New Study Shows Why Big Pharma Hates Medical Marijuana (washingtonpost.com) 416
HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that a new study shows that painkiller abuse and overdose are significantly lower in states with medical marijuana laws and that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. The researchers "found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law... In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical-marijuana state prescribed 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers in a given year."
[P]ainkiller drug companies "have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization..."
[P]ainkiller drug companies "have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization..."
Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, their voices need to be heard, but companies ought not to become politically powerful entities. They are there to make money, produce goods, and make our lives better, not to tell us how to live.
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies will have power as long as they can make political donations.
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Companies will have power as long as they can make political donations.
And the solution is?
Except talking about it....
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At the very least, making any donation public.
And making attempts to hide donation source criminal.
You should at least know who is buying which representative and senator.
Since 2008ish we can't do that any longer as they are allowed to hide their donations legally.
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Informative)
We tried that. The net effect was that corporations don't donate to politicians anymore but they found a branch and employ said politician as a consultant and pay him for consulting. Which led to an interesting bonmot in a trial for corruption around here where a politician asked his "employer": "Uh, hey, say, what was my service to you again?"
Yes, our politicians are even too stupid to be properly corrupt.
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At the very least, making any donation public.
And making attempts to hide donation source criminal.
You should at least know who is buying which representative and senator.
Since 2008ish we can't do that any longer as they are allowed to hide their donations legally.
Ha ha ha!
All this "it should..." thinking may be great but has no effect at this point until Donald the savior shows up and fixes it all (pun intended).
Reality is that the people benefitting from this money source - or honor/social stand are the one's making the laws - House and Senate.
Would they cut in their own fingers? Your guess.
Same goes for the revolving door Congress Industry, expect any change there?
Or look how they are fighting about Supreme Court nominations to tilt the laws there in their favor
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
"And the solution is?"
I like the proposal that has been floated to make all politicians wear their corporate sponsor logos on their suits every day, like NASCAR drivers.
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is for the people to wake up and pay attention to what their government is doing.
Any "solution" that is premised on changing human nature is not a solution at all.
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:4, Insightful)
Best interest. . There is the problem. You do not know what my best interest is. You might know what yours is or even what you want it to be but it may be completely different than mine.
And you will find that along the way, there will be people with completely different best interest than either of us or even others.
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not know what my best interest is.
There's a 99% chance that your best interest doesn't involve letting politicians get bribed. Some things are obvious for the vast majority of us.
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It depends on what they are being bribed to do. Just because it benefits someone else doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit me or that whatever is being done is overall bad for the country. Often it doesn't even matter to me so what do I care if someone else gets their way.
Of course I'm thinking bribed is used in the liberal sense where donations and such count (considering the topic)
Re:Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
*shrug* then there's no solution.
Sure there is. Some countries are far more corrupt than others. But the difference is not in the people. People in Venezuela are no different from people in Denmark. The difference is in the laws and institutions. In corrupt countries, these are designed to facilitate corruption. In clean countries, they are designed to inhibit it.
In America, when I apply for a business license, the law says that the clerk "will issue" when I pay the standard fee, which is posted on a public website. In corrupt countries, the clerk "may issue" and has much more discretion to delay and obstruct. In America, the clerk sits at a public window, and my transaction is in full view of the other people waiting in line. When I applied for a business license in China, I was escorted by the clerk to a private office, where "expediting fees" were discussed out of sight and hearing of the next applicant. The system there is designed to be corrupt.
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Companies in the US already have strong restrictions on "political donations".
What they can do is communicate on issues. So, are you going to start massively censoring speech by companies? How exactly is that going to work? Does "company" include the New York Times, or only companies you don't like?
Companies donate to campaigns. A lot. (Score:5, Informative)
Companies in the US already have strong restrictions on "political donations".
They may have "restrictions"-- but they find ways to donate anyway. Nice thing about corporations; they have lawyers to find the loopholes.
Here's the top contributors list from OpenSecrets.org: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... [opensecrets.org]
What they can do is communicate on issues.
Yes, that's the biggest loophole: the Political Action Committee ("PAC"). It's "supposed" to be to "communicate issues". Every candidate has one.
"Political contributions, which used to go directly to candidates, now often flow to Super PACs, independent organizations that can raise money to either help or defeat a political candidate. Historically, traditional political action committees have been prohibited from accepting donations from unions and companies. However, following rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, Super PACs are now allowed to accept unlimited donations from unions and companies, provided the money does not go directly to the campaign.
