Cannabis Current Events (Part 1)

Updating this case.

Another baby step forward👍
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Florida judge again backs allowing man to grow marijuana

Tampa strip-club owner, cancer survivor wants to cultivate medical pot

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/Editorial-Redner-s-court-win-on-medical-marijuana-sends-message_167266028

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whoa…fantastic article!!! from Harvard no less. This is a excellent piece to give to politicians, regulators, asshole doctors, etc. Let’s reveal that man behind the curtain!

The Pharma oligarchs hide behind “drug free kids” while pumping our kids full of toxic prescription meds.

Painkiller manufacturers have been quick to take notice of falling prescription rates and attempt to counteract them. Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories, the companies that produce OxyContin and Vicodin, are two of the largest donors to the Partnership for Drug Free Kids, one of the largest anti-marijuana lobbies. Purdue Pharma also donates to Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, while Abbott Laboratories is the second largest pharmaceutical donor to congressional representatives.

http://harvardpolitics.com/covers/pot-and-politics-investigating-barriers-to-medical-marijuana-legalization/

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another one!

http://harvardpolitics.com/covers/restricted-relief-the-unintended-harm-of-prescription-limitations/

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not safer. cheaper. they should name the company ‘apartheid cannabis’

Israel has an ideal climate for growing cannabis with abundant light to support year-round greenhouse cultivation without the need for supplemental flower lighting. The Israeli climate, combined with Gan Shmuel’s existing manufacturing infrastructure and skilled labor force, will enable Cronos Israel to produce high quality medical cannabis at an expected cost of between $0.40 and $0.50 per gram.

i imagine they need light deprivation tho

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If we want to stop the opiate/heroin problem we need to change our culture of medicating for every bump and bruise, every sore joint and strained muscle. Every other commercial tells you not to work through your pain, but to buy this or that medication to alleviate it for you.

A decade of methadone isn’t uncommon, but successfully completing the program in less than one year is. And that would be all good if the programs had significant results, but these programs are also rife with active heroin use and repeat clientele. Only 3 out of 4 people even complete the programs, and only 1 out of 5 people actually stop doing drugs to the extent that they can claim to be sober after 5 years. To be fair tho, only 87 million dollars a year goes towards these programs.

22.2% of the MA state budget goes to solving the problems associated with substance abuse. That’s 8.7 billion out of 40 billion dollars last year, because these people have a disease, while people living in poverty are characterized as just not working hard enough. The rest of the world is told to “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps.” Why are heroin addicts given a hug and an opium lollipop? The empirical data says it doesn’t work. It needs to end.

We need to stigmatize weakness, and be open and honest about the addicts that hemorrhage 22% of our state budget, when they make a mess someone else has to clean up. We need to be a nation that works through the pain, not a bunch of pussies that pop a pill because we don’t feel as good as we think we should.

It’s all ass-backwards.
/EndRant

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how much of that is spent on law enforcement and the judicial system? #legalizealldrugs

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@legalcanada 3.6 billion dollars, leaving roughly $5 billion spent for non-treatment and non-enforcement problems, like cleaning up dead bodies, and providing narcan. In a state with only ~7 million people.

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sounds like you guys could really use a safe injection facility. insite has supervised over 3.6 million injections and not a single overdose death with an operating budget of only 3 million per year

http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/supervised-injection-sites/insite-user-statistics

edit: it’s actually 3.6 million visits and most people inject multiple times once they get inside, so it’s likely 4-6+ million injections

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I saw a recent report where 125 people applied for treatment from opiate/heroin addiction only like 5 of them had ever been prescribed painkillers by a doctor. Patients usually don’t become addicts.

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thats a very small sample size and i disagree with your conclusion. lots of patients from pain management clinics who get cut off from their doctors turn to illegal sources. its extremely common.

Of those who began abusing opioids in the 2000s, 75 percent reported that their first opioid was a prescription drug

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/relationship-between-prescription-drug-heroin-abuse/prescription-opioid-use-risk-factor-heroin-use

Each additional week of opioid use increased the risk of dependence, abuse, or overdose by 20 percent. Each additional refill boosted the risk by 44 percent, the analysis showed, with the first refill more than doubling the risk.

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LC both of the quotes you posted directly support my point! 75% of those abusing opiods said their first dose was a prescription drug - but NOT prescribed by their doctor - it’s from the street. Out the back door of Walgreens in a crate, not in a bottle through a legitimate patient.

Same with NIH quote - it just says more people have started with pills than powder heroin. It doesn’t say the pills came from their doctor.

I don’t have time now but if you search the news you’ll see several cases of Walgreens and CVS branches caught selling millions of dollars worth of Oxycontin off the loading docks directly to criminal organizations. Only about 2% of those actually prescribed opiates for a medical condition ever experience problems with addiction or withdrawal.

