Study: More Legal Pot = Less Opioid Problem

No shit, Sherlock.  Every Kentuckian with chronic pain who has been self-medicating with illegal marijuana has known this for years.  Big Pharma, which makes billions of dollars every year from getting people addicted to its opioids, and the cops getting billions of dollars every year in war materiel from the War on (some classes of people who use some classes of) Drugs are the ones standing in the way of legal pot.  They, and the legislators they have bought, are condemning law-abiding Kentuckians to excruciating pain or lethal addiction in order to feed their own greed.

From WKYT

NEW YORK (AP) — Can legalizing marijuana fight the problem of opioid addiction and fatal overdoses? Two new studies in the debate suggest it may.

Pot can relieve chronic pain in adults, so it's been proposed as a lower-risk alternative to opioids by advocates for liberalizing marijuana laws. But some research suggests marijuana may encourage opioid use, and so might make the epidemic worse.

The new studies don't directly assess the effect of legalizing marijuana on opioid addiction and overdose deaths. Instead, they find evidence that legalization may reduce the prescribing of opioids. Over-prescribing is considered a key factor in the opioid epidemic.

Both studies were released Monday by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. They examined state laws and statewide levels of opioid prescribing.

Stop Targeting the Wrong People for Opioid Abuse

Visit a nursing home sometime.  Look for the old men and women sitting in their chairs with tears running down their faces. They're not lonely; they're suffering non-stop agony because Kentucky's lethal yet ridiculous KASPER law has taken away their painkillers.

Kevin Drum brings the scientific facts:

The main reason prescriptions went up is that doctors really had been undertreating pain for a long time. And it turns out that the biggest problem with high rates of opioid prescription don’t come from pain patients anyway. Addiction rates among pain patients are actually fairly low: anywhere from 0.1 percent to less than 8 percent, and very few pain patients ever move on to heroin or other drugs. Rather, the biggest part of the problem comes from people who score opioid painkillers elsewhere. And where do they get them? From leftovers sitting around their parents’ medicine chests. From friends. From the black market.

In other words, if we really want to address the opioid epidemic, our best strategy is not to focus all our attention on prescriptions among legitimate pain patients. Nor is it to refight the war on drugs yet again. Instead, we need to:

• Get better at screening people with previous (or current) addictions.
• Prescribe fewer pills after surgeries, but make it easy to get refills. The idea here is to limit the number of leftover pills lying around, but to do it without making things difficult for pain patients.
• Crack down on pill mills and on shipments plainly bound for the black market—but without making doctors live in fear of the DEA knocking on their door if they treat their pain patients properly.
• Get tougher on misleading pharmaceutical marketing.
• Fund much more research on pain management and alternative pain strategies.

This is what President Trump ought to be doing as part of his “public health emergency” over opioid deaths.

The War on Abused Children

Divine Irony:

And Phillippine mass murderer Duterte is proving it with his executions of thousands of addicts.

Gray Lambasts AynRandy on Drug War Funding

Good on Jim Gray, but they're both still missing the point.

No amount of money for programs to deny painkilling drugs to people in chronic pain is ever going to solve the problem of people in chronic pain overdosing on heroin because of programs that deny painkilling drugs to people in chronic pain.

This beyond-stupid insanity is not just counter-productive; it is literally murdering people who just want some relief from constant pain. And the murderer is not a heroin dealer; it's the legislators who think threatening doctors into denying painkilling drugs is going to solve anything.

Meanwhile, the DEA is once again snatching a useful drug away and falsely labeling it dangerous. This is the same agency, remember, that labels marijuana as dangerous as heroin but thinks the alcohol and nicotine that kill more than a million Americans every year - pot kills exactly zero - are fucking health food.

Daniel Desrochers at the Herald:

Two dozen people in Louisville overdosed on drugs Tuesday, prompting an emergency room doctor to declare a public health emergency.

Two weeks before, there were 26 overdoses in Huntington, W.Va. Then 50 overdoses in Cincinnati, followed by 12 in Mount Sterling.

