This article today in the Washington Post caught my attention:
Drug overdoses deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year
The death toll jumped by more than 21,000, or nearly 30 percent, from 2019, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics, eclipsing the record set that year.
Disturbing news, but what caught my attention was how the article approached this problem. Not once was the notion of harsher enforcement mentioned as a possible solution or need.
Instead, here were some of the reflections in the article:
“Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in an interview that fentanyl has so thoroughly infiltrated the illegal drug supply that 70 percent of cocaine overdose deaths and 50 percent of methamphetamine overdose deaths also involved fentanyl. In many cases, she said, users are unaware that their drugs are laced with the powerful painkiller, which can halt breathing even if a minute amount is ingested.” […]
But unlike past years, 2020 brought the added complications of a worldwide viral pandemic. Health-care resources were stretched and redirected toward the emergency. Anti-addiction medication was more difficult to obtain. Stress increased dramatically. Users were more isolated, leading to additional overdoses because other people were not nearby to summon first responders or administer the opioid antidote naloxone, experts said.
“The pandemic has led to increased substance use across the board, as people have sought to manage stress, isolation, boredom, anxiety, depression, unemployment, relationship and child care issues, and housing instability,†Kimberly Sue, medical director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, an advocacy group that tries to prevent overdose deaths, said in an email.
It’s time for the government to “provide medications for opioid use disorder for everyone who needs them, with no restrictions on cost or availability,†Volkow said.
There was a time when an article like this would be half enforcement-related, with a push for stricter laws and tough cracking down. This really seems like a long-overdue change in the discourse, at least. Recognition that drug illegality results in the more dangerous lacing with fentanyl, and that stress, depression, and instability (etc.) are factors leading to addiction and overdose as opposed to it being a thing you can just arrest your way out of (or “just say no” to).
San Francisco 2020 OD deaths doubled. From Capradio:
Some funny youtube dude likes to do shows on states, dividing them by region, politics, and economics. Come to find out, meth is really popular in a lot of these really poor parts. But Oklahoma having the same issues as many of these states, was no longer in the top ten for meth use, while previously holding the record for being in the Top 5 for decades on out. And they are all believing cannabis is responsible for Okies being in the top 10%. In fact, Oklahoma made medical marijuana more affordable and easier to obtain during the pandemic . . . the Pandemic was a good time to open up a new store. And we have drive-in stores, where you drive your car through the middle of the store if you don’t feel like getting out of your car.
On a not-so-high note: my 60something older gentleman I help to take care of when it comes to being his friend and getting him his meds had all his vapes and pens confiscated by the nursing staff on Monday at his State ran VA home. And his meds were helping and giving him vigor and appetite. Now he cannot eat and he just looks so horrible. It’s not like he was smoking flower and having lighters (prohibited to all due to oxygen) on him. The state says we are allowed to have it, but the administration says that we cannot because we are partially funded by the VA and not just the State. But none of the elderly vets smoking pot causes problems or sensations or pisses off the staff; it’s when Covid-19 causes admin to act dumb and hypocritical or when they keep two old people in a hot tub all day, later to find out they boiled to death in temperatures not suited for any human of any age for longer than a second.
Depressed LGB youths use more cannabis, study:
Mouth ulcers successfully treated using CBD:
A time when doctors took cocaine injections in the name of science, produced by Rohin Francis, MBBS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0duLUAc9Pc
German physics students determine why beer mats make bad trajectory vehicles:
Is there anything weed doesn’t get blamed for? Not according to
the spyware industry.
Phillippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte is getting heat from the U.S. State Dept: ‘U.S. drug war no cleaner than ours’, exclaims Duterte,
https://tribune.net.ph/index.php/2021/08/04/u-s-drug-war-no-cleaner-than-ours/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_30e33a9a3c4d0e55ff6cfac42e073b6adf4d60cb-1628121656-0-gqNtZGzNAg2jcnBszQh6
DEA agent, Chad A. Scott, sentenced to 13 years behind bars for corruption:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/disgraced-dea-agent-sentenced-13-years-corruption-case-79421161?cid=clicksource_4380645_9_mobile_web_only_headlines_headlines_hed
Cancer patients are not using marijuana medicinally at the same rate of increase as people with no medical history of the disease:
Servetus, I find this news troubling as cannabis has anticancer properties. The question of whether cannabis is helpful or hurtful for cancer is an easy one.
Cannabis is antiproliferative, i.e., it kills cancer cells. It’s anti-angiogenic, i.e., it cuts off a tumor’s blood supply. It’s anti-metastatic, i.e., it keeps the tumor contained so it doesn’t spread to other body parts. And it performs a cellular housekeeping function called apoptosis which removes damaged cells that have the potential to become cancer.
I believe a lack of education by physicians is the biggest problem and reason for this. Full extract cannabis oils are better than combustion for treating cancer.
