Elizabeth Warren Urges CDC To Look At Pot As Potential Fix To Prescription Painkiller Epidemic

[n2doc]

American political leaders around the country are casting about for a policy response to the widespread abuse of opioid painkillers that doesn’t replicate the mistakes of past punitive approaches to drug use.

Now, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has thrown her clout into that push for solutions – and in a way that underscores the injustices of the War on Drugs over the past several decades.

Warren is asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research how medical and recreational marijuana might help alleviate the opioid epidemic. In a letter sent Monday to CDC head Dr. Thomas Friedan, Warren urged the agency to finalize its guidance to physicians on the dos and don’ts of prescribing oxycodone, fentanyl, and other popular drugs in this category.

But she also went further, asking Friedan “to explore every opportunity and tool available to work with states and other federal agencies on ways to tackle the opioid epidemic and collect information about alternative pain relief options.” Those alternatives should include pot, Warren wrote. She went on the ask Friedan to collaborate with other federal health agencies to investigate how medical marijuana is or isn’t working to reduce reliance on highly addictive prescription pills, and to research “the impact of the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana on opioid overdose deaths.”

more
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/02/10/3748383/elizabeth-warren-marijuana-opioid-epidemic/

[Truprogressive85]

1. Now would you look at that

[randys1]

2. Where was all this concern when there was a crack epidemic?

I am glad Warren is doing something, but I cant get over just how different it is that it is a problem not thought of as Black.

[Android3.14]

3. Codeine

About 12 years ago I had a series of abdominal surgeries involving multiple bowel resections that left me with terrible IBS (we are talking 8-12 episodes of diarrhea every day, bleeding, cramping and all the consequences). Eating was like throwing gravel down a corrugated pipe. It wouldn't have bothered me, except somewhere along the line my alimentary canal would add metaphorical bits of barbed wire and glass to the mix, and that was a pain that would never leave.

As an occasional marijuana user, I learned within a year after the last surgery (which was for a perforated bowel and nearly killed me) that a few puffs of a joint would make me feel normal for about 24 hours. I later learned about the antispasmodic effects of weed, worked with my physician and now have Rx marijuana, which allows me to have a normal life.

During the years that my physician helped me deal with this, the hospital where she worked had a policy restricting the prescription of weed. So we tried other solutions. One of those was codeine. The narcotic has the side effect of causing constipation, which was a good thing. Unfortunately the addictive nature of it would mean that I would start taking more and more and more until I was insufferable to my family because coming off of codeine makes a person aggressive and grumpy. Then I would have to go through the horrible withdrawal period and try another solution. The other solution was to eat only once a day, take about 20 fiber capsules before and after each meal. You would think fiber would make it worse, but not at those doses. The fiber would swell in my gut and absorb some of the acids which were eating my insides. This made the transit time slow down just a bit and reduced the bleeding and pain to "manageable" levels. Unfortunately, after doing this for years, I developed adult onset diabetes because I was only eating a single meal a day.

We couldn't go on family trips, couldn't go anywhere that was more than ten minutes away from a bathroom, couldn't sleep through the night. I was dealing with depression, weight loss, anemia and a quality of life that was literally shit.

The point is, eight years ago I started smoking weed regularly illegally and got my medical marijuana card about four years ago. Today I smoke almost every day but use less than 3/4 of an oz each year, and I can eat and live normally. I'm no longer addicted to anything. I'm a small business owner employing four people, member of the chamber of commerce, and I owe it all to medical marijuana.

I don't know what I will do if a Republican goes into office and shuts down the clinic where I buy my weed. I wish the feds would just back off.

[Bohemianwriter]

4. Kicked!

[mimi85]

5. My husband has a med MJ card

and has grown enough the last two years to use his own pot instead of buying it. In California you can grow 6 plants. It's not just the yield, but he so enjoys the gardening part of it. It doesn't really agree with me and I quit eons ago, but he has smoked for about 50 years.

Scientists would be fascinated to study his brain, but I'm not letting him go anywhere soon!

[mimi85]

6. What's the chances?

My reply was posted at 4:20. Got a chuckle out of that!