Politicians mean drugs they have laws against when using this phrase. They are close, like only 180-degrees off. It is their war on people using non-prescription drugs and their rules against natural healers that drive people in the wrong directions.
Current polls vary, but at least two thirds of us support REPEAL of all laws against cannabis users and its use as medicine that was safely self-administered for centuries.
Note: I did not say “legalize” on purpose. I will welcome reduced government malfeasance on this topic, but until their toxic presence in the world of cannibis is no more, we are all the losers.
The winners? Big Pharma, Prison-Industrial Complex, organized crime, asset forfeiture collectors and a few others who contribute a lot more than we do to election campaigns.
Your turn to do something about it.
Ted
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3 new bills to legalize marijuana
Do your reps know you want them to legalize marijuana? Retweet
Don’t impede yourself. Take notice — eventually, public opinion turns into legal change. The marijuana issue is a perfect example. Minds have moved toward legalization, and now legislation is following after. This is how things work!
Politicians do not lead, they follow!
And what do they follow? Public opinion! But not just majority opinion. Passionate opinion is what moves them most. More and more people are becoming more and more passionate about ending pot prohibition. So…
There are now 3 bills in Congress to legalize pot – one in the House and two in the Senate. Please tell your reps to…
Do it now. Take this action often!
That’s how you show your passion.
Thank you for being an ACTIVE DC Downsizer,
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
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On a directly related subject, there is a lot of talk about “The opioid crisis”.
In states where cannibis use is allowed the trend is quite clearly one of reduced prescription and non-prescription opioid use. The truth is plain to see. You have to work at it not to.
More about that below.
Ted
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American Heroin Epidemic
The rise of the misuse of opioids, especially heroin, in America has grown to epidemic proportions in the past two decades. In recent years, however, this has also been accompanied by a shift in the ways that policymakers, law enforcement professionals, those in the legal field and even average citizens see the challenges posed by the use of drugs like heroin. It has also raised a very simple question: How did we get here?
The Initial Factors
A confluence of factors created a perfect moment in the history of America for the heroin epidemic to blow up. These factors also created an environment in which many members of society who had developed addiction issues didn’t see themselves as addicts.
First, an aging population has increasingly been in legitimate need of pain management medications as evidenced by the fact that many states have seen heroin use rise to epidemic levels as their populations have gotten older. It’s important to note that those people who became addicted to opioids often graduated from prescription medicines to heroin only after their prescriptions ran out or their doctors cut them off. Second, the pharmaceutical industry went hard after potential customers during the 1990s, a choice they’re now beginning to pay for in the form of lawsuits from states like Florida.
Additionally, the impulse among medical professionals at the time was to trust the drug companies and their research. It was common for pharmaceutical representatives to tell doctors many things that have since been proven false, such as that a commonly prescribed painkiller like OxyContin:
- Was less likely to promote addiction than its forerunners, Percocet and Vicodin
- Couldn’t produce the same high as heroin
More disturbingly, there’s evidence that pharmaceutical firms and chain pharmacies turned a blind eye to the excessive availability of their drugs. This was especially the case in states with large aging populations.
For example, one county in Florida, Pasco, has a single Walgreens that had supplied enough opioid prescriptions to give every single person in the county a six-month supply. There’s also evidence that many chain pharmacies shipped billions of doses into the states where the heroin epidemic exploded.
By 2012, it was estimated that 2.1 million Americans were addicted to some type of opioid. Of those, nearly 500,000 were believed to be users of heroin.
A Second Wave
Charts from the mid-2010s indicated that we might have been seeing a crest in the epidemic sometime around 2016. Just as mitigation efforts by the government tried to take hold and pharma firms began behaving more responsibly, though, a new wave of drugs hit the streets.
Fentanyl from China, in particular, began moving along the drug highways of the U.S. The practice of unloading drugs during transshipment in order to pay expenses has led to a slew of overdoses in states like Ohio where the interstate highway system has provided speed and convenience to traffickers. I-70, I-75, and I-80 all across the state, and the I-65 pipeline that moves drugs from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest is also nearby.
The new wave of drugs is being fabricated in conditions that closely replicate the laboratories that fed the first wave. Street-level dealers frequently cut their products with potentially lethal doses of products such as carfentanil, a drug with such a high potency that it has been deployed in aerosolized form by special forces in Russia. Street-level drugs found in this second wave have been so strong that one police officer had to be administered four doses of Narcan after he accidentally brushed his hand against a package after a raid.
Another disturbing trend in heroin use has been a growing habit of inhalation. This seems to be tied to an uptick in cases where major brain damage has occurred. Fortunately for those involved in this type of drug use, treatment is available that can help them avoid these problems and move toward a more healthy future.