The rise of the Super PAC has opened the door to a new generation of fundraising, changing how money is used to elect candidates and increasing the amount candidates need to raise to be competitive as they seek office.
(source: http://247wallst.com/special-r... [247wallst.com] )
So, are you going to start massively censoring speech by companies? How exactly is that going to work? Does "company" include the New York Times, or only companies you don't like?
A start would be a law mandating that money donated to political action committees has to be disclosed: if you're funding political campaigns, you have to do it openly, not secretly. This wouldn't even require overturning the Citizen's United decision: the Supreme court already said that this would be legal.
Re:Companies donate to campaigns. A lot. (Score:4, Informative)
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The table you point to lists primarily contributions from employees, and they go primarily to causes and issues. The association with corporations is indirect, as is the association with parties. You're being dishonest by misrepresenting this table as "political donations by corporations".
Re: Companies donate to campaigns. A lot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Treason is, perhaps, a bit harsh, but I suppose it would depend on the nature of the law being twisted. For example, in the case of a law you're being prosecuted for violating, if it's a minor crime and/or it wasn't publicized at all, simply dropping the charges and paying 3x lost wages and legal costs should suffice; if it was made public or is a major crime that may affect your ability to find housing or work in the future, ongoing yearly payments of 10x the mean salary might be in order. That would serve as a deterrent against bullshit arrests and prosecution and lead to more common-sense enforcement of the law, which is something that needs to be highlighted in order to get votes, especially when the people doing the voting (e.g. politicians) benefit from at least one class of the loopholes being discussed.
As for crimes you commit, which is what the AC was talking about (clearly you understand this, I'm just clarifying that I do as well) that's a much longer discussion. Perhaps too long for a single Slashdot post, but I think it would be interesting nonetheless, if you wish to pursue it.
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This was going on before political donations. As long as companies (or labor unions, or other organized groups) can promise nice, fat "consulting/board" positions to politicians after they retire, they will have power.
This would be easily handled with "conflict of issue" or "bribery" laws. It would be easy enough to make these sort of things illegal. The problem would be getting the political power to do it in the first place and enforcing it afterwards. Public shaming in theory should even work but as you can see from our current crop of candidates, the public doesn't seem to care if their candidate is morally corrupt and does illegal or unethical things as long as that candidate is perceived to be on their "side".
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The single reason not voting for Bernie is stupid, from either side of politics
Speaking of Bernie, does anyone here know whether his stances on Drugs and America's Incarceration Nation have made it into the Democratic Platform?
Re: Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Interesting)
Bernie called for the immediate removal of pot from the Controlled Substances Act, which would effectively legalize pot at a federal level.
The DNC platform language calls for a "pathway toward legalization", which is, of course, vague enough to be fairly meaningless and unenforceable against HRC once in office. And it barely passed, 81-80.
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By the way, LOVE your Username!
Re: Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:4, Insightful)
Bernie called for the immediate removal of pot from the Controlled Substances Act, which would effectively legalize pot at a federal level.
The DNC platform language calls for a "pathway toward legalization", which is, of course, vague enough to be fairly meaningless and unenforceable against HRC once in office. And it barely passed, 81-80.
Yet chipping away at bad laws a bit at a time has proven much more effective in the long term. Having people in office who understand this will be better than having blowhards who get blocked by the opposition constantly.
Re: Companies shouldn't have political power (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Moderates like Obama have very little opposition.
But he got a 'half way to universal healthcare measure' through congress, where a universal healthcare measure would not get through.
With luck the next administration will get though the 'single payer' option, which will in the style of Zeno's paradox get 50% of the remaining way to universal healthcare.
In time an incremental approach works. The all-in-one approach rarely succeeds.
I'll take an pragmatic incrementer over someone calling for a revolution that will never happen.
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But he got a 'half way to universal healthcare measure' through congress
No, he didn't. Since ACA, uninsured rates have dropped ~25%.
where a universal healthcare measure would not get through
There's a lot to unpack in this bit of wisdom. First of all, there were other alternatives. Second, they weren't considered. It had been over a decade since a serious universal coverage proposal was discussed, and it was just discarded without discussion.
Putting that aside, a majority of Americans support a single-payer system. The fact that Congress can't "get through" policies with "wide support" is a clear sign that Congress is corrupt and insul
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There has always been controversy about pot being on the Schedule I list of irredeemably hard drugs. An even better candidate for delisting is MDMA, which was the subject of a lot of psychiatric experimentation until it was classified as Schedule I for no particular reason.
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Companies have employees. THEIR voices can be heard.
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Then those people can go and vote at the polls like everyone else, rather than having an unfair advantage through lobbying.
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Companies don't have "political power"; they can't vote, they can't serve in Congress. Companies simply inherit the right to free speech from their owners; that is, I can either speak for myself, or I can get together with a couple of other people--or a million other people--to pool money and exercise my free speech rights. If you attack that right of "companies", you're attacking my right to free speech. Furthermore, any even remotely plausible restrictions on free speech exercised through companies needs
Companies are not people (Score:4, Informative)
Companies don't have "political power"; they can't vote, they can't serve in Congress.
To the contrary, companies have plenty of political power. What we've discovered in the 20th century is that the money to run political campaigns is power.
Companies simply inherit the right to free speech from their owners;
Yes, that's the basis for the Supreme Court "Citizens United" decision. It is on questionable logical grounds however: corporations are not citizens, and while the people composing a corporation have first-amendment rights, it is not at all clear that the corporations themselves do. The belief that an object inherits the properties of the pieces composing it is one of the logical fallacies: this is the fallacy of composition. [fallacyfiles.org]
(Or see: Logically Fallacious: Fallacy of composition. [logicallyfallacious.com])
The alternative would be to say that the people themselves have the right to donate to political campaigns, but if they want to do so, they must do so personally, and not from the corporations. This is also perfectly reasonable: corporations are legal entities, not persons, and can be subject to different laws then people.
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Corporations in the US cannot "run political campaigns"; they can't even contribute to political campaigns.
Re:Companies are not people (Score:4, Insightful)
A corporation does not inherently have rights. You still do.
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No, corporations just decide who we may vote for, and then we may decide which of their vassals we want to vote for.
I think it's called "separation of power".
Easy solution (Score:3)
I can see the pattern now (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever the drug companies think is bad for their business, must be good for the consumers.
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We're talking about "Big Pharma" not "A Big Farm".
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Just make sure that all your meals contain the big, important 4 food categories: Fat, Salt, Sugar and Caffeine.
Ummm click bait (Score:2, Interesting)
So because J&J donates to drug prevention efforts for children you logically assume they only do it because they are afraid of lost revenue due to legal marijuana? That's a pretty far stretch. that is like saying Britain donates to food pantries so they can by food from farmers who harm our water supply more......
One of five big industries (Score:5, Informative)
Big Pharma is only one of five industries spending big money to keep it illegal. The rest are aggravating, too. Private prisons, prison guard unions, and actual law enforcement are also involved. Law enforcement should just enforce the laws, in my opinion. They should not be involved in lobbying for or against them, though.
http://www.republicreport.org/... [republicreport.org]
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It affects their revenue stream.
Re:One of five big industries (Score:5, Interesting)
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In Canada the "Royal" Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) make tens of billions of dollars a year on cannabis. They completely control the trade. Confiscate, resell, confiscate, resell. They can sell the same product over and over and over. They decide who their approved dealers are and the rest got to jail. They even spike it with harder drugs like they always accused the Hells Angels of doing (which they never did). The RCMP kicked the Hells Angels out of Eastern Canada in the early 90's and then promptly took
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I think the police want drug prohibition, not because they think that enforcing drug prohibition makes much of a difference, but because it supplies a ready justification for stopping and searching people and the odds aren't bad that some of these stops will result in arrests for drug possession, boosting an officer's arrest stats.
Strip away drug laws and the cops have a lot less to do, or, more likely, have to focus their efforts on solving/preventing other crimes.
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Nope. Your average cop doesn't want it, rather they'd like to see softer drugs like MJ regulated and sold. The best example? Let's say you're on a boat, that boat is filling with water but you're still bailing water to stay afloat. Right now? You're up to your neck in that shit, but you're still bailing water. That's what your frontline cops believe. The staff sgt's? Generally the same, but once you get into the higher ranks? Nope, they're against it. But they're also in their very late 40's or 50
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Law enforcement should just enforce the laws, in my opinion. They should not be involved in lobbying for or against them, though.
http://www.republicreport.org/... [republicreport.org]
The opinion of law enforcement is one I'm actually interested in. Their input into how difficult something is to police is certainly useful in finding the best working solutions. (It's also possible that their input on a given matter is useless, but the only way to know is to listen to it.)
