Drug ODs up, deaths down | New Hampshire
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Category: Drugs & Drink,
The US Coast Guard is operating floating prisons in the Pacific Ocean, outside US legal protections | Public Radio International
Jeezus Kerresyst…. Apparently we don’t have to worry about monsters.
We are the monsters.
Turning to Kratom For Opioid Withdrawal
Eric Mayhew Jr. wanted to break his more than decade-long addiction to opioids — one that started when his doctor prescribed them for knee pain.
…When it comes to withdrawing from opioids, medical experts and addiction counselors agree that you will be far more successful with support than trying it alone. But traditional treatment can be expensive and time-consuming, if it’s even available. Many treatment centers have long waitlists.
…A study published in July 2017 found kratom is used for self-treatment of pain, mood disorders, and withdrawal symptoms that come with prescription opioid use. It was found to have few negative effects, including nausea and constipation, but generally only at high doses or when taken frequently.
…“I think the cool thing about it is this guy went from injection drug use to nothing, and all he had was a runny nose,” [director of academic development in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Edward W.]Boyer says. “It’s similar to something like methadone or any other opioid, but what is different is withdrawal from those substances is far more involved.”
People who use kratom typically don’t have withdrawals, says McCurdy, the University of Florida professor.
“That it helps them stop their cravings for going back to opioids and helps them with their mood. They feel good. They mention that they aren’t lazy like when using opioid prescriptions or addicted to opioids. They feel more productive and are doing things they love again, returning to a normal lifestyle.”
McCurdy’s research on mice shows kratom has a clear potential to treat opioid withdrawal with few side effects.
“It is probably addictive, but its addictive equivalent is something like coffee, which isn’t surprising because the leaf is in the coffee family,” McCurdy says. “We firmly believe that it will be very good for treating opioid withdrawal.”
…FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, says people who use medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid addiction cut their risk of death from all causes in half.
Turning to Kratom For Opioid Withdrawal
What’s the hurry to classify Schedule I? Is someone about to lose money over it?
Drug Labs Used By The Taliban In Afghanistan Are Now A U.S. Target
The United Nations found in a survey released last week that opium production has nearly doubled since 2016. Poppy cultivation has increased by 63 percent. Afghanistan is the world’s main cultivator of the poppy, from which heroin and opium are made.
Drug Labs Used By The Taliban In Afghanistan Are Now A U.S. Target After Trump Authorizes Strikes
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How Vets And Doctors Get Around The VA’s Medical Marijuana Policy
“While on federal property in a federal rehab program, [veterans] can be allowed to use a federally illegal substance,” Fruchter told Task & Purpose by phone. “On a patient-doctor level, if this is what you want, it’s doable.” Through a combination of persistence, vague regulations, and an open-minded medical team, Fruchter had stumbled upon an unusual loophole in the VA’s approach to medical marijuana — one that is putting individual VA clinics at odds with the department’s publicly stated policy.
How Vets And Doctors Get Around The VA’s Medical Marijuana Policy
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Native Americans, among the most harmed by the opioid epidemic, are often left out of conversation
Deaths rose by more than 500 percent among Native Americans and native Alaskans.
Jeezus
There’s A Glaring Hole In Trump’s Plan To Fight Opioid Addiction
There’s A Glaring Hole In Trump’s Plan To Fight Opioid AddictionHe’s not directing any new funding to it. In fact, he wants to cut spending.
There’s A Glaring Hole In Trump’s Plan To Fight Opioid Addiction | HuffPost
Of course.
Drug company founder John Kapoor arrested for alleged opioid scheme
Federal agents arrested the founder of a major drug company in an early-morning raid Thursday on charges stemming from an alleged scheme to get doctors to prescribe a powerful opioid to patients who don’t need it.
Drug company founder John Kapoor arrested for alleged opioid scheme – CBS News
Note to lawmakers: Stopping the opioid crisis isn’t about education and it certainly isn’t about doubling down on addiction treatments with high rates of recidivism. If you want to stop something, go after the source of the problem.
The Real Johnny Appleseed Brought Apples—and Booze—to the American Frontier
Starting in 1792, the Ohio Company of Associates made a deal with potential settlers: anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on the wilderness beyond Ohio’s first permanent settlement would be granted 100 acres of land. To prove their homesteads to be permanent, settlers were required to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees in three years, since an average apple tree took roughly ten years to bear fruit.
