ADDICTION OFTEN BEGINS WITH A BEAUTIFUL BOY OR GIRL
NOVEMBER 12, 2018 By Dr. Robert DuPont in StatNews
In the American mind, drug addiction happens only to people “born under a bad sign.” That’s just not true. Worse, it implies that success in life protects individuals from addiction. Throughout my 50-year career working on drug abuse prevention and treatment, I’ve often seen drug addiction befall every kind of person.
That’s one reason I have been urging people to see “Beautiful Boy,” a new film about the relationship between a good father and his good son as the teenager dives into addiction. The film is based on a pair of best-selling books: “Beautiful Boy,” which tells the story from the father’s perspective, and “Tweak,” which tells it from the son’s.
Ninety percent of adult substance use disorders begin in adolescence because of the unique vulnerability of the adolescent brain to addiction. This movie is a cautionary story for teens and families. Another reason I am recommending the movie (and the books) is their riveting and relentless portrayal of how addiction hijacks the brain.
Love of parents not a match for addiction
The film shows the limits of treatment and family love in confronting the awesome and tenacious power of addiction. The movie does not let the viewer stray from that horrifying descent into this modern hell. It brutally and relentlessly portrays the chemical slavery that is addiction and the sustained helplessness of both father and son as they struggle to escape addiction’s iron grip year after devastating year.
For more http://www.poppot.org/2018/11/12/addiction-often-begins-with-a-beautiful-boy-or-girl/
The Marijuana Conundrum in North America — A recognized deficiency: Inadequate protective protocols
An evaluation of risk applied to marijuana products for recreational or medical purposes concludes that advanced mitigation strategies and new protective delivery protocols are necessary to adequately protect the public from harm. In Canada a controlled distribution program is in place called the RevAid®.1,2 This program assures consumers are monitored to prevent or minimize major side effects and or reactions. Under this program only prescribers and pharmacists who are registered or patients who are enrolled and who have agreed to meet all the conditions of the program are given access to these drugs.
The Marijuana Conundrum in North America Oct2018
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Cannabis users and growers still turning to black market
November 16, 2018 By DATAC
As the legalization of cannabis settles in, coming up on the one month mark, there are many challenges which have arisen in the legal sales arena. There have been issues across the country with the legal dispensaries, either online (ON) or store fronts (NB, QC) running out of product and experiencing website glitches. These bumps in the road for legal sales have meant that many recreational and medicinal users are turning to the black market to obtain their products.
Black market filling the holes
The black market for cannabis sales obviously existed prior to the legalization of cannabis last month, and just this fact alone means that they have a head start in sales. Many users, medicinal and recreational, are going to be hard to bring around to purchasing from legal sources. There are two main reasons for this, the first being that the legal sites (storefronts or online stores) have been running out since they opened their doors. Some have completely run out of all products, and have had to close their doors, while others are simply at very low stock and/or long wait times to obtain the product as things are on backorder.
As well as running out of products there are numerous products which will not be available legally until next year, such as edibles, which includes such things as cannabis-infused foods (from cakes to candies) as well as drinks. Cannabis concentrates are another product which will not be available via legal dispensaries until next year. The black market will have a stronghold on all of these, still not purchasable cannabis products, for at least a year, which also means buyers keeping their relationships with their illegal dispensers.
The second reason for a user choosing the black market is price. Particularly for those users who were already set up with a place to purchase, prior to legalization, deciding now to pay much more for the same thing they can already get, is a hard sell. There is variation from province to province with the cost of product from stores versus street, but the prices in stores can be up to $15 a gram with the average price on the street ranging from about $5 (Alberta) to around $7 (Ontario). It also seems that because the prices are high on the legal market it may have led to a drop in prices in the black market.
For complete article https://datac.ca/cannabis-users-and-growers-still-turning-to-black-market/
LEGALIZATION WINS IN MICHIGAN; QUESTIONABLE ETHICS
midterm marijuana votes, advocates say
This headline, and the story it describes in Michigan, raises two questions:
- Is it ethical for TV stations to pull political ads off the air?
- Is it ethical for the ads’ opponents to set up their own “fact-checking” committee as the basis for complaining that the ads are inaccurate?
Will Common Cause intervene?
Marijuana Moment said the ad was pulled for “incorrectly claiming that the initiative would allow for ‘unlimited potency’ cannabis products.” If that is not true, than the industry will allow regulators to cap the potency at 16% THC, something that hasn’t been allowed in other states. When Coloradans supported a cap, the marijuana companies bought off the authorized to petition in 2016. Good luck Michigan.
The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol created a ballot initiative in Michigan to legalize marijuana for “recreational” use. Marijuana Policy Project, New Approach PAC, and the Drug Policy Alliance, all national organizations, make up the coalition. The out-of-state groups sponsored every single initiative to legalize marijuana for either medical or “recreational” use. Backed by billionaires, they raise lots of money to legalize pot, and leave each state’s taxpayers to clean up their mess.
They have succeeded in convincing Americans that marijuana is a “medicine” that cures or relieves some 65 different conditions. They tell teens it is “not addictive,” is “safer than alcohol,” along other of “facts” that are lies.
So, it is no small irony that the Coalition has set itself up as a reliable “fact” checker to attack Michigan citizens. The opposition was only trying to prevent the legalization of an addictive, harmful drug in their state.