It's the lobbying bit that's the problem. Instead of gathering input from various groups and crafting the best workable solution, you often get the solution that best appeases the highest bidders.
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Another group that has a vested interest in keeping it illegal: the smugglers and dealers. Demand for illegal pot should severely drop where it is legal.
There is a lot of money selling illegal drugs, so one would expect that there would be a lobbying effort from that camp as well. The question is: how do we track it?
There has been. California pot farmers have been VERY supportive of those who want to keep MJ illegal.
Candy (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife had damaged the occipital nerve on the left side of her head in an accident. She had excruciating pain from this and went repeatedly to various doctors trying to get some help. They handed out hydrocodone and oxycodone like it was candy. After exhausting all options locally she was sent to a pain center. Their answer? More pills. I remember sitting there with a humongous bottle of hydrocodone and told her if you take all this shit it's going to kill you. I got her in to the pain clinic at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the doctor there did a nerve ablation that gave her relief from the pain. It came back and she had to have further treatment but the last 3 years have been pain free. It seems that if doctors can't figure what to do they just throw pills at it.
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It seems that if doctors can't figure what to do they just throw pills at it.
First off, sorry for your wife's struggles. I am glad she is past it.
In reality, many doctors don't know what to do and resort to symptom management with drugs. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does seem like the easy answer sometimes. You were wise to keep trying different doctors, they don't all now everything. I've learned not to accept 'there is nothing we can do', sometimes there is, sometimes they are right.
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I got her in to the pain clinic at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the doctor there did a nerve ablation that gave her relief from the pain. It came back and she had to have further treatment but the last 3 years have been pain free. It seems that if doctors can't figure what to do they just throw pills at it.
I'm glad you figured out a way to end the pain, just realize that there are many painful diseases and injuries we don't have a cure for no matter how long and hard you search. Using medication to numb the pain is in many cases the best we can do to reduce suffering, whether it's short term until it heals, more or less permanent against chronic disease or just to ease the passing for terminal diseases. I don't think doctors want to "throw pills at it" if they can see a better option. But sometimes specialist
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My wife has suffered from anxiety and depression her whole life, she was on SSRI (Cialis) which did nothing for the anxiety but made her more depressed as she gained 40lbs due to it (which is a known side effect but they seem to gloss over it). She had a bad episode earlier this year and her doctor gave her a prescription for benzodiazapine without blinking. The results are just taking a quarter of a pill with the lowest dosage knocks her our and gives her a hangover the next morning. She did some research
Get rid of FDA, Drug Laws, and Patents. (Score:2)
What ever happened to my body, my choice? Is it only true when you are killing the unborn?
Maybe we don't need to get rid of the FDA but just change it so it can't prohibit drugs. It can give the FDA "Seal of Approval" for drugs that meet it's standards. You should be allowed to sell any compound. As long as it's labeled properly and accurately the drug maker shouldn't be liable for any side effects. After all Peanuts are a great, cheap source of protein. But they also kill some people. It's should be up to
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That's what I would do: strip the FDA of its power to keep products off the market, because that's where the corruption comes into play. Look up the story of colchicine for an example of what I'm getting at.
Let the FDA test, and require that every product that it tests be labeled with the FDA's evaluation, but otherwise be sold freely. Let doctors and their patients make up their own minds on whether or not it might be worthwhile in a specific case to prescribe a compound labeled as "Still in Phase III tria
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The FDA is for more than blocking legitimate treatments. Its origin is based around mislabeled or adulterated drugs, which is a far more serious problem that would come back without some oversight.
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Agreed. That's why I mentioned it as a legitimate function of government.
Big pharmas hate it! (Score:5, Funny)
Learn about the secret all natural plant that might get you off anti-depressants and painkillers that the big pharmas don't want you to know!
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Read quickly before this article gets banned!!!!
FDA Scheduling (Score:3)
States with an MMJ program can and do perform studies, but they are at odds with the Federal regulations.
Until this changes (rumored to happen on August 1), cannabis derivatives, whether organic whole plant preparations or synthetics are stil
Re:Big pharmas hate it! (Score:4, Informative)
There is such a thing as "weed in a pill" and it is sold under the brand name Marinol. It is a schedule 3 drug under US law which means that prescribing it is under considerable scrutiny from the DEA. Low dose opiates and many mood altering drugs are schedule 4 and 5, which means the DEA is much less likely to scrutinize the physician for running a pill mill for addicts.