My perspective is based upon years in chronic pain support groups, where many of my friends struggled badly to get medication and most of our discussion centered around finding compassionate doctors willing to prescribe enough meds. Things are different in the US that Canada, doctors are now refusing to give meds people with cancer and severe neck or back problems and it gets worse every year.

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here’s an example of one of my friends - I have spoken to many people like this who are being cut off of opiate meds by their doctors for no reason:

http://archive.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/07/13/the_pros_and_cons_of_medical_marijuana/

Duda has always had migraines. But they got much worse 10 years ago after two operations to remove life-threatening aneurysms, weak areas in the blood vessels in her brain. None of the standard drugs her doctors prescribe help much with her post-surgical symptoms, which include nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and pain on her left side “as if my body were cut in half.’’

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i’m not sure i believe that 2% number and can say conclusively a large number of addicts were first prescribed by their doctor. almost every addicts story i hear starts with being prescribed precocet or oxy. and if you’re being prescribed for a prolonged time you are already addicted. if you don’t get tapered down you will certainly experience withdrawal.

i also don’t believe cannabis can replace opiates for pain (in cases where opiates are necessary) or that it helps with withdrawal. i do believe there’s major overprescribing and majority of those people just need to toughen up but in cases where higher dosage opioids are necessary cannabis is not a viable alternative.

vancouver has had legal cannabis for decades and they experience an average of 8 overdoses a day, up from 30 a month, so i also don’t believe legalizing cannabis will miraculously lower addiction or overdose rates.

i think we might be talking about different statistics. you seem to be talking about the percentage of people legitimately prescribed opioids becoming addicts whereas i’m trying to figure out the percentage of addicts who were originally prescribed opioids. i’m having a hard time finding statistics. but i found this report

Nearly 92 million U.S. adults, or about 38 percent of the population, took a legitimately prescribed opioid like OxyContin or Percocet in 2015, according to results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

The survey found that 11.5 million people, or nearly 5 percent of the population, misused prescription opioids they’d obtained through illicit means.

Of those who misused prescription opioids, more than 50 percent got the medications as hand-me-downs from family or friends. Overall, nearly 60 percent of misuse involved taking opioids without a prescription.

so if 60% is 11.5m that means 7.666 million people who misused prescription opiates in 2015 did have a prescription for them

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My first opioid was a painkiller given to me by a doctor as a child. I would assume most peoples experience is the same. The desire to escape reality and shun society should be looked at not when they first ingested a substance. (In my opinion of course)

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Same here. Twelve years old till sixteen/seventeen I was on damn near every opiate that docs prescribe, @ hundreds of pills a month, and more than a dozen shots of morphine. Pain killers don’t get rid of pain tho, they alter your perception so you forget you’re in pain. At some point you’ll get sick of it.

Gotta agree with @Muleskinner that patients dont become addicts, because heroin isn’t used to manage pain, the pain and sickness is just motivation. Some addicts coincidentally get prescribed medications for legitimate reasons, but if your goal is pain management you would be titrating your heroin dose, and addicts don’t do that.
(I apologize for the poor quality of my argument, should have been cleaner :grin:)

@legalcanada u also made a good point about Cannabis and addiction. Many addicts dont even smoke weed, regardless of legality. The population that will benefit from medical legalization is probably a small portion.

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That was my experience with opioids!
Heavy duty crap.

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Never took opioids until I was seriously injured a few years ago.
I was hospitalized for two months. While recovering, I was prescribed Percocet as well as Dilaudid (for the first few weeks).

I left the hospital and went to a Nursing/Rehabilitation facility. I continued with Percocet for about 8 months.
I was surprised to discover a thriving black market of opioids within the Nursing home. Many were purloined (by staff) from unsuspecting, befuddled patients. The facility was eager to keep as many opioid prescriptions flowing through the place as possible. Corruption is rampant within the medical industry…certainly in Florida.
The owner of the facility I was in is currently being held in a Federal detention center awaiting trial for the single largest case of Medicare/Medicaid fraud in US history…$1.2 Billion.

I decided to quit taking Percocet on my own. The knuckleheads in pain management seemingly encouraged usage. I quit, with the only discomfort being a few restless nights. It was easy for me.

Wow.
I was so happy when I left the Rehab.
Now I am pain free, although a little slower and more deliberate in my movements…and I only smoke weed and occasionally imbibe.

The stories I could tell.

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Silly Feds!

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Feds warn Florida breweries to stop making marijuana-flavored beer

http://www.nydailynews.com/amp/news/national/feds-warn-fla-breweries-stop-making-marijuana-flavored-beer-article-1.3940863

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