A sad time for Michigan
Did the subterfuge work? Yep. Michigan passed legalization by a vote of 2,346,713 to 1,851,679 (55.9% vs 44.1%).
Michigan already has a stoned driver problem, more than most states. Since law enforcement does not have good detection methods, this problem will only get worse with legalization.
Read Marijuana Moment article here.
For an in-depth report on how the legalization movement has unfolded, read “Tracking the Money That’s Legalizing Marijuana and Why It Matters” here:
RICHARD KIRK INTERVIEW CONFIRMS MARIJUANA AS UNSAFE SWAP FOR OPIATES
NOVEMBER 15, 2018 Bottom of Form
Three months after Colorado opened marijuana stores, Richard Kirk shot and killed his wife while she was on the phone with 911. On November 12, Lori Gliha, an investigative journalist from the news magazine program Insight with John Ferruggia interviewed him on Rocky Mountain PBS. Most viewers who watched the jailhouse interview agree that he wouldn’t have killed his wife had he not eaten the marijuana edible.
The State of Colorado deserves a good portion of the blame for the death of Kristine Kirk.
The program revealed Richard Kirk’s chronic back pain and addiction to opiate pain pills. One day, out of opioids, he stopped at the marijuana dispensary near his home. When the edible containing 100 mg THC didn’t resolve the pain within an hour, he tried more. Then Kristine Kirk called 911 to report his hallucinations and threat of violence in response to marijuana edibles. It was only 3-1/2 months after dispensaries opened in Colorado, and regulations were inadequate at the time.
A few weeks earlier, Levy Thamba, an exchange student from the Democratic Republic of Congo, became psychotic from a marijuana cookie, jumped off of a hotel balcony and died. After these two deaths, Colorado made the regulations tougher. The following year, another young man, Luke Goodman, shot himself after eating marijuana edibles.
It’s shocking that Kirk wasn’t given an involuntary manslaughter sentence instead of a murder conviction. Kirk knows he was psychotic and never would have done it had he not used the marijuana. There is a wealth of scientific data supporting what happened to him. A jury convicted him and he was sentenced to 30 years in jail.
Insights from the Investigation on PBS
Watch the entire Rocky Mountain PBS interview here.
The two scientists interviewed made key statements towards the end of what they had to say: Dr. Kari Franson, the clinical pharmacologist, maintained that we might have to accept that THC and the gastrointestinal system just don’t belong together and that interaction is too variable to be able to predict what will happen.
Dr. Andrew Monte stated that edibles should not be on the recreational market. He reported 2,600 ER visits connected to marijuana at UC Health University of Colorado Hospital over the past 5 years. Most of these hospital visits involve edibles. However, marijuana proponents have a view of self-entitlement which allow them to rationalize that if they don’t have these bad reactions, then why should it matter if others do? For complete story Cannabis-Edibles-Carnage
The tide is turning: Big Pharma billionaire arrested, charged with conspiracy and bribery of doctors
By Dr. Cheryl Strayed October 28, 2018
I almost never thought I’d see the day when a Big Pharma founder and owner was finally arrested for running a criminal drug cartel, but that day has arrived.
“Federal authorities arrested the billionaire founder and owner of Insys Therapeutics Thursday on charges of bribing doctors and pain clinics into prescribing the company’s fentanyl product to their patients,” reports the Daily Caller News Foundation, one of the best sources of real journalism in America today.
Addictive drugs that include opioids, we now know, are claiming over 64,000 lives a year in the United States alone.
From the DCNF:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged John Kapoor, 74, and seven other current and former executives at the pharmaceutical company with racketeering for a leading a national conspiracy through bribery and fraud to coerce the illegal distribution of the company’s fentanyl spray, which is intended for use as a pain killer by cancer patients. The company’s stock prices fell more than 20 percent following the arrests, according to the New York Post.
Kapoor stepped down as the company’s CEO in January amid ongoing federal probes into their Subsys product, a pain-relieving spray that contains fentanyl, a highly-addictive synthetic opioid. Fentanyl is more than 50 times stronger than morphine, and ingesting just two milligrams is enough to cause an adult to fatally overdose.
The series of arrests came just hours after President Donald Trump officially declared the country’s opioid epidemic a national emergency. Drug overdoses led to 64,070 deaths in 2016, which is more than the amount of American lives lost in the entire Vietnam War.
As the opioid crisis has developed, more and more states have begun holding doctors and opioid manufacturers accountable for over-prescribing and over-producing the highly-addictive painkillers.
“We will be bringing some major lawsuits against people and companies that are hurting our people,” Trump said Thursday. He also spoke about a program similar to Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” initiative.
“More than 20,000 Americans died of synthetic opioid overdoses last year, and millions are addicted to opioids. And yet some medical professionals would rather take advantage of the addicts than try to help them,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “This Justice Department will not tolerate this. We will hold accountable anyone — from street dealers to corporate executives – who illegally contributes to this nationwide epidemic. And under the leadership of President Trump, we are fully committed to defeating this threat to the American people.
For complete article http://urhealthinfo.com/2018/10/28/the-tide-is-turning-big-pharma-billionaire-arrested-charged-with-conspiracy-and-bribery-of-doctors/