I'm stepping a bit further into speculation here but it appears that there is a social aspect here on not wanting to be seen as a quack for prescribing "weed in a pill" when there are a number of other schedule 3 drugs which are widely accepted to treat pain, even though those pain pills contain opiates. Cannabinoids have been shown to treat issues besides pain but again there are other drugs on the same level of controls or lower that are more socially acceptable.
If you are getting high from your pain meds then you are doing it wrong. I've been prescribed opiates for years for chronic pain and I take my pills carefully so that I don't get high from them. That high feeling was fun for a while but as you also found out that is no way to go through life. So I'll space out my doses, sometimes cut pills in half, so that I get the pain reducing benefits without that warm and tingly feeling.
I have no formal medical training so my speculation on what you've experienced is from that of a pain patient, not a licensed medical provider. People can have different kinds of pain. People can react differently to medications. I've gone through a number of medications for my chronic pain and I've had some side effects that seemed to baffle the physicians that prescribed my meds. One example is Tramadol, some people love this drug as it reduces pain but has no significant side effects for them. Apparently I'm in the 1% of people where Tramadol produces sleeplessness. Tramadol will help with my pain but if I take it before noon then I may not be able to get to sleep that night.
I've learned that just because something does not work for you does not mean it will not work for someone else. Humans are unlike many other species of animals out there. We've got such a varied genome that drugs can have a wide variety of effects. Animals like horses, cattle, and domestic cats don't have such variation so when drugs are tested on animals they don't always tell the whole story. The only animal that seems to be as widely varied as humans are dogs. My sister in law is a veterinary surgeon and she has to treat certain breeds of dogs as if they are a different species.
Which brings me back to why the drug companies can't just put "weed in a pill". The effects for marijuana can vary widely on the person and so dosage is difficult. If put in a pill form the marijuana would have to be in a wide variety of dosages and/or the physicians may have to prescribe a rather unrealistic number of pills for some people. This would make the regulation difficult and make them expensive. Marijuana in its natural form is easy to meter in that it is dilute, just take a bite of a marijuana cookie if that is all you need or eat the whole thing. Marijuana is naturally cheap to produce, it's a plant that grows like a weed, processing it to a pill form would make it expensive.
Probably the biggest reason that drug companies don't just put it in pill form is that there would be no profit in it. It would take only a minute for someone to see that the pills they are prescribed are just the same thing the stoner on the street corner is selling. Drug companies cannot compete with that.
Then this quickly turns to politics. For a drug company to sell a drug derived from marijuana on the market they'd have to lobby the DEA to reschedule the drug. Since there is now a large gray market for this in many states the big drug companies know they cannot act quickly enough to get any profit from it. Their potential customers would be quickly grabbed up by the existing marijuana dealers. Those taking what the big companies are offering now might just s
Pot Probably Safer than Benzodiazepines (Score:4, Interesting)
Having tried both, I feel that pot is less addictive than Atavian.
When my mother had cancer, they gave her Benzodiazepines for stress. The withdraw she went thought was like nothing I have ever seen anyone go through from pot.
Perhaps in a perfect world there would be no pot, but there wouldn't big drug and beer companies telling you and your government what to do.
So what? (Score:2)
Those people are still on drugs.
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It's hard to OD on pot.
No! it's IMPOSSIBLE. The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse researched this in 1972. I know. My Mom worked for the Commission (which recommended Decriminalization of Pot, BTW), and I have seen the underlying research they had done.
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Yeah, well, I'll remember that next time a 2-year old wanders away from his home and winds up dead face down in a slag pit because the mother was too stoned to pay attention to the kid. I'll remember that next time another 2-year old dies because the kid's guardian overdosed the kid to get him to shut up and then dumps the body in the middle of the night. I have personally spent more than a week searching for both of these kids. Don't ever give me this crap about it being a victimless crime.
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" I'll remember that next time another 2-year old dies because the kid's guardian overdosed the kid to get him to shut up and then dumps the body in the middle of the night."
And you've got the toxicology report to show us to PROVE it was *JUST* cannabis and nothing else?
Start fucking dropping docs, and back your fucking words up.
Drug Companies fund Anti-Drug Coalitions (Score:2)
Mind you, I would be okay with rifle companies lobbying for gun control and Lockheed Martin funding anti-war protests, while that's still an excessive use of private money power for political power that'd be a change.
