As the linked article’s blurb notes, medical cannabis “can help reduce our nation’s pain epidemic” – and by doing so with safer agents – can also take a big bite out of the opioid crisis.
But for that to happen, the federal powers that be have to have an open mind on changing how opioid abuse is being dealt with. The new presidential Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis so far hasn’t chosen to give an airing to the considerable evidence we’ve been citing here showing that opioid overdoses have decreased very significantly in states with legal medical cannabis, and don’t seem inclined to do so in the course of their deliberations.
In fact several of the Commission members, including the Chair, come to their appointments with a record of opposing cannabis law reform at various times in their careers.
And all of the testimony in last week’s session on “Innovative Pain Management and Prevention Measures for Diversion” came from pharmaceutical companies talking about how their next products (over some number of years) would be better and safer.
Despite its demonstrated efficacy (in the studies mentioned and in a 2017 review of 10,000 studies by the prestigious American Academies of Science), medical cannabis was not considered a candidate to be evaluated as an “innovative pain management measure.”
Groups like Americans for Safe Access asked to be included and to present, but were denied.
As this op-ed by #ASA’s Steph Sherer notes, “If the intent of the commission is to truly look at innovations in pain management, then why were pharmaceutical approaches the only ones discussed on this panel? There are numerous non-pharmaceutical interdisciplinary approaches and therapies to pain management that were not discussed at all, and a glaring omission was medical cannabis.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health expressed the need to accelerate the pace of how medicines that may help with chronic pain are researched and obtain FDA approval. However, there was no mention of accelerating research into using medical cannabis to treat chronic pain.”
Click for much more in an important read about why we need to hold commissions set up to investigate solving social problems to the standard of actually investigating with an open mind, rather than being set up to rubber stamp conclusions they’ve come to endorse regardless of what their staffs find or what witnesses are called and what those witnesses say…..
And so far “this is not the commission we’ve been looking for” if the federal government is truly committed to take a fresh and honest look at al of the promising options on the table.
#MMJ #Opioids #Research #USpol #EndPainNotLives #TRUCE
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See full article – Medical cannabis can help reduce our nation’s pain epidemic.
