WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA TO TREAT THE ADDICTION EPIDEMIC?

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The Marijuana Policy Project promotes their drug as a substitute for opiate pain pills.  Like the worst offenders in the opiate industry, the cannabis lobby follows an addiction-for-profit business model. Their master plan needs 80% of the demand to be met by 20% of the users.  Science shows no evidence for using medical marijuana as a substitute for pain pills.

Governor David Ige of Hawaii wisely refused to cave to lobbyists, and he vetoed a measure that would have allowed medical marijuana to treat opiate addiction.

A large-scale, major study from Australia demonstrates that cannabis doesn’t work as a substitute for opiate pills in instances of chronic, non-cancer pain.  The study came out in July, 2018 and it supports the findings of an American study published in September, 2017.

The three-year research  study by Olfson, Wall et. al., Cannabis use and the Risk of Prescription Opioid Use Disorder, 2018, concluded: “Cannabis use appears to increase rather than decrease the risk of developing nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid use disorder.”   More than a year ago, Dr. Ken Finn, professional advisorto Parents Opposed to Pot, published Current Research on Marijuana in Pain is lacking.

It seems we should NOT be encouraging “medical” marijuana use if our goal is to stop  addiction. Theodore Caputi and Keith Humphreys recently published in the Journal of Addiction: Medical marijuana users are more likely to use prescription drugs medically and nonmedically.  They concluded: “Medical marijuana users should be a target population in efforts to combat nonmedical prescription drug use.”   See our page on Marijuana vs. Pain Pills.

The Canadian Family Physicians wrote an editorial about Medical Marijuana in February, 2018, p. 87, after devoting an entire issue to the journal on medical marijuana.  Like the NAS report in the United States, the Canadian physicians reviewed hundreds of relevant studies. In the editorial, they concluded:

“Evidence indicates the most consistent effects of medical cannabinoids are adverse events.  A variety of adverse events have a greater magnitude of effect than the potential benefits for the conditions targeted.

Read the Clinical Conundrum of Medical Marijuana for more information. Dr. Ken Finn treats pain patients at of Springs Rehab in Colorado Springs.  He advises that there are more than 600 drug interactions with medical marijuana.   Are any medical marijuana dispensaries giving these warnings?  Another Colorado doctor who advocates marijuana for pain recently stated that marijuana edibles and concentrates should be banned.

For complete article http://www.poppot.org/2018/08/18/slim-evidence-medical-marijuana-for-opiates/

Thinking About Dropping Marijuana From Your Drug Test?

Some employers may be thinking about dropping marijuana from their drug testing panel as a way to address legalization. Learn about what to consider before making any changes to your drug-free workplace program in a short video produced by our friends at Drug Free Business.

https://youtu.be/ExvaVePrKYs

Thinking About Dropping Marijuana From Your Drug Test?

HIGHLY TOXIC CANNABIS IN MASS?

GLOBAL NEWS CENTRE

Contaminated flower may be getting patients and employees sick

Anne Hassel had high hopes for a new career when she applied for a job serving medical marijuana patients at New England Treatment Access (NETA), a registered medical dispensary (RMD) in Massachusetts. A licensed physical therapist, she believes in the efficacy of cannabis and says that she appreciated how NETA was presented “as having a new business paradigm, one of worker input and responsive management.”

That was then. Now, nearly a year after she quit working at NETA and filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) claiming she was regularly exposed to mold via cannabis flower, Hassel mockingly says NETA stands for “Never Ethically Treating Anybody.”

“Mold was an issue at both [NETA’s] Franklin cultivation center and the Northampton dispensary,” Hassel wrote in her complaint to OSHA. The former budtender reported that she “observed powered mildew flower” while trimming cannabis in 2016 in Franklin but was instructed by a supervisor to “cut around it.” She also says that management dunked “marijuana flower into a hydrogen peroxide solution to treat the mold.”

In response to a request for comment, a NETA spokesperson wrote, “Our product is tested for mold, yeast, bacterial and other biological pathogens, by independent laboratories… No product is delivered to the dispensaries that has not passed state testing protocols.” Regarding hydrogen peroxide, the spokesperson offered information that was previously unavailable in the company’s response to regulators: “NETA has been open and public about our use. The [response to Hassel’s OSHA complaint] pertained to our Northampton RMD and would be misapplied when discussing our harvest practices.”

For complete story http://www.globalnewscentre.com/highly-toxic-cannabis-in-mass/#sthash.hr45lBso.dpbs%20https://digboston.com/is-there-moldy-cannabis-in-mass/

International Overdose Day 2018 — Prevent Don’t Promote

This day of acknowledgement and focus around illicit drug overdose issues, should be — must be — about the prevention, repair and/or cessation of all that leads to an overdose episode, not merely the survival of it! …

It is important to reiterate that, a very real danger of this emerging narrative, is that it only entrenches victimhood and habit in unaccountable modes, ensuring personal agency and capacity are further deprived from the self, family and community harming individual! …

Trauma must be properly defined, properly managed and recovery from cause and symptom inexorably perused with best-practice mechanisms at all levels. Best-practice that precludes all self-medicating/harming processes, as they are all counterproductive in the restorative journey…

It’s also important to delineate between uptake of Heroin and the uptake of other illicit drugs. Our organisations connections in the sector have revealed that the majority of those ‘engaging’ directly with heroin were those who had suffered sexual abuse of some kind, particularly when young. However, we must be careful not to fall for the emotional overcategorization of triggers, prompts and ‘incentives’ for the far wider uptake of illicit drugs.

For complete article go to International Overdose Awareness Day 2018

Fight Drug Abuse, Don’t Subsidize It

Americans struggling with addiction need treatment and reduced access to deadly drugs. They do not need a taxpayer-sponsored haven to shoot up.

