Today, the Office of National Drug Control Policy convened its first meeting of President Trump’s “Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis.”
The Commission is tasked with making recommendations for improving the Federal response to opioid misuse and abuse.
Best evidence informs us that medical marijuana access is associated with reduced levels of opioid-related abuse, hospitalization, and mortality. Nonetheless, this administration continues to express skepticism with regard to the safety and efficacy of medical marijuana.
Today in The Hill newspaper, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano writes:
With opioid overdose deaths having risen four-fold since 1999, it is imperative that lawmakers and public health experts approach this issue with an open mind and remain willing to entertain all potential alternatives.
For many patients, cannabis provides a safe and effective substitute for the use of opioids and other potentially harmful substances. Committee members should set their political ideologies aside and give strong consideration to this rapidly growing body of scientific evidence.
You can read the full piece in The Hill by clicking here.
It is crucial that our government hear from us. Click here to send a message to the Commission urging them to include medical marijuana as part of any national response to the opioid crisis.
I clicked the link above, to send my letter to the ONDCP Commission. I hope you too will make use of the NORML link!
Done.
The members of the ONDCP may very well be on our side with issue of cannabis but the drug czar is muzzled, and only Congress can deschedule marijuana federally.
I suppose this open letter is more of a political statement to Congress in preparation for 2018 elections.
As far as “will this commission work,” I would say yes, if the mission is to drain the ONDCP and use those funds to crack down on asset forfeitures. But if the mission is to reduce the opiate epidemic then Insys and other manufacturers for synthetic opiates that are paying off doctors to push on targeted communities need to go behind bars and marijuana needs to be descheduled by Congress.
If only to get the evidence that cannabis has been repeatedly demonstrated in helping people to be free of opioid addiction in view before the proper minds at the proper spacetime…
Work place drug testing really made things worse.Anybody that had a choice for a recreational drug will find that marijuana stays in your system potentially for months and the stuff that can kill you only remains detectable for days making it appealing to some people that may be up for a drug test. Just may be some of those details as to how we got in this opioid mess.
I have just kicked 12 years and thousands of Percocet,soma,
With the help of “YES” cannabis and willpower. In fact I helped a 5 year 180 Percocet and 90 barbiturates per month habit that was causing pain and sorrow to his wife and child. Hey tried it once that day and he couldn’t believe how fast and great he felt without the opioid side effects. Jeff please stop saying what big pharma is paying you to say. The DEA has a lot more bigger fish to fry. Stop taking peoples homes and property because of a small amount of cannabis.
Re: Jeff saying what big pHARMa tells him to say, try this:
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http://cannabisgrowracks.com/why-jeff-sessions-has-to-do-what-big-tobacco-tells-him-to-do/
.
2014 Surgeon General Report: (tobacco) smoking-related illness costs US economy $289-billion a year. Can you help cure a 7300-$igarette-per-year poor puffsucker with cannabis and willpower? (YES!)
10 years of 4 or 5 vicodin nothing but good old weed
The can kill you for cannabis and take your constitutional civil rights away but won’t care if you die of any prescription “drug”
The link from Big Pharma to Sessions?
https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00003062&type=I&newmem=N
As Senator of Alabama Sessions accepted decades of sustained donations from HealthSouth Corp which spun off into the Birmingham based Medpartners Inc., which purchased what is known today as CVS Caremark, a physician practice management (PPM) company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CVS_Caremark
Today the company is one of the nation’s leading pharmacy benefit management (PBM) companies, provides comprehensive prescription benefit management services to over 2,000 health plans, including corporations, managed care organizations, insurance companies, unions and government entities. With net revenue of approximately $37 billion (including approximately $5.8 billion of retail copayments) in 2006, they are also one of the largest PBMs.
But campaign donations don’t reveal the whole scope of how these companies purchase our Congressman. Big Pharma companies outsource so they don’t pay taxes then offer special tax-free stocks to our Congressman as offshore tax havens. If Sessions is a secret shareholder of HealthSouth how would we know he’s profiting from opiate addiction? We wouldn’t.
But what we do know is that as US Attorney, Senator of Alabama and now USAG, Sessions stands to keep a lot of bad guys like HealthSouth from losing big in court for fraud and predatory opiate prescriptions.