Conspiracy is Conspiratorial (Score:2)
One, opiod prescription rates are down significantly in nearly all states, largely due to new regulations that are meant to discourage their use.
Two, opiods are often amongst the smallest and easiest to synthesize molecules in pharma today. A lot of companies can easily make them, which makes them cheap and low-profit. The big pharma companies don't even want to bother mak
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One, opiod prescription rates are down significantly in nearly all states, largely due to new regulations that are meant to discourage their use.
That's true. The new regulations make it almost impossible to get decent painkillers any more. Vicodin doesn't work on me at all, it does absolutely nothing in my system. I can take four big ones and wash them down with a beer and... nothing. I'm terrified of the torture I'll have to go through if I get a serious injury because of these misguided laws. MJ doesn't cure all pain, after all.
Two, opiods are often amongst the smallest and easiest to synthesize molecules in pharma today. A lot of companies can easily make them, which makes them cheap and low-profit. The big pharma companies don't even want to bother making them.
They like selling blood pressure medication and sleeping pills okay, though.
big pharma could make lots of money selling pot if they wanted to.
No, no they could not, because they could not
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big pharma could make lots of money selling pot if they wanted to.
They can't make big money on anything they can't patent.
That is very much untrue. If that were the case then we wouldn't see any name brand Tylenol, Advil, etc being sold at retail. There are plenty of other drugs that have gone off-patent (and OTC as well) that the big pharma companies are still making lots of money on. Go to your local drug store, and look in the NSAID aisle. Compare how much of the shelf space is name-brand Advil to store-brand Ibuprofen; this is based on how much money the company behind the name brand is making, as they are paying the
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There is plenty wrong with big pharma and with the system. But all that big pharma is doing against generics is marketing.
False. [guardianlv.com]
You are doubting the creativity of big pharma. They only need to change the formulation of a mixture and they have something they can sell as unique.
Something nobody wants. Unless they can keep the other stuff illegal, they won't be able to sell it.
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It's easy to reach that conclusion. However there are some important facts to consider that the conclusion conveniently passes on. One, opiod prescription rates are down significantly in nearly all states, largely due to new regulations that are meant to discourage their use.
No: The research quoted in TFA says that prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. This is a comparison study, not a "opiod use dropped, therefore it must be medical marijuana" correlation=causation study.
Two, opiods are often amongst the smallest and easiest to synthesize molecules in pharma today. A lot of companies can easily make them, which makes them cheap and low-profit.
Faulty thinking: "cheap to
It's inevitable now (Score:3)
We now have 25 states and DC that have made marijuana available for medical use. A handful of states, in spite of federal prohibitions, that have legalized it for recreational purposes. Half of the US states, districts, and territories are now violating federal law. What happened to the supremacy of federal law? Makes me wonder how else the states can tell the federal government to fuck off.
The DEA has now drawn up a set of "policies", which also violate federal law, where they do not enforce federal law on the possession of marijuana in jurisdictions where it is "legal". IMHO, this is an admission by the federal government that they cannot enforce federal laws without the cooperation of local law enforcement. This was always true but now they must admit it outright. Things were different when the federal government was unopposed.
The event that set a countdown timer in my mind for the end of federal prohibitions on marijuana possession was a news article about a Girl Scout selling cookies outside a medical marijuana dispensary in California. That must have been two years ago now and she was about 12 years old as I recall. This tells me that we have four years until this young lady is old enough to vote. When that happens then expect the federal government to fold on marijuana.
I expect to see in 2020, if not sooner, people running for public office talking about how they believe marijuana to be as safe as alcohol and tobacco. What this means in more specific policy terms would be interesting. Would this mean that marijuana regulation moves from the DEA to the BATFE? What would this mean for the future of the DEA? Would they be tasked with keeping marijuana from being smuggled *from* the USA *into* Mexico?
I don't expect the legalization of marijuana to have further effects on other drugs but I do see it as setting into motion other aspects of states rights. If states can legalize marijuana without federal opposition then what about gun laws? Energy is a big concern, what keeps a state from licensing nuclear power reactors on their own? We're already seeing states push back on the DHS running security at airports, what purpose does the DHS serve if all the states kick them out of all their airports?
It's also possible that the federal government learns from this to pick the fights they can win in order to keep federal supremacy from being questioned again. Legalizing marijuana might just do that. If the federal government backs off on this now then the smaller things like gun control might not come up. This assumes the federal government, made up of thousands of alpha personality types and each having their own idea on what roles the federal government should fulfill, can come to any singular conclusion on policy.
