Two Moms Reported to Child Services for False Positive Drug Tests from Poppy Seeds
Today, two women filed lawsuits against Garnet Health Medical Center alleging that the Middletown, New York, hospital drug tested them without their consent when they were giving birth. They both tested “presumptive positive” initially, but later tested negative — as did their newborns — and the false positives were the result of eating poppy seeds.
The women allege that hospital staff interfered with their ability to breastfeed, despite their newborns testing negative. The hospital also reported their unconfirmed, false positive results to the state, and child welfare authorities conducted unnecessary and invasive home visits. The suits allege that not only does Garnet Health conduct drug testing without informed consent, but it uses opiate testing thresholds far lower than the levels the federal government uses for workplace testing — 300 ng/mL versus 2,000 ng/ml — levels the government raised more than 20 years ago, specifically because of false positives.
This is truly unconscionable.
The poppy seed scandal in a Middletown, New York, hospital is a sad example of the miserable lives people face living in Prohibition Land. In places like Middletown, people are treated as subjects, not citizens. It’s why differing legal standards still exist for prosecuting crack and cocaine possession. The powers that claim the throne owe their existence and allegiance to willful misinterpretations of pharmaceutical science. They claim the stewardship of human rights laws only to alter or violate human rights at will. No one in Congress is unaware this is happening. It’s their doing, after all.
Removing corruption from a government usually requires some kind of novel force. That’s why despots seek the ability to prosecute anyone for anything, no matter how trivial. Take that power away from them and it’s worse than taking candy from a baby. Not even Batman can save us when we’re facing crazed do-gooders who make war on drug heretics.
In his book Ceremonial Chemistry, Dr Thomas Szasz noted that heresy is derived from the Greek word hairetikos which means able to choose. The drug heretic in this case allegedly chooses wrongly, at least according to twits like Patrick Kennedy, a man who can’t use legal pharmaceutical drugs successfully, much less smoke a benign weed without screwing up, feeling sorry for himself, turning himself into a professional victim, and seeking the leadership of the ONDCP. Patrick was the Congressman who crashed into a Capitol Hill barrier because he didn’t read the package insert on his Adderall that says don’t take this crap and drive your car.
Then there was prohibitionist President George H. W. Bush whose most glaring failure as president was his precious war on drugs, one that included a concocted crack bust in front of the White House that he later used as a propaganda stunt in a major speech to the nation.
The type of power a prohibitionist gains is power over the weak, the poor, the ignorant, the disenfranchised, all of whom get exploited mercilessly. No one other than someone who is utterly defenseless is likely to pay prohibitionists any mind, certainly no mindful person still possessing a modicum of self respect.
Power over others is what Nietzsche called vulgar power. It was power over oneself that he encouraged, especially the power to go beyond any medieval-minded cult that might be standing in the way of true progress towards peace, harmony, and modern medical treatments. He hated the autocratic and authoritarian Germans, admired the Brits, and chose to live in Switzerland, a neutral country. He would not have liked Hitler, as Nietzsche’s idiotic fascist herd-minded sister claimed after her brother’s death. She promoted him to the Nazis for her own profit and prestige just like the swine she was. Nietzsche would have scoffed at drug and alcohol prohibitions as a manifestation of despots who scapegoat material substances merely to promote a theonomy—a hypothetical Christian form of government in which society is ruled by divine law—one that includes profiteers who endorse fatalistic solutions that justify human suffering as little more than punishment for one’s sins. Rejecting suffering becomes the equivalent of rejecting authority.
It’s no accident that the majority of the non-religious, the non-church affiliated, the nones (nothing in particular), have largely written off support for the drug laws since time immemorial. Surveys and polls made this fact abundantly clear as early as the 1960s. The polling results may even have spurred a movement by the religious right to persecute illicit drug users en masse since a drug war was virtually guaranteed to turn up religious heretics or non-believers in the final body count. Religious heretics were construed as communists by 1920s Red Scare evangelists like Billy Sunday, who alleged the commie strategy for taking over the US to destroy capitalism was to undermine its religious values. Billy Sunday was an outfielder in baseball’s National League and the leading white Christian evangelist of his era. Evangelism made him a lot of money. He was very influential in promoting Prohibition and he’s credited for the role he played in bringing about the 18th Amendment in 1919 that prohibited alcohol.
The commie plot belief never did fade away. It resurfaced time and again in political groups like the John Birch Society. Ultimately it’s not just black or brown people who get targeted in a drug war. Teenage rebels of any color who possess enough intellect to penetrate government anti-drug propaganda are also caught up in the tragedy of a forbidden fruit scam aimed at quelling rebellion that targets government corruption and deceit. Despots, authoritarians and oligarchs have many reasons to worship at the altar of the drug war.
In the end game, anyone facing illicit drug charges in a sanctimonious small-town court room foisted upon them by incompetent bureaucrats teetering on the failure of empire must choose to select a jury made up of nones.
The nones are compatriots who can form a jury of true peers. According to a recent Pew Poll, only 36 percent of the most religious of Americans favor both medicinal and recreational marijuana, while the least religious favor it by 76 percent. White evangelicals stood out as the major group opposing cannabis in all its forms. Not surprisingly, white evangelicalism has a chronic race problem that among other things helps make it the most disliked religious group in the US. There is a solution. When selecting a jury, just say none to prohibitionists.
Interesting comment and analysis as always.
Mom tried to get me to attend church regularly. Southern Baptist and Mormon attemps were made. Thought they were both batshit crazy.
‘The African Roots of Marijuana’ by Chris S. Duvall (Duke University Press) might shed some light on the use of religion by the rich and powerful. And this book also highlights how real-world data in Africa doesn’t correlate with previous histories/studies of the people in those regions since said studies were influenced by specific narratives controlled by Islam, Christianity, Colonialism, Slavery, World Wars, oil, Communism, India (South East Africa), etc. And the notion that Africa had long used cannabis as not only an intoxicant, but hemp farming as well. Whereas the Islamic/European world viewed eating hash as a delicacy due to the recipe and the time it took to make it, but below the Sahara, eating cannabis wasn’t practiced as much, but smoking it was, which was deemed ‘backwards’ by those who ate hashish.
Happy Holiday’s
OT… ran across this tonite, from 1961, One Step Beyond: The Sacred Mushroom
Anthrax toxin can block pain receptors in an animal study that points to alternatives to opioids in pain control:
Psilocybin safety is demonstrated in a study at King’s College London:
Pfizer, Roche, AstraZeneca and J&J face newly revived lawsuit claiming they funded terrorism in Iraq
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/appeals-court-revives-lawsuit-against-pfizer-roche-astrazeneca-and-johnson-johnson-claims
from WSU in Pullman, WA, where I spend my spring and summers these days:
An uneasy interaction: WSU researchers say cannabinoids are found to interfere with how medications metabolize in the body
Hemp compounds can stop COVID-19 virus from entering human cells:
Delta 8 THC effects and its popularity are surveyed:
A newly developed opioid molecule is safer for use in pain relief: