under the Cures Act, even though it can boast of a recovery rate of 85 percent from the most serious sorts of mental illness – all without drugs.

On Jan. 3 as Congress reconvened, I called the office of Sen. Warren to insist that she bring her modernized 21st century Glass-Steagall law up for a vote because this is the only measure that will prevent the formation of a police state at home. I also want to get her to work at having the provision for forced treatment of the mentally ill removed from the Cures Act. Please back me up by calling and insisting on the same. To speak with a live person, it is probably best to call her Boston office at 617-565-3170. Please help make it a Happy New Year!.

ARLEEN MARTINO

Littleton