On Wednesday, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, the Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul this fall, held a news conference in Louisville to chastise Paul and Congress for failing to fund the recently passed Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. It calls for improving prescription drug monitoring programs, expanding treatment for addicted prison inmates and increasing the availability of a drug that counters the effects of heroin and opioid overdoses.

“Legislation without funding is a failure,” Gray said. “You have to fund it and that hasn’t been done.”

Earlier in the year, President Barack Obama asked Congress to provide $960 million with the act, but Congress didn’t include funding.

Gray criticized Paul, R-Bowling Green, for not voting for an amendment that would allocate about $600 million with the bill.

Guess Their Race!

Caught with semi-automatic weapons, body armor and - wait for it - marijuana.  And the cops let them go.  Guess their race!

Linda Blackford at the Herald:

Police were called to the Richmond Road Walmart Saturday night after a witness noticed a car full of men in body armor holding semi-automatic weapons. A six-month old baby was also in the car.

Lt Jackie Newman said when Lexington police officers got the three men out of the car at about 11:15 p.m., they said were preparing for Doomsday and needed supplies. The men were armed with pistols and semi-automatic rifles, police said. A license is not required to have semi-automatic weapons in a car, police said.

Police also found marijuana in the car.

All three subjects voluntarily came down to police headquarters for questioning that night, said Lt. Richard Willoby of the Lexington Police Department. They were given a citation for the marijuana but were not charged with any other violations, and were later released.

Willoby said police took photographs of the car and the weapons in order to complete a report to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services because of the baby in the car.

“There appeared to be nothing criminal,” Willoby said. “They’re in the mindset of preparing for the end of the world, accumulating weapons and things like that, but the weapons appear to be legally owned.”

If those drug-dealing preppers had been black they and their baby would be dead.

HT End Opiate Abuse: Legalize Pot

But they won't because ending opioid abuse is not the point of stupid laws like KASPER. 

 

The point of KASPER is to keep Big Pharma obscenely rich, the population permanently disabled by chronic pain and doctors cowed into obedience by the terroristic threat of losing their license and livelihood.

 

From Kevin Drum:

Here's a fascinating study. A pair of researchers at the University of Georgia took a look at what happened to prescriptions for opioid painkillers in states that passed medical marijuana laws. Over at the Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham summarizes their results:

They found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013,prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. The drops were quite significant: In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication.

Needless to say, the painkiller industry would much rather have you gulp down their addictive and lucrative product. They are not taking the threat from medical marijuana lying down:

The tanking numbers for painkiller prescriptions in medical marijuana states are likely to cause some concern among pharmaceutical companies. These companies have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization.

Pharmaceutical companies have also lobbied federal agencies directly to prevent the liberalization of marijuana laws. In one case, recently uncovered by the office of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that naturally derived THC, the main psychoactive component of marijuana, be moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 of the Controlled Substances Act — a less restrictive category that would acknowledge the drug's medical use and make it easier to research and prescribe. Several months after HHS submitted its recommendation, at least one drug company that manufactures a synthetic version of THC — which would presumably have to compete with any natural derivatives — wrote to the Drug Enforcement Administration to express opposition to rescheduling natural THC, citing "the abuse potential in terms of the need to grow and cultivate substantial crops of marijuana in the United States."

The study estimates that if all 50 states legalized medical marijuana, Medicare would save $500 million per year in painkiller spending. It's hard to extrapolate that to overall spending on painkiller medication, but the total savings would be on the order of $2 billion per year—maybe more.

Here's How to End the Heroin Epidemic Fast, Easy and Cheap

Because the federal government has just freed states to legalize medical marijuana.

Via Political Animal, from the LA Times:

Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government’s prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy…

Congress for years had resisted calls to allow states to chart their own path on pot. The marijuana measure, which forbids the federal government from using any of its resources to impede state medical marijuana laws, was previously rejected half a dozen times.