It may be a lack of education, or the health system’s medical policies. Hospital protocol is ironclad and defying it any level can land an employee in a lot of trouble. Increasing the information overload doctors meet in keeping up with their professional tasks needs to be measured according to priorities, and until someone decides marijuana is a priority, it’s not likely to happen.
And doctors aren’t researchers. For the most part, they’re physicians whose daily work schedules in a big city hospital can be grueling for any number of reasons. They don’t necessarily follow research. It’s not their job.
On top of everything else doctors need to learn, they’re being called on to unlearn more than 80 years of government propaganda designed to demonize a weed whose anti-cancer properties were known by researchers in 1974.
There’s also the possibility that cannabis could lead to medical specializations. We might someday see a hospital that features a Cannabis Medicine Department (CMD) with trained cannabis doctors, or a psilocybin clinic.
Great points all, and the result is a potential therapuetic loss for many suffering from cancer.
More on why the medical profession still ignores marijuana as a medicine.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/23/the-sub-prime-of-ms-jane-brody-still-ignoring-the-science-on-medical-marijuana/
The strange effects of the COVID pandemic on illicit drug consumption in Australia—cannabis use rises, meth decreases…
More on the loss of the drug war in Afghanistan:
https://truthout.org/articles/before-2001-invasion-bush-admin-declared-taliban-an-ally-in-the-war-on-drugs/
S-man, loan me that freakishly large brain of yours, will ya?
In 1910 the Flexner Report on the status of US medicine established the Pharma dominated, Western, evidence-based system we have today.
The great points you made on how protocol protects and guides modern docs is based on that century-old work.
In 1910 cannabis and other herbs were considered “injun medicine” and the laboratory medicine of the day wasn’t able to correctly identify the evidence-base behind cannabinoids.
Today’s labs are more sophisticated and the evidence is there for anyone willing to look.
The Flexner Report handed the keys to the kingdom to Big Pharma.
I am convinced a NEW Flexner Report that took a fresh look at cannabinoids would require Medical Schools to teach the truth! Actually I’m convinced it should cause a paradigm shift. The reality isn’t pro-cannabis.
Allopathic or so-called evidence-based medicine that refuses to acknowledge a new reality based on lab testing is “for-profit” and not for-people OR Health Care in any sense of the word.
How do we get Congress to initiate a NEW Flexner Report which honors our family members, but at the expense of Big Pharma?
Right now most docs are too worried about mortgages and careers RATHER than the well-being of patients. A NEW Flexner Report would require NEW medical school curriculum and hopefully better treatment for cancer.
How do we demand a paradigm shift through modern laboratory science and education?
A neo-Flexner Report would be a great idea. The new report would need to address some strange phenomena.
The US has a capitalist economy and universal health care is not provided, so the medical profession wants to go where the money is, which might exclude weed and psychedelics even though the drugs can make doctoring a lot simpler. Pharmaceuticals are typically easier and cheaper to produce and more profitable to sell.
At least the money generated by former illicit drugs won’t be going to Big Pharma, which is all set to take a Big Loss due to cheaper and more easily available botanicals that threaten its market.
It’s always been complicated. The physical therapy business that was created as a treatment for victims of polio dissolved all due to Dr Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine discovery. Many good and competent people, those in the medical professions, were forced to learn new disciplines and move on. Someday we may see a big part of the psychology profession splintered simply because people need little more than three pills to straighten out their heads. Addiction might be treatable using a single pill. The mysteries of schizophrenia may be solved. Unlike corporations, the solutions won’t put molecular psychiatrists or other scientists out of business. Science self corrects, and it does so in real time, unlike corporations, governments or cults. Scientific solutions will be needed for many decades forward whether bureaucrats or anyone else likes it.
Change brought about by a solution is always difficult for bureaucracies. Kafka wrote about it. Emil Durkheim predicted that industrialization would lead to bureaucratization and to decreasing social solidarity, just as we’ve seen with the FDA and Congress.
The medical profession is in the beginning of adopting significant genetic therapies such as CRISPR Cas-9 to address medical problems such as Huntington’s disease. It faces opposition in some cases due to a public anti-GMO attitude that fails to acknowledge and understand genetics, or what actually happened in India with regard to Monsanto and its GMO seeds. In this case, it’s the public education system that needs reevaluation and redirection, not just medical schools.
The profession is understandably paranoid. US medical malpractice lawsuits are a hassle. Medical professionals don’t want to make a move until they can be absolutely indemnified. Doctors can sometimes worship the FDA and not the Hippocratic Oath. The last thing the profession wants is to be tagged with something like Big Pharma’s thalidomide nightmare that caused babies to be born without limbs. The current opioid crisis is another black eye for modern medicine.
So it’s conceivable that cannabinoids and psilocybin could be rejected or demonized for the foreseeable future, although by fewer numbers of people. And nothing about Schedule I drugs will ever make sense as long as the information originates directly from medical bureaucrats.