Medical Marijuana States' Painkiller Deaths Drop by 25%

[_ronzlo_]

Say what you want about how much you hate truhedz popping off 'bout de herb - this is unequivocally good.

http://www.newsweek.com/states-medical- ... -25-266577

[wub]

Awesome news.

No more riding the OxyContin express

[jrkhnds]

roughly 16'000 deaths by freedompills. per year.

US healthcare is a joke and every citizen should be ashamed of it.

[nousd]

currently have Fentanyl patches & lollipops in the house
Read that it's a medico's fave to abuse.
I'm deffo not going to try it but has anybody else?
What's the effect?

[_ronzlo_]

currently have Fentanyl patches & lollipops in the house
Read that it's a medico's fave to abuse.
I'm deffo not going to try it but has anybody else?
What's the effect?

Short/fast acting opiate. Easy to get acclimated to quickly (in a bad way).

[nousd]

so it might as well be smack...same psychic affect...dreamy, no worries etc?

[_ronzlo_]

~redacted~

[cyclopian]

THC overdose deaths are on the rise though

[nousd]

really?

[nousd]

More or less: to an opiate heavy user/addict it would be a bit of a trifle - lacks the heavy knockout of heroin/morphine/dilaudid - but to the average joe yeah, pretty much. If heroin is roast beef then fentanyl is a little chicken canapé.

hmmm, that's a worry
bottles of dilaudid hanging about
as first breakthru resort

so dilaudid...hydomorphone hydrochloride...is stronger than fentanyl?

[_ronzlo_]

THC overdose deaths are on the rise though

Bullshit. Source?

There are actually very few documented cases of death by a marijuana overdose. For the most part, THC (the drug in marijuana) has never been thought of as a deadly drug. In the few instances that death has occurred with marijuana use it has been attribute to other drug use or the health condition of the individual. THC is so low in potency that very large amounts would need to be taken to cause a dangerous overdose.

A fatal marijuana overdose in humans would take 40,000 times the amount of THC that it took to get them high in the first place. In comparison, it would only take 5 to 10 times the amount of alcohol to get drunk to kill a human. If you can get drunk on 3 beers, then 15 to 30 beers can cause death. If you inhale 3 puffs of marijuana smoke and get high, then you would have to take 120,000 puffs of marijuana smoke to be fatal. In this sense, it is nearly impossible to die from an overdose of marijuana. Again, it depends on the purity of the marijuana and the health status of the individual so these amounts may vary depending on the situation.

There have been a number of scientific studies on the main chemical in marijuana, THC. This drug is a cannabinoid and in the field of science known as, tetrahydrocannabinol. These studies are pretty conclusive on the fact that THC is a “psychoactive” substance and can cause people to become high when ingested, but they have not found any evidence that it is toxic to the body.

In order to determine how much of a drug would be fatal, scientists came up with a formula known as “lethal dosage.” They then test a substance until 50% of the test animals in the lab die. The formula is known as the LD-50. With this formula, it shows that very small animals such as; rats and mice, can take in as much as 1000mg per kilogram before they die. Larger animals did not even reach the LD-50 even giving them as much as 3000mg per kilogram of body weight.

What this means is that a person who weighs 140 pounds or about 63 kilograms would need to take in over 4 pounds of marijuana at once to reach the same levels as the large animal study and this still would has not been proven to be a fatal dosage. These studies have been ongoing over 30 years and researchers have yet to see a severe adverse event with the drug.

[Riddles]

i think it was a joke.

[_ronzlo_]

i think it was a joke.

Sure hope so.

[AxeD]

If there is even a number, it's probably rising though.
Weed related incidents has to be rising in the US anyway.

[OGLemon]

lol andius is top troll

[_ronzlo_]

LEADING ANTI-MARIJUANA ACADEMICS ARE PAID BY PAINKILLER DRUG COMPANIES

As Americans continue to embrace pot—as medicine and for recreational use—opponents are turning to a set of academic researchers to claim that policymakers should avoid relaxing restrictions around marijuana. It's too dangerous, risky, and untested, they say. Just as drug company-funded research has become incredibly controversial in recent years, forcing major medical schools and journals to institute strict disclosure requirements, could there be a conflict of interest issue in the pot debate?

VICE has found that many of the researchers who have advocated against legalizing pot have also been on the payroll of leading pharmaceutical firms with products that could be easily replaced by using marijuana. When these individuals have been quoted in the media, their drug-industry ties have not been revealed.

Take, for example, Dr. Herbert Kleber of Columbia University. Kleber has impeccable academic credentials, and has been quoted in the press and in academic publications warning against the use of marijuana, which he stresses may cause wide-ranging addiction and public health issues. But when he's writing anti-pot opinion pieces for CBS News, or being quoted by NPR and CNBC, what's left unsaid is that Kleber has served as a paid consultant to leading prescription drug companies, including Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin), Reckitt Benckiser (the producer of a painkiller called Nurofen), and Alkermes (the producer of a powerful new opioid called Zohydro).