Heroin use is epidemic in Kentucky and other states not because suddenly a bunch of law-abiding people achieved their lifelong ambition of becoming heroin addicts.

Heroin use is epidemic because people in chronic pain can no longer get pain-relieving legal medications, thanks to the Drug War Idiots in the state legislature and their destructive, ridiculous, addict-creating KASPER.

You know what relieves pain faster, better and cheaper than either heroin or legal opioids like oxycodone? MEDICAL FUCKING MARIJUANA.

You know why the criminal morons in the Kentucky state legislature will never, ever, EVER legalize medical marijuana?  

No, not because they are pants-shitting Drug War Idiots, although that's a good guess.

It's because lobbyists for the private prison industry and the law enforcement industry and the failure-to-manage-pain industry and all the other motherfuckers who profit off the desperation of people in pain will buy off the legislature and leave Kentucky wallowing in feudal stupidity. Again. Still. Forever.

World's New Progressive Leader is Former Most Backward

It gives me hope, it does, that the nation most thoroughly chained into medieval barbarism by freakazoid religion has in the span of just a few years made giant leaps of liberalism.

Gay marriage by referendum overwhelmingly, and now treating heroin addicts like human beings.  Could abortion on demand be far behind?

If Eire can do it, so can America.

Think Progress:

As the battle to decriminalize — and legalize — weed in the U.S. continues, another country is taking a giant leap towards eliminating its stringent drug laws. In the near future, Ireland will decriminalize marijuana, cocaine, and heroin possession. Medically-supervised injection rooms will also soon be available to drug users, in order to reduce the stigma of addiction.

Ireland is following in the footsteps of countries that have started to tire of the fallout from the war on drugs driven by U.S. policy.

On Monday, during a speech at the London School of Economics, Minister of Drugs Aodhán Ó Ríordáin announced plans to open the injection centers for drug users in Dublin next year. Ríordáin also divulged that the parliamentary committee on Justice, Defence and Equality strongly supports decriminalization across the board, and will work towards making that a reality in 2016.

Calling on a “radical” shift in drug policy, Ríordáin pointed to the public health implications of decriminalization and the extent to which national funds are spent on law enforcement and court efforts to crack down on drug use.

“Too often those with drug problems suffer from stigma, due to a lack of understanding or public education about the nature of addiction. This stigma can be compounded for those who end up with a criminal record due to possession of drugs for their own use,” he said. “Addiction is not a choice, it’s a healthcare issue. This is why I believe it is imperative that we approach our drug problem in a more compassionate and sensitive way.”

By decriminalizing the drugs, addicts are less likely to wind up behind bars and more likely to receive treatment. The minister cited research that treatment reduces both drug use and drug-related crime.

As for the benefits of establishing supervised injection sites, Ríordáin explained that casual drug injection in the streets of Dublin threatens the lives of users and the general public. Users can overdose and contract blood-borne diseases, and people around them can be harmed by “syringes and other drug paraphernalia.”

By opening centers where medical professionals oversee injection, drug addiction can be diverted to safer, controlled settings. The Irish Times reports that injection facilities will spring up in Galway, Cork, Limerick, in addition to Dublin.

SNIP

With Ríordáin’s announcement, Ireland is on its way to implementing one of the most progressive drug laws in the world.

“We need to have discussions like today in think tanks, universities, parliaments and small rooms across the globe so that we can develop a more modern and comprehensive response to tackling drug trafficking and consumption,” Ríordáin said.

"Getting smarter about how we address substance use disorders"

The only place to start, Mr. President, is by eliminating programs like Kentucky's KASPER that punish doctors for prescribing needed painkillers and force people in chronic pain to turn to heroin.  End the crime of KASPER first, and the rest will be easy.



Full transcript here.

Condemning People in Pain to Ignore the Facts on Heroin, Still and Again

Did you see this? The Obama administration has a revolutionary plan to help law enforcement officials partner with health experts."  No, it doesn't.  Any plan that does not deal with the fact that bans on prescription painkillers are driving thousands of desperate people in chronic pain to heroin is a waste of time and money as well as a crime against public health.