I think we are seeing a new revolution on rights, or merely a government sized train wreck, happen in slow motion.
Re:Doses, not prescriptions. (Score:5, Informative)
The numbers here are doses, not prescriptions. Keep that in mind, folks. Not nearly as big a reduction as the blurb is trying to make it sound like.
The study says the drop is greatest in states with legal MM, but implies there is a drop in other states as well. That information (the drop in other states) is conspicuously missing. What, then, is the reason overall for that drop? Also, since is a drop in prescriptions, maybe they could ask a few doctors why they are prescribing less. In some states like FL, there has been major crackdowns on excessive pain killer prescription writing.
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One limitation of the study is that it only looks at Medicare Part D spending, which applies only to seniors.
Re:Doses, not prescriptions. (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Consider the source (Score:2)
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Linked article is from vice.com. You don't think they have an agenda do you?
And I have no problem with people having an agenda. But I do find it interesting how easily people accept such flawed studies when it supports their ideals. What will be sad is the tremendous number of follow-on articles that claim these findings, and the extremely small number of those who see the problems with it. Its a sign of how collectively stupid the media is. They can't even question why doctors may be writing smaller prescriptions, or even how one can correlate doctors writing smaller prescriptions
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Linked article is from vice.com. You don't think they have an agenda do you?
And what about Big Pharma as well as the LEO and Prison INDUSTRIES?
Bitch, Please.
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Regulation is corrupted by lobbying I guess is the general theme, which is quite on-topic.
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Wow, I am appalled that this made it past the editors. What's the news here? Drugs may render other drugs unnecessary? Pharmaceutical companies have money and sometimes spend it? WTF?
Or how about, "Dr's prescribe less after major DEA crackdown".
Re: News for nerds? (Score:2, Insightful)
The DEA is another problem. Some people actually need pain medication and now whether you get it or not depends on things like how timid your doctor is, how much of an agenda your politically minded law enforcers have this week, and of course what kind of person you appear to be. If you're very young you'll get over the counter crap that doesn't work but if you have a good job, live in a rich part of town, etc it's different. I fall in that latter category. Had minor surgery a couple of years ago. Got
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The article also mentions reductions in other classes of drugs which are NOT subject to a "DEA crackdown".
Further, this reduction outpaces the reduction in non-MM states. And the average reduction in doses includes physicians who
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Anything that is causing people to take fewer pharmaceuticals must be of a concern to pharmaceutical companies, wouldn't you say?
It may. But that doesn't make a spit of difference in drawing a conclusion about the relationship between the drop in prescribed amounts and medical marijuana usage. There isn't even data on how much individuals that are actually sick are taking, only prescribe amounts. for example, my dad had severe arthritis and used to stock up on pain pills in case they price went up, he couldn't get out to refill, or his coverage changed. He wound up with tons of unused painkillers.
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It's probably a good idea for anyone with the responsibility of voting to look beyond the end of their nose once in awhile.
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We are going to need new laws or a constitutional amendment to prevent companies from screwing over citizens to make a profit. These companies, like the Oxycontin maker, know their product is deadly and addictive, and they fight every day to prevent pot from becoming legal. They don't care how many lives are ruined as long as the money keeps flowing.
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We are going to need new laws or a constitutional amendment to prevent companies from screwing over citizens to make a profit.
LOL. See also: TPP.
Goes like so:
1. Country legalizes pot.
2. You establish having lost profit because pot.
3. Sue the country under TPP for lost profits.
4. Profit!
Re:Can't wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, like I said, we are going to need new laws, not new "free trade" agreements. The criminal corporate overlords need to be taxed into submission, broken up into smaller companies and regulated until they scream Uncle!
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And then the local cops and courts don't enforce the pop laws due to there high cost of courts / locking up people.
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It wasn't intended to be deadly and addictive it was intended to treat severe Pain. If you want to blame anybody, blame Doctors who think it's Candy and Users who take it to get High.
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Thousands of people die from overdoses every year. Of course it is the doctor's and patients who are ultimately responsible, but congress and the lobbyists have made it much too easy for people to get much more oxycontin than they need. Ask Rush Limbaugh, he knows.
