Excerpts:
“Speaking Tuesday morning before the National Association of Attorneys General, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressed doubt that marijuana could help mitigate the opioid abuse epidemic.
‘I see a line in The Washington Post today [Monday] that I remember from the ’80s,’ Sessions said. ‘Marijuana is a cure for opiate abuse.’ Give me a break. This is the kind of argument that’s been made out there to just – almost a desperate attempt to defend the harmlessness of marijuana or even its benefits. I doubt that’s true. Maybe science will prove I’m wrong.’
TRUCE Spoiler alert: Uhh, well, in fact It already has put you on the wrong side of the evidence, Mr. Attorney General:
“Surveying the entire known universe of studies about the medical efficacies of cannabis, the National Academies of Science, Medicine and Engineering found “strong evidence” showing marijuana is effective at dealing with chronic pain in adults, relative to a placebo. The National Academies study is the most thorough review of the literature on marijuana to date (up to recent years), conducted by some of the nation’s leading substance use researchers.
Across numerous trials and experiments, the report found, people treated for pain with marijuana were “more likely to experience a significant reduction in pain symptoms” compared to a placebo or doing nothing at all.
This is huge news, considering the annual opiate overdose numbers cited above. Americans consume roughly 80 percent of the world’s opiate painkiller supply. The drugs are often prescribed for long-term treatment of chronic pain, a practice that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now trying to discourage. Prescription painkillers and other opioids are highly addictive, and taking too much of them can easily kill you.
Marijuana is habit-forming too, but not nearly as much as opiate drugs like heroin. It also has no known lethal dose – you basically can’t consume large enough quantities of marijuana at a fast enough pace for overdose death to become a concern the way it is with say, OxyContin or fentanyl – or alcohol for that matter.
There’s been a lot of research done into this question in recent years.”
Which is the subject of the rest of the article. Highly recommended.
#MMJ #Opiates #ChronicPain #UTpol #GetSerious #TRUCE
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See full article – Dear Jeff Sessions: Here’s that science on marijuana and opioids you were asking for