It's spreading.  The stupidity of KASPER out of Frankfort has infected Washington.  Now everybody in the country gets to suffer in agony because the fucking War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs doesn't have enough victims.

Shame on you, President Obama. You know better.  Shame!

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress:

The Obama administration unveiled a new strategy to combat heroin abuse on Monday, pledging $2.5 million in additional funds to target five “high intensity drug trafficking areas.” The plan, which aims to pair law enforcement officials with health experts, is notable for its emphasis on connecting heroin users with treatment rather than focusing on putting them behind bars.

In the 15 states participating in the pilot program, a public health official will coordinate “heroin response teams” and help track the number of overdoses in their region. More first responders will be trained about how to administer naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses from heroin and prescription painkillers.

The new strategy “demonstrates a strong commitment to address the heroin and prescription opioid epidemic as both a public health and a public safety issue,” according to Michael Botticelli, the Obama administration’s director of national drug control policy.

How to Ruin Lives and Destroy the Medical Profession With One Idiotic Law

Uh, hello? Anybody remember the heroin epidemic that exploded shortly after KASPER went into effect?  Of COURSE there are fewer pain prescriptions or people doctor-shopping:  all of those people are now buying heroin.

But of course they remember the heroin epidemic and know perfectly well why it is still growing:  the very program they’re promoting here.  They’re just hoping you don’t remember it and make the connection.

But because there are very few people in Kentucky who are not:

• struggling with chronic pain because KASPER prevents them from getting necessary medication, 
• taking heroin because they can’t get needed pain medication, or
• the friend or family of someone who is

There are even fewer people in Kentucky who don’t realize that Governor Cowardly Worm and his pet researchers at UK (Shame on UK!) are motherfucking liars who are lying about fucking their mothers.

Since Kentucky’s landmark prescription drug abuse legislation took effect in 2012, the Commonwealth has seen a significant decline in the number of prescriptions for the most commonly abused medications, doctor shopping has decreased by more than 50 percent, and more Kentuckians are seeking treatment for prescription medication addiction.

These findings, among others, are part of a yearlong study conducted by researchers at the University of Kentucky Institute for Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy and compiled in a report to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS).

Gov. Steve Beshear joined Attorney General Jack Conway, lawmakers and health industry officials today to announce the report.

The study specifically researched and analyzed the impact of state law known as House Bill 1, which was passed in a special session by the 2012 General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Beshear.

“House Bill 1 was a bipartisan effort designed to help us fight the epidemic of prescription drug abuse in Kentucky, and it’s doing exactly that,” said Gov. Beshear. “Since the law was enacted, not only have we seen a decline in doctor shopping and prescriptions for heavily abused medications, pill mills have closed and the provider community at large has become more educated and committed to using best practices for prescribing these commonly abused medications.”

But what House Bill 1 really did was criminalize pain relief.  It hit the mosquito of pill mills with a bazooka, taking out the ability of thousands of doctors to prescribe legitimate pain medication at the same time.

Doctors everywhere in Kentucky are refusing to prescribe any pain medication at all for any reason to anyone.  That is how draconian the KASPER regs are.   Write one scrip, and if the KASPER police wake up with a wild hair, they can strip you of your license to practice medicine. Forever.

So now we have thousands of Kentuckians with legitimate chronic pain desperate for relief, turned away by the medical profession and able to survive only by using heroin.

All thanks to the prescription drug law that makes trying to relieve someone's pain a crime.

Flakka Latest War on Drugs Bullshit

"Brain-melting?"  Seriously, Gracie?  Let's see some actual melted brain cells right now, 'cause I'm calling bullshit.

And "excited delirium?"  Where have I heard that before?  Oh, yeah, the same excuse white cops have been using to murder unarmed black and brown people since the first honky asshole realized 40 years ago that the effects of PCP could be easily turned into an excuse for just mowing the ni**ers down.

