Opioid Companies Lobby Against Medical Marijuana

[workinclasszero]

Opioid Companies Lobby Against Medical Marijuana
09/12/2016 12:16 pm ET Allen Frances Professor Emeritus, Duke University

The exponential growth of addiction to prescription opioids offers a classic example of selfish corporate greed swamping any vestige of corporate conscience.

The Pharma drug pushers are attempting to protect their blood money profits by blocking fair competition from much safer and much cheaper medical marijuana. As usual, Pharma displays great loyalty to its executives, its shareholders, and its subservient politicians, while displaying a shameful disregard for the lives of its customers and the welfare of our society.

Drug cartels are rightly reviled. But drug companies are now more deadly and only marginally less ruthless.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/opioid-companies-lobby-ag_b_11287182.html

[skylucy]

1. Yep. Pretty obvious what is going on here.

[Aristus]

2. I fight them every day in clinic.

Unless an opioid medication is absolutely essential in the treatment of a patient, I refuse to prescribe them.

I just finished with a patient with chronic knee pain. He doesn't like pharmaceuticals. He vapes marijuana instead and says it works very well. I told him: "Fine by me."

[Coventina]

3. While I am fully in support of medical marijuana, I also think there is an absolutely INSANE

crusade against the medical use of opioids right now.

As some of you might remember, a few months ago I had major abdominal surgery, and it was like pulling teeth to get the pain relief I needed after being cut from sternum to groin and having my innards all rearranged.

I'm not saying I support the drug companies. I think they are greedy monsters. I just think EVERY patient deserves to get the pain relief THEY NEED, whatever form that happens to take.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. I agree 100%. We're supposed to let people with bone cancer suffer in agony because someone might

catch an unauthorized buzz.

Still, marijuana needs to be legal, regulated, and taxed- not just for medical use, but for adults period.

But beyond that, we have this crazy situation where there is this demand to "clamp down" on the "prescription med crisis", which drives pain patients to seek relief from the black market, with predictable results.

You end up with the situation like Richard Paey, the wheelchair-bound Florida man sentenced to 25 years in prison for managing his own spinal pain, because power-crazed prosecutors and cops decided he was taking "too many pills".

Everyone who needs it should have access to the relief they deserve. Period. If people have problems or addiction, offer treatment on demand; and take hard drug abuse out of the hands of gravy-train invested drug warriors and treat it as a health matter.

[awoke_in_2003]

5. Agreed

Opioids help my wife's chronic pain, but I wish it were legal for her to at least be allowed to try marijuana. It might not work in every case, but neither do opioids.

[TheFrenchRazor]

7. yep. nt

[Crunchy Frog]

8. Totally agree on that.

And now they're banning kratom, which many, many people have been using to effectively control chronic pain, and even using to get off and stay off of hard drugs and alcohol.

They seem to want to drive as many people as possible onto black market narcotics.

The DEA needs to be disbanded.

[Strelnikov_]

6. In states w/ legal/Medical MJ, Opioid OD's drop by 25%

That is the reason. They are making a fortune on black market usage. If MJ is readily available, a percentage of the addictive personality types turn to MJ.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2016/05/study-links-medical-marijuana-dispensaries-to-reduced-mortality-opioid-overdose

The most striking finding was that legally protected marijuana dispensaries (LMDs) were associated with lower rates of dependence on prescription opioids, and deaths due to opioid overdose, than would have been expected based on prior trends.

. . .

Their analysis revealed that states with LMDs had lower opioid-overdose mortality rates and fewer admissions to treatment for opioid addiction than they would have had without the dispensaries. The estimated sizes of the reductions were 16 to 31 percent in mortality due to prescription opioid overdoses, and 28 to 35 percent in admissions for treatment of opioid addiction. This latter reduction was steeper, up to 53 percent, among patients who entered treatment independently of the criminal justice system.