Where are big pharma's recreational drugs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where are big pharma's recreational drugs? The ones they engineer from the ground up to provide a pleasant, short-term euphoria with designed-in features to prevent overdose, mitigate overconsumption and abuse, and cheap enough that they could be priced lower than mass-produced marijuana?
I would kind of expect that somebody, somewhere would figure out that this would not only be big business but good public policy. Punitive measures to inhibit use of the existing classes of recreational drugs hasn't worked, so why not engineer alternatives that mimic those highs but minus as much of the negative side effects as possible?
The current class of recreational drugs have all kinds of nasty side effects, addictions, overdose deaths, corrosive physical effects, hangovers, and all the social problems they produce. Marijuana isn't bad in comparison to most, but even it still has the lingering stupor and the smoking aspect.
You would think that the bright guys in the lab would be able to come up with something new that minimized the negatives while still giving people something that would dissuade most people from bothering with the legacy highs.
Not a good track record (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are big pharma's recreational drugs? The ones they engineer from the ground up to provide a pleasant, short-term euphoria with designed-in features to prevent overdose, mitigate overconsumption and abuse, and cheap enough that they could be priced lower than mass-produced marijuana?
Drug manufacturers have a poor track record on that.
In the 1800s, they noticed that opium worked as an analgesic, but had people using it simply for pleasure. So they engineered a new drug to just have the analgesic properties, and named it "morphine."
That didn't work. It had a bad side effect: people who took opium or morphine experienced a side effect where they started craving it, called "opium appetite". So, pharmacies thought, well, we need to find a deliver it without the people eating it-- it could be delivered directly to the body, so people wouldn't have the craving (how could you have a craving for something you don't even taste?) So they invented needle injection to solve the opium appetite problem.
That didn't work. Opium and morphine both turned out to be addictive, so they developed a new drug to solve that. This one they name it "heroin".
That turned out to be even worse. So they went completely synthetic to make a new painkiller which didn't trace to the opium flower: Oxycodone.
That turned out to be even more addictive...
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The point is you are missing the point. Heroin use/addiction is on the rise in the US in large part because of Oxycontin. Perdue Pharma convinced doctors it was safe and non-addictive (wrong on both counts) and had made over $30B doing it. Thousands of unnecessary prescriptions were written causing many to become addicted. The Gov cracked down on pill factories making it hard to get thus those severely addicted turned to heroin (much easier to get). Just peruse the graphs and they will tell the tale:
https:/ [drugabuse.gov]
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Prozac isn't so pleasant. There's no high at all. It can cause anxiety.
You're confused about antidepressants and what they're for.
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My guess is that the drug companies have tried to have the best of both words, designing drugs that fit the traditional treatment model of "fixing" some defined biological problems while quietly promoting them as viable lifestyle drugs for patients whose principal problem seems to be disaffection.
It is in the national interest that people be sober and rational as much as possible.
I think this kind of Calvinistic mindset is really why drugs remain illegal and big pharma hasn't tried to develop safer recreational drugs. A lot of people are invested in the idea of permanent sobriety.
I can't s
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I think this kind of Calvinistic mindset is really why drugs remain illegal and big pharma hasn't tried to develop safer recreational drugs. A lot of people are invested in the idea of permanent sobriety.
I am reminded of the words of arch-conservative intellectual pundit William F. Buckley, who, although he was supremely Conservative in his political views, was nonetheless intelligent enough to recognize that we need to Legalize ALL Drugs (.long before Portugal did exactly that), to wit:
"Drugs are illegal because they are immoral, and they are immoral because they are illegal, and that's where we're stuck."
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What do you think Prozac is?
Dangerous, like all SSRIs.
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People do it FOR the "lingering stupor". Also they have solved the smoking it problem. Not to mention OD is literally impossible.
The lingering stupor I'm talking about isn't the first hour, but the hours after that where you're sort of high, but sort of not.
I don't disagree that it mostly hits the checkboxes -- no death potential from overdose, the emerging use of vaporizers to eliminate the need for combustion, no evidence of long-term corrosive physical effects, the high it produces makes people generally calm and gregarious (as opposed to the frequent hostility produced by alcohol or the psychosis produced by amphetimines).
But the
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Can't wait for the those same drug companies to get their hands on MJ so they can start filling it with additives and making it as addictive/poisonous as cigarettes. By the time they're through with it, it'll be more dangerous than the synthetic stuff they're currently trying to outlaw.
Effects of intentional adulteration will be mitigated because pharmaceutically effective marijuana can be grown by individuals.