This isn't about addiction, it isn't about the phony drug war and it sure as fuck ain't about what poor people in Eastern Kentucky really need to get out of endemic poverty.

This is about filling jail cells to terrify the squares into cutting social spending to build more jail cells to hold more people who need social spending.

Katrina Goetz at the Courier:

Alpha-PVP, nicknamed "flakka" — an illegal synthetic drug that has made headlines across southern Florida — has burrowed deep into Lewis County in the past six months. And some experts say it's likely to spread.

It has sheriff's deputies on high alert because it's unlike any drug they've ever seen. Users are trading heroin to get it — a substance that looks like rock salt, reeks of ammonia and sells for $100 to $500 a gram.

On the street, users call it gravel, sometimes magic, because the high lasts so long. But it also makes them paranoid, violent and can give users superhuman strength, a troublesome combination for law enforcement.

"It's kickin' our ass," Lewis County Sheriff Johnny Bivens said.

And making obscene fortunes for Corrections Corporation of America.

Take the trillions of dollars we're wasting on what Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money calls the "War on (some classes of people who use some classes of) Drugs" and spend it on creating real world-class schools and good government jobs and a strong safety net and real substance abuse programs and decent housing and superb health care and everything else actual modern civilized nations have.

Flakka and all the other trumped-up excuses for worthless politicians and the pathetic excuses for "reporters" who believe them will disappear.

Declare Victory

Digby:

This is the War on Drugs, people. It is a license to spy and a license to steal.

If people want to reform the justice system one very simple way to get started would be to declare victory and disband the DEA.

Conform and Obey, or Suffer the Consequences

Can you really say with confidence that there is absolutely nothing in your life that collected and misinterpreted could be used to arrest, imprison or otherwise destroy you?

 

Digby:

I'm going to guess that everyone who thinks mass government surveillance for "terrorism" is a-ok must think this is ok too?

Secret mass surveillance conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration is falling under renewed scrutiny after fresh revelations about the broad scope of the agency’s electronic spying.

On Tuesday, USA Today reported that for more than two decades, dating back to 1992, the DEA and the Justice Department “amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking.” 

This is the thing I've never understood about people's casual attitude about all this surveillance. They seem to think that the Al Capone logic of government agents finding any crime they can to put someone behind bars couldn't possibly apply to them and will only be used against real "bad guys." But the Drug War should show if nothing else does that these agencies have a need to perpetuate themselves and will use whatever means at their disposal to ensure a steady supply of bad guys. These mass surveillance programs basically give them a permanent record of everyone's activity just in case they need to find some evidence of something against a person they want to target. And you may never even know that's what they did since they routinely lie about how they were informed of certain crimes citing the need to protect their confidential informants which can very well be the secret government program that's collecting all your information.

It's crazy. If you don't think the government should be allowed to scan every piece of mail that goes through the post office and keep it on file just in case they might "need" to sift through it and find something in your past or among your associations to use against you, you shouldn't be so sanguine about this stuff. These things could happen. They have happened.

You Can't Fix the Police Until You Fix the Laws

I was wrong; training cops to more respectfully arrest poor and minority people for minor offenses won't solve the problem.

Only ending the War on (some people who use some categories of) Drugs (tm Lawyers, Guns and Money) and de-criminalizing being poor, minority or homeless will do that.

From The Nation:

What is not discussed in the report is dialing back in any meaningful way the war on drugs, police militarization or the widespread use of “broken windows” policing that has led to the unnecessary criminalization of millions of mostly black and brown people. Well-trained police, following proper procedure, are still going to be engaged in the process of arresting people for mostly low-level offenses, and the burden of that will continue to fall primarily on communities of color, because that is how the system is designed to operate—not because of the bias or misunderstandings of officers. A more respectful and legally justified arrest for marijuana possession is still an arrest that could result in unemployment, loss of federal benefits and the stigma of a drug arrest.

