Studies Show Safe Access Cannabis Reduces Prescription Opioid Use
New York- Two new investigative studies published in April by the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA Internal Medicine confirm that access to medical cannabis reduces opiate prescribing.In the one study, which looked at state data in states with access to medical marijuana from 2011-2016, researchers found that there were more than 5 percent fewer Medicaid opioid prescriptions following the passage of medical and recreational cannabis laws.
Noting the relative safety of cannabis and its effectiveness in controlling pain, the study’s authors conclude that is can be “a component of a comprehensive package to tackle the opioid epidemic.”
In the other study, which looked at state data in states with access to medical marijuana from 2010-2015, researchers found those states have 8.5 percent fewer daily opioid doses filled under Medicare Part D than states without safe access. When looking at those states where medical cannabis in available through dispensaries, the number of opioid drug doses drops further, to 14.4 percent fewer.
The authors of that study endorse “considering medical applications of cannabis as one tool in the policy arsenal that can be used to diminish the harm of prescription opioids.
ASA’s End Pain, Not Lives campaign is working to convince policy makers to make medical cannabis more available as an alternative to opioids.
Senators call for DoJ to stop blocking medical marijuana research
Washington DC- Bipartisan senators are calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to cease efforts by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to slow medical marijuana research.In a letter sent April12th, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) stated they are disturbed by reports that the Justice Department is effectively blocking the DEA from taking action on more than two dozen requests to grow marijuana for use in research.
“Research on marijuana is necessary for evidence-based decision making, and expanded research has been called for by President Trump’s Surgeon General, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the FDA, the CDC, the National Highway Safety Administration, the National Institute of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Academies of Sciences, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.” […] “Research on marijuana is necessary to resolve critical questions of public health and safety, such as learning the impacts of marijuana on developing brains and formulating methods to test marijuana impairment in drivers,” the senators wrote.
Sessions has been an blunt adversary of marijuana throughout most of his career, and often speaks unsympathetically about its use. Sessions has also claimed that he is skeptical about the medical benefits of smoking marijuana.
The DEA has maintained marijuana’s classification as a Schedule 1 controlled substance — which officially means it has no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
However, the DEA itself has been open to medical studies regarding marijuana and changed its policy nearly two years ago to allow for more suppliers because of the growing interest in researching further medical uses of the drug.
To date, only one producer — the University of Mississippi — is licensed to manufacture marijuana for federally sanctioned research.
According to Senators Hatch and Harris, at least 25 producers have formally applied to generate federally approved research-grade marijuana. But the DEA has not approved those requests, and Hatch and Harris said they are concerned the DoJ has been sitting on the applications.
The senators asked Sessions for a commitment that the DEA would resolve all the outstanding applications by Aug. 11 at the latest — exactly two years since the agency announced its
policy change.
Boehner Says Legislators Will ‘See the Light’ on Marijuana
Ohio- When the former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, says he’s never tried the weed he once demonize, that when it’s time to relax he prefers a healthy pour of red wine.That’s what makes Boehner’s decision to join the advisory board for cannabis company Acreage Holdings such a critical moment in marijuana’s journey to full acceptance. That and the reality that Boehner will always be identified with the Republican Party, more likely known as the party against cannabis reform, not for it.
“The fact that a former speaker of the House, a Republican nonetheless, has joined the board of a cannabis company says volumes about how far we’ve come as an industry,” said Daniel Yi, a spokesman for MedMen, (Los Angeles). “It shows that we’re on the right side of this issue, and that the momentum is building for the eventual end of the federal prohibition.”
Of course, the federal prohibition is policed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Republican of the anti-cannabis variety, who said in 2016 that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”
Boehner shrugged off that obstacle to legalization. He said in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg that when he heard Sessions say the Trump administration was rolling back Obama-era protections for marijuana, “I almost chuckled to myself.” […] “I don’t know why they decided to do this,” Boehner said. “It could be that the attorney general is trying to force the Congress to act.”
That’s where Boehner is beneficial to Acreage, to the weed industry and to the millions of Americans rooting for legalization. Of course he’s no Willie Nelson, or Cheech and Chong, or Snoop Dogg – but he’s a Republican. More importantly he’s establishment. He’s from Ohio. He’s older. He’s gotten his hands dirty making laws in Washington. He can advise cannabis fans not to worry.
“Former Speaker Boehner is still held in high regard by a large percentage of the GOP membership and voter base,” Erik Altieri, executive director of NORML, a marijuana advocacy group, said in a statement. “We look forward to his voice joining the growing chorus calling for an end to cannabis criminalization.”
As a politician, we hope Boehner has his finger on the pulse of Americans and can feel the wind shift. Even a majority of Republicans now support legalization. It likely has something to do with the growing size of the marijuana industry, and the money its posed to generate. Legal weed brought in $6 billion in 2016, and is expected to reach $75 billion by 2030, according to Vivien Azer, an analyst at Cowen & Co.
“As public opinion shifts, members’ opinions on this are going to shift -- I’m a prime example,” Boehner said. “Over these last 10 years, my attitude has changed pretty dramatically on this.”
Boehner compared his turnabout on marijuana with the evolution of opinion on same-sex marriage, which is now legal throughout the U.S.
“Members will see the light,” he said.
The DEA: Making Raids Look Like Robberies
Oregon- The Drug Enforcement Administration likes to use something called a "sneak-and-peek warrant," a search warrant that allows agents to enter and search a property without notifying the owner as a normal warrant would require. Officers operating on a sneak-and-peek (officially called , a Delayed Notice Warrant) typically are NOT allowed to take any evidence they find on-site, but they do commonly trash the place, faking a burglary to explain the “break-in.”Delayed Notice Warrant searches were authorized by the Patriot Act and, as is often the case with this law's provisions, it quickly became more useful for the federal drug war. But the trouble with “fake-robbing” people is it can lead to unintended, dangerous consequences, like those experienced by an Oregon storage locker manager named Shawn Riley.
In December, The Oregonian reports, Riley was tied up and held at gunpoint by alleged drug traffickers who believed he'd stolen the cache of marijuana they'd stored at his facility. It turns out the DEA was the real culprit; agents had done a sneak-and-peek and confiscated 500 pounds of pot. "The danger of violence is obviously real, and this case makes it very evident," said Cleveland State
criminal law professor Jonathan Witner-Rich, a warrants expert. "Someone could have been killed."
Marijuana is legal in Oregon, and the 500 pounds was allegedly set for transport to Texas.
