Continuing our spotlight coverage of the opioid crisis – with its grim daily toll in lives and on the lives of those that those deaths effect – what about the role medical cannabis could play nearly immediately in reducing fatalities and hospitalizations – if universally approved as a therapy for chronic pain and for opioid overuse and dependency….??
At the current rate, it may take a minute (or million) to know the answer. The President’s new commission on the epidemic (headed by Chris Christie, a man with known suspicions about medical cannabis, and with other members known to be less than embracing) refused to even accept testimony despite the growing body of data demonstrating cannabis treatment’s relevance to the Commission’s mission.
Even mainstream proposals are mum on a cannabis role…. See, e.g., an otherwise very thoughtful treatment: http://ift.tt/2vj175a
Federal law and bureaucracies (the DEA, NIDA, FDA, etc.) continue to prevent progress, e.g., by preventing, for example, VA doctors from utilizing medical cannabis in a population of injured veterans – where chronic pain – and therefore opioid use – is rampant.
The federal mess and patchwork of state laws also makes interstate shipments (and often patient travel) illegal, and keeps medical cannabis-related businesses from using federally chartered banks or for their owners to deduct legitimate business expenses. And more.
Note: The government has announced a five year study of MC and opioid abuse – which will take likely about 7 years from workup through publication – and meanwhile, while quoted (all horrific) estimates vary, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 people a year – or more – are dying of opioid overdose…!
This annual toll is more than the total number of Americans who died in the entire ten year’s plus of war in Vietnam..! Think about that for a moment. Those deaths convulsed the country for a decade.
And it means there are 420,000 or so people who can’t wait seven years for research confirming what is already strongly indicated by data….
The linked article covers five studies and more data gathered over 17 years of legal medical cannabis use – whose findings all point in the same direction, adding strength in numbers to data gathered in disparate ways and places.
I.e., while not a complete solution in and of itself, cannabis could directly and quickly help save thousands of lives per year, and from all the information we have, its immediate deployment as a front line opioid-overuse reduction tool is more than justified by a more than sufficient amount of data.
#MMJ #Research #Opioids #OpioidAbuseReduction #UtahNext #TRUCE
http://ift.tt/2ndWdyL
See full article – Despite the skeptics, legal marijuana is having a positive impact on the opioid crisis