And there are plenty of settlements in the lethal opiate industry;
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/20/cvs-agrees-to-pay-600000-to-settle-record-keeping-/
Jeff Sessions is and always has been profiting off of the predatory, parasitic exploitation of opiate addiction. Click on the Act tab and support the CARERS Act now to stop this attrocity.
Sessions should be tarred and feathered. He should be bull whipped first and then hog tied so we can hear him swill just like a little scrawny pig about to get his you know what de-circumvented. LOL That greedy little rat faced scoundral realy realy needs a good ole mule f__king for sure.
In effigy, of course. And in similar vein, “Fuck Trump!”
https://acestoohigh.com/2017/05/02/addiction-doc-says-stop-chasing-the-drug-focus-on-aces-people-can-recover/
Addiction doc says: It’s not the drugs. It’s the ACEs – adverse childhood experiences
“Its not the drugs?!”
Apparently you either dont know what fentanyl is or what predatory synthetics Insys Therapeutics is kickbacking through our legal and medical systems… or your complicit in their Machiavellian plan$…
Or you could be a case of both and more… a victim of child abuse, hooked on opiates who has identified with his opiate peddling aggressors?
You see, life experience and brave introspection with a little help from marijuana has taught me that answers are very seldom “either or” but “both and more,” MSimon. If you smoke a bowl, look inside yourself with an honest inventory I think you will agree.
@ MSimon,
Not necessarily. Alcoholism is often genetic.
PTSD is a genetic disease triggered by trauma.
This police officer came to a conclusion similar to the doctor’s.
14-Year Veteran Undercover Cop Exposes Truth About The Drug War: “I Used To Believe I Was Doing Good”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-16/14-year-veteran-undercover-cop-exposes-truth-about-drug-war-i-used-believe-i-was-doi
I have been saying that for over 12 years
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2004/09/heroin.html
Addiction is a symptom. Drugs are not the cause.
People in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers.
@ MSimon,
By the way, screw you for never responding to critical questions with honest self-appraisal. Like Trump, you are a fraud.
@Rilla8: Congratulations for your continued success using cannabis to throw away the pill bottles. Helping others to recover this way and tell their story is exactly what our politicians need to hear.
To elaborate on my previous comment about asset forfeitures, while that is certainly the intent of the DEA, and despite Deputy AG Rosenstein’s recent alarming lies about medical marijuana, the Federal government is in so much disarray from the Dumpster-fire-in-Chief that for now the Cole memos will stay in play, hence, no big federal crackdown for the time being. The best we can do during the lawless chaos this Administration is bringing to our federal government is support our institutions of liberty like NORML, the ACLU, DPA, and LEAP. And lets focus on our state legislatures to reform marijuana law and combat the synthetic opiate lobby and asset forfeitures. By all means, click on the link above and let our voices be heard at the Federal level, but citizen lobbying at the state and local level is vital if were ever going to root out the bad laws that affect us most. Clicking on the Act tab and calling up our state representatives and letting them know we vote in their districts, support marijuana reform and reject civil asset forfeitures is a good place to start. It’s long-term rewarding work, and don’t be discouraged by talking to staff members. Build a relationship with your Congressional staff; they might become bigger allies then we give them credit for. We need voices like yours who have personal, first hand experience with using cannabis to stop opiate addiction at every level of our government.
Keep up the good work!
Yeah, this will go over great! Since Chris Cristy is in charge this will be a nothing burger.
In Ohio we are watching fentanyl and carfentanyl killing tons of people .. If there’s not many people left in an area ..there wouldn’t be a reason to do anything but decrease law enforcement funding in said area due to a declining population. So thus it would be wisest from a financial point of view for law enforcement to want marijuana legalization .. But they haven’t figured that out and won’t till some blue paychecks get smaller because of downsizing due to drug overdoses reducing the population of rural areas
Damnit Drunken Cactus, youre right… to some degree, but have you ever spoken to anyone on your city council? Do you know who your state representative is?
And heres the part I dont even do as much as I should… have you ever vetted your candidate for Sheriff or DA? THESE are the people that most affect the survival of ordinary people in Ohio… start local…
http://youtu.be/XGESalMRrEs
Trump on private prisons…