Almost 64,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, a shocking 54 percent increase since 2012. Dangerous opioids such as heroin and fentanyl contributed to two-thirds of the deaths. This killer knows no geographic, socioeconomic or age limits. It strikes city dwellers and Midwestern farmers, Hollywood celebrities and homeless veterans, grandparents and teenagers.

Remarkably, law enforcement efforts actually declined while deaths were on the rise. Federal drug prosecutions fell by 23 percent from 2011 to 2016, and the median drug sentence doled out to drug traffickers decreased by 20 percent from 2009 to 2016.

The Trump administration is working to reverse those trends. Prosecutions of drug traffickers are on the rise, and the surge in overdose deaths is slowing.

Unfortunately, some cities and counties are considering sponsoring centers where drug users can abuse dangerous illegal drugs with government help. Advocates euphemistically call them “safe injection sites,” but they are very dangerous and would only make the opioid crisis worse.

These centers would be modeled on those operating in Canada and some European countries. They invite visitors to use heroin, fentanyl and other deadly drugs without fear of arrest. The policy is “B.Y.O.D.” – bring your own drugs – but staff members help people abuse drugs by providing needles and stand ready to resuscitate addicts who overdose.

Aug. 27, 2018 By Rod J. Rosenstein — deputy attorney general of the United States. For complete article go to New York Times Opinion — Shooting Galleries

With cannabis coming to the workplace, what constitutes ‘impairment’?

ANDREW AU AUGUST 10, 2018  President, Intercept Group

Just as digital transformation has disrupted legacy business models, cannabis legalization will fundamentally challenge workplace policies.

On Oct. 17, recreational marijuana will officially become legal in Canada. According to a recent study conducted by Deloitte, 22 per cent of the Canadian adult population consumes recreational cannabis at least occasionally, and a further 17 per cent show some willingness to try it.

When we look at the single largest generation in the work force — millennials born between 1980 and 2000 — we see even higher receptivity. A national millennial study conducted by Intercept revealed that nearly three-quarters of respondents agree with the legalization of cannabis. And, they’re eager to try a variety of formats, including marijuana-infused baked food (52 per cent), skin lotions (49 per cent), candy (40 per cent) and vapour (38 per cent). Interestingly, while the majority of millennials agree with legalization, they also have concerns. Nearly 40 per cent believe it may lead to poorer performance at work.

Like it or not, cannabis consumption is about to spike. The total number of Canadians who’ve already registered for medical marijuana use exceeded 270,000 in December, 2017, according to Health Canada.

If you’re concerned about the implication of cannabis legalization, you’re in good company. In a report by the Conference Board of Canada, more than half of Canadian employers expressed concern about the implications of legalized marijuana on the workplace.

Cannabis will force company leaders to rethink existing workplace policies and implement new ones to ensure they’re offering a safe, inclusive and productive environment.

For complete article https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/cannabis/article-with-cannabis-coming-to-the-workplace-what-constitutes-impairment/

Dear friend,

LIFE OR DEATH AFTER A NON-FATAL DRUG OVERDOSE

Research studies (see Stoové et al, 2009) have long associated surviving a drug overdose with the increased likelihood of a future non-fatal or fatal drug overdose. In a 2017 Massachusetts study of opioid overdoses, 10% of those who survived died within the next year from a drug overdose or other causes. In one of the most rigorous U.S. follow-up studies, Dr. Mark Olfson and colleagues compared the mortality rates of people who had survived a non-fatal opioid overdose to demographically matched members of the general U.S. population. They found that those who survived an opioid overdose died in the next year at 24 times the mortality rate of those in the general population, with most deaths attributed to drug-related diseases, subsequent overdose, circulatory disease, respiratory disease, cancer, HIV, viral hepatitis, and suicide. In another study that might be christened an investigation into lost opportunities, Dr. Linn Gjersing and colleagues found in a retrospective analysis of people who died of a drug overdose that 61% had previously sought emergency medical care and that 18% were frequent users of emergency medical services. The reasons for seeking past emergency care included somatic complaints (48%), injury (44%), alcohol and other drug-related medical problems (32%), and drug overdose (26%).

For complete article http://www.williamwhitepapers.com/blog/2018/08/life-or-death-after-a-non-fatal-drug-overdose.html

This is just one of the reasons why it is vital to divert drug users into recovery programs, not simply enable and equip them to continue self-harming with substances — These drug use endorsing mechanisms only increase the risk of harm that the same so-called ‘harm reduction’ strategies are supposed to lessen! (D.I. Comment)

TWO FRIENDS: QUITTING POT SENT ME IN ANOTHER DIRECTION

AUGUST 2018

(Read part 1) This is how two friends changed forever.  I was 19, with spotty employment, working low level part-time jobs. Sometimes I was “involuntarily terminated” from jobs because of poor attendance or petty theft. I did not understand at the time the awful effects that near daily use of marijuana was exerting on me. I had become a different person.

At age 19, I was diagnosed with clinical depression by a psychiatrist. Looking back from the much wiser perspective of mature man, I am absolutely certain that my depression was triggered directly by my regular cannabis use.

I had wanted to join the U.S. Navy immediately after high school because I’d wanted to “see the world.” But a neighborhood guy, another doper and USN veteran with a bad conduct discharge, had talked me out of it. He told me I’d most likely get involved with hard drugs if I did. I took his advice because I was not mentally strong enough to make decisions and stand on my own two feet. Cannabis had turned my mind into mush.

For complete story http://www.poppot.org/2018/08/13/two-friends-meet-go-different-directions/