Ever the savvy businessman, Chapman realized that if he could do the difficult work of planting these orchards, he could turn them around for profit to incoming frontiersmen. Wandering from Pennsylvania to Illinois, Chapman would advance just ahead of settlers, cultivating orchards that he would sell them when they arrived, and then head to more undeveloped land. Like the caricature that has survived to modern day, Chapman really did tote a bag full of apple seeds. As a member of the Swedenborgian Church, whose belief system explicitly forbade grafting (which they believed caused plants to suffer), Chapman planted all of his orchards from seed, meaning his apples were, for the most part, unfit for eating.
It wasn’t that Chapman—or the frontier settlers—didn’t have the knowledge necessary for grafting, but like New Englanders, they found that their effort was better spent planting apples for drinking, not for eating. Apple cider provided those on the frontier with a safe, stable source of drink, and in a time and place where water could be full of dangerous bacteria, cider could be imbibed without worry. Cider was a huge part of frontier life, which Howard Means, author of Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story, describes as being lived “through an alcoholic haze.”
…During Prohibition, apple trees that produced sour, bitter apples used for cider were often chopped down by FBI agents, effectively erasing cider, along with Chapman’s true history, from American life
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SJC decides field sobriety tests not scientific evidence for pot
The court decided there is currently no reliable, scientific test for marijuana impairment.
SJC decides field sobriety tests not scientific evidence for pot
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Seven Days of Heroin – Cincinnati.com
The Enquirer sent 60 journalists to cover an ordinary week in this extraordinary time. This is what an epidemic looks like.
Seven Days of Heroin – Cincinnati.com
Jeezus….
Study linking cardiovascular death and marijuana far from conclusive
Researchers found a high incidence of cardiovascular death among marijuana users but the study has limits. Authors said more research is needed.
…It also assumed that those who said they had used marijuana in 2005 continued to do so, and it assumed that users largely smoked their pot and didn’t consume it in other ways, such as by eating marijuana-laced brownies.
Those caveats limit the study’s validity, said Dr. Vinay Prasad, associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and an expert on the design and results of medical studies.
“It does not prove that if you choose to use marijuana you are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease,” Prasad said in an email. “I think the major limit of the study is that there may be unobserved differences between the people who used and admitted to using marijuana during the years of this study, and cardiovascular outcomes that the researchers did not adjust for. In fact, that is likely.”
Study linking cardiovascular death and marijuana far from conclusive | OregonLive.com
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US won’t declare opioid emergency, Price says
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump has no immediate plans to declare the nation’s opioid epidemic a public health emergency, a decision that flies in the face of the key recommendation by the President’s bipartisan opioid commission.
US won’t declare opioid emergency, Price says – CNN
The Cheeto ignores the input of people who know more than he does? Shocking!
errrr, um, not.
Booker introduces bill to legalize marijuana nationwide
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker is proposing a far-reaching bill that would both legalize marijuana at the federal level and encourage states to legalize it locally through incentives.
…The bill would legalize marijuana at the federal level and withhold federal money for building jails and prisons, along with other funds, from states whose cannabis laws are shown to disproportionately incarcerate minorities.
Under the legislation, federal convictions for marijuana use and possession would be expunged and prisoners serving time for a marijuana offense would be entitled to a sentencing hearing.
Those “aggrieved” by a disproportionate arrest or imprisonment rate would be able to sue, according to the bill. And a Community Reinvestment Fund would be established to “reinvest in communities most affected by the war on drugs” for everything from re-entry programs to public libraries.
Booker introduces bill to legalize marijuana nationwide
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Trump called New Hampshire a ‘drug-infested den’
One of the best ways to determine something’s political impact is to imagine it in a TV ad. “President Trump thinks your state is a drug-infested den.” Yeah, ouch.
Sheriff In Heart Of Ohio’s Opioid Epidemic Refuses To Carry Overdose Reversal Drug
More than 150 people died of heroin- or fentanyl-related overdoses in Butler County last year.
Sheriff In Heart Of Ohio’s Opioid Epidemic Refuses To Carry Overdose Reversal Drug | HuffPost
Murderous monster.
Protect and serve much, asshat? Apparently not. Some law enforcement officers are merely taking up oxygen that the rest of us could put to better use.
Jeff Sessions personally asked Congress to let him prosecute medical marijuana providers – The Washington Post
Sessions is asking congressional leaders to undo federal medical marijuana protections that have been in place since 2014.
…The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent certain states “from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”
…Sessions’s citing of a “historic drug epidemic” to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United States.
…Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R.-Calif.) said that “Mr. Sessions stands athwart an overwhelming majority of Americans and even, sadly, against veterans and other suffering Americans who we now know conclusively are helped dramatically by medical marijuana.”
Trump WH has no use for reality, the plough ahead no matter how bone-headed and wrong-headed the scheme.
Pigeon ‘caught with backpack of drugs’
A pocket holding 178 pills was strapped to the bird which was caught near the Iraq border – report.
Pigeon ‘caught with backpack of drugs’ – BBC News
OK, that is just funny.
Why is Sessions doubling down on a failed drug war?
We already know what happens when prosecutors focus on mandatory minimums and severe sentences: we end up in a nation with the highest incarceration rate and an ongoing drug crisis that belies the aggressiveness of the War on Drugs.
We already know that focusing on harm reduction, prevention, and treatment is more effective than focusing on long sentences and jail time. Yet, Sessions is intent on institutionalizing his obsession with incarceration, which will only sink us further into this crisis.
A recent study found that conservative Americans overwhelmingly support criminal justice reform and practices that focus on rehabilitation and prevention.
Why is Sessions doubling down on a failed drug war? | TheHill
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Sessions to Toughen Rules on Prosecuting Drug Crimes
In contrast to Mr. Sessions’s views on drug crimes, the Obama administration pushed for more lenient and flexible sentencing laws and presided over the first decline in the federal prison population in a generation.
…Mr. Holder has said his policies were intended to reduce taxpayer spending on prisons and other public safety costs and to ease inequities in the justice system by scrutinizing the circumstances of each case rather than applying one-size-fits-all punishments of the toughest variety.
Mr. Sessions has argued that the Obama administration’s less aggressive approach toward prosecuting drug cases has inspired other crimes.
…Should Mr. Sessions push for a uniformly strict posture in prosecuting drug crimes, it would mark a significant shift in tone.
“Many advocates think there are too many mandatory minimums, and that federal charging in general is still too harsh, even after the shift in policy under Holder,” Ms. Starr said. “But this isn’t especially surprising given what we know about the attorney general and the president and their view on criminal justice.”
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Meh, a lot of totally-not-at-all-rooted-in-fact bullshit justifying his actions when Sessions just wants to put more black people in jail.
Substance Abuse Costing New Hampshire Over $2B
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A nonprofit advocacy group says its latest report on the effects of alcohol and drugs on New Hampshire’s economy confirms how the lack of workforce in the substance misuse field has contributed to a public health crisis.
…New Hampshire has one of the highest per capita death rates due to drug overdoses in the nation, with nearly 500 people dying from an overdose last year. The report estimates more than 30,000 people in New Hampshire over the age of 15 abused drugs in 2014.
Report: Substance Abuse Costing New Hampshire Over $2B | New Hampshire News | US News
Considering the fact that this happen on the former governor’s watch, and that she not only willfully passed up multiple opportunities to shift gears from a prosecutorial to a treatment oriented approach to opioid abuse but chose again and again to obstruct anyone suffering from chronic pain from having any other treatment options than the highly addictive opioid prescriptions that serves as the highway to opioid addiction, well…
…Maggie Hassan needs to sit down and shut the hell up.
Jeff Sessions Wants to Kick the War on Drugs into High Gear
Gather ’round, kids.
It is now conventional wisdom that one of the worst mistakes the country ever made was launching its idiotic, wasteful “war”on drugs. In the three decades in which this “war” has been waged, we have lost two generations of African-Americans to the prison system, shaved the Bill of Rights down to a nub, tied the hands of the judiciary, and, finally, made not an appreciable dent in the problem of drug use and drug addiction. We have blessed ourselves with private prisons and militarized police forces, so there is that.
…There was a strong, evolving, and bipartisan consensus that it was time to call a truce on the “war” we were making on our own citizens. The country was getting sensible about marijuana and mandatory minimum sentences at the same time; conservatives abandoned simplistic law ‘n order coding and hopped on the bandwagon of criminal justice reform; in many cases, they took the wheel on it. And, at least rhetorically, the response to the opioid crisis was more reasoned and measured than the response to the crisis of crack cocaine was—and the reasons for that are worth exploring. But nobody wants to, least of all JeffBo. Over the weekend, we learned that this brief, fragile truce had ended.
Jeff Sessions Wants to Kick the War on Drugs into High Gear
Sigh….
Cherokee Nation Sues Walmart, Drug Companies Over Opioids
The Cherokee Nation filed suit against CVS, Walmart and others on April 20 declaring an “opioid epidemic of unprecedented proportions’ in Indian country.
…By ignoring red flags and refusing to monitor the supply chain, contributing to what is known as “drug diversion,” the suit alleges that the effects of opioid addiction has had a devastating human toll on the tribe’s citizens and crushing impact on its resources.
Cherokee Nation Sues Walmart, Drug Companies Over Opioids – Indian Country Media Network
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