Kleber, who did not respond to a request for comment, maintains important influence over the pot debate. For instance, his writing has been cited by the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police in its opposition to marijuana legalization, and has been published by the American Psychiatric Association in the organization's statement warning against marijuana for medicinal uses.

Could Kleber's long-term financial relationship with drug firms be viewed as a conflict of interest? Studies have found that pot can be used for pain relief as a substitute for major prescription painkillers. The opioid painkiller industry is a multibillion business that has faced rising criticism from experts because painkillers now cause about 16,000 deaths a year, more than heroin and cocaine combined. Researchers view marijuana as a a safe alternative to opioid products like OxyContin, and there are no known overdose deaths from pot.

Other leading academic opponents of pot have ties to the painkiller industry. Dr. A. Eden Evins, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is a frequent critic of efforts to legalize marijuana. She is on the board of an anti-marijuana advocacy group, Project SAM, and has been quoted by leading media outlets criticizing the wave of new pot-related reforms. "When people can go to a ‘clinic’ or ‘cafe’ and buy pot, that creates the perception that it’s safe,” she told the Times last year.

Notably, when Evins participated in a commentary on marijuana legalization for the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the publication found that her financial relationships required a disclosure statement, which noted that as of November 2012, she was a "consultant for Pfizer and DLA Piper and has received grant/research support from Envivo, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer." Pfizer has moved aggressively into the $7.3 billion painkiller market. In 2011, the company acquired King Pharmaceuticals (the makers of several opioid products) and is currently working to introduce Remoxy, an OxyContin competitor.

Dr. Mark L. Kraus, who runs a private practice and is a board member to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, submitted testimony in 2012 in opposition to a medical marijuana law in Connecticut. According to financial disclosures, Kraus served on the scientific advisory panel for painkiller companies such as Pfizer and Reckitt Benckiser in the year prior to his activism against the medical pot bill. Neither Kraus or Evins responded to a request for comment.

These academic revelations add fodder to the argument that drug firms maintain quiet ties to the marijuana prohibition lobby. In July, I reported for the Nation that many of the largest anti-pot advocacy groups, including the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions for America, which has organized opposition to reform through its network of activists and through handing out advocacy material (sample op-eds against medical pot along with Reefer Madness-style videos, for example), has relied on significant funding from painkiller companies, including Purdue Pharma and Alkermes. Pharmaceutical-funded anti-drug groups like the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids and CADCA use their budget to obsess over weed while paying lip-service to the much bigger drug problem in America of over-prescribed opioids.

As ProPublica reported, painkiller-funded researchers helped fuel America's deadly addiction to opioids such as OxyContin and Vicodin. These academics, with quiet funding from major pain pill firms, encouraged doctors to over-prescribe these drugs for a range of pain relief issues, leading to where we stand today as the world's biggest consumer of painkillers and the overdose capital of the planet. What does it say about medical academia today that many of that painkiller-funded researchers are now standing in the way of a safer alternative: smoking a joint.

[DrGatineau]

More or less: to an opiate heavy user/addict it would be a bit of a trifle - lacks the heavy knockout of heroin/morphine/dilaudid - but to the average joe yeah, pretty much. If heroin is roast beef then fentanyl is a little chicken canapé.

This is some misinformation man, especially to someone with fentanyl in his house - fentanyl is one of the strongest painkillers in the world.

It's definitely stronger than morphine and dilaudid, probably same ballpark as heroin but that's just a guess since i don't see any hard info on it online. It's significantly more likely to cause an overdose than heroin though.

Fentanyl is approximately 50-100 times more potent than morphine.

Be reeeaaaalll careful with that ish sd5

[_ronzlo_]

More or less: to an opiate heavy user/addict it would be a bit of a trifle - lacks the heavy knockout of heroin/morphine/dilaudid - but to the average joe yeah, pretty much. If heroin is roast beef then fentanyl is a little chicken canapé.

This is some misinformation man, especially to someone with fentanyl in his house - fentanyl is one of the strongest painkillers in the world.

It's definitely stronger than morphine and dilaudid, probably same ballpark as heroin but that's just a guess since i don't see any hard info on it online. It's significantly more likely to cause an overdose than heroin though.

Fentanyl is approximately 50-100 times more potent than morphine.

Be reeeaaaalll careful with that ish sd5

Yeah, you're right - although I don't know about your strength claim (my experience was that dilaudid was definitely stronger, and there's not as much of the sought-after nod as heroin anecdotally; you're probably right about morphine though) ANY opiate should not be treated lightly. IMO they're best left to the realm of medication and not recreation.

[nousd]

Strange thing is that the palliative care doctors tell