SNIP

We cannot produce true justice by reforming police procedures. Instead, we need to call into question why we have come to rely so heavily on the police to manage social problems in a time of growing racial and economic inequality.

Safest Drug

Divine Irony:

Flashbanged for Jaywalking, But Only If You're Black

Flashbangs aren't smoke bombs. They're bombs: weapons of war that kill people.

No, cops aren't soldiers.  They're fucking thugs.

Digby:

These bombs were invented to help special forces in hostage situations. Which makes sense. If civilian lives are in danger then it's reasonable to take risks. When it's over a baggie full of pot, not so much.

I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that they tend to only throw them into the homes of African Americans:

SNIP

Read the whole thing. As you know by now, the attitude of the police is that we are at war in the streets of America and their primary duty is to keep each other safe. All they want is to kill the "enemy" and get through their tour in one piece. But selling beer on Sunday is not jihad, African Americans are not the Taliban and protesters are not ISIS. Just because they wear the costumes and carry all the gear it doesn't make them soldiers.

Do your local cops have military bombs? Who are they using them on?

Big Fucking Deal: Holder Puts Stop to Police Theft

There aren't many single policy changes that can make a huge difference in the lives of the most oppressed among us: minorities, the poor, the marginalized of all kinds whose lives are destroyed by thieving cops just because they can.

Digby:

This is a big deal:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without evidence that a crime occurred.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

SNIP

A Justice official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the attorney general’s motivation, said Holder “also believes that the new policy will eliminate any possibility that the adoption process might unintentionally incentivize unnecessary stops and seizures.”

This program was a huge incentive to what can only be called outright theft of private property by police authorities. It's actually hard to believe they got away with it for so long. But interestingly, the alleged anti-federal right (along with the pro-police center) had no problem with it. They get very angry about any kind of taxes on rich people but had no problem with police targeting innocent people and just taking everything they own to fund their own activities. Odd that.

One hopes the libertarians among us will give old Holder and Obama some kudos for this action. It's been easy for Democrats to let this stuff go for both political and economic reasons. It funds police and lets politicians look like they are tough on crime. Ending this is going to make police across the nation --- many of who already hate Holder and Obama --- very angry. Tough.

Money Won't Stop Heroin Overdoses. Only Decriminalizing Painkillers Will Do That

John Cheves at the Herald:

The state will provide $105,000 for three urban hospitals, including the University of Kentucky's in Lexington, to buy about 2,000 naloxone kits to send home with heroin overdose patients, Gov. Steve Beshear said Tuesday.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/01/06/3626974/state-to-fund-kits-with-life-saving.html?sp=/99/164/#storylink=cpy

People in genuine, severe, chronic pain cannot get the prescription painkillers they need for love nor money because Kentucky law threatens to prosecute any doctor who dares to write a legitimate prescription for narcotics.

People are fucking desperate, so of course they're buying heroin on the street and of course they're dying of overdoses.

But throwing people in agonizing pain into jail will not solve the problem.

Only repealing the cruel, deadly, lunatic KASPER law will save lives.

But neither KASPER nor Conway's initiative are intended to save lives.  They are intended to do exactly what they are doing, which is maintain the insane War on Drugs.

The War on Christians

How come we never hear about all those freakazoids being re-jailed for refusing atheist indoctrination? 

Divine Irony:

Calif. atheist awarded $2 million after being re-jailed for refusing faith-based rehab

A Northern California man was awarded almost $2 million in a settlement after prison officials sent him back to jail for refusing to take part in a faith-based treatment program for drug offenders because he is an atheist.

According to the Redding Record Searchlight, Barry Hazle Jr. will receive $1 million from state officials and $925,000 from Westcare California, the contractor in charge of the program, which called for attendees to submit themselves to a “higher power” and pray.

“I’m thrilled to finally have this case settled,” Hazle said on Tuesday. “It sends a clear message to people in a position of authority, like my parole agent, for example, that they not mandate religious programming for their parolees, and for anyone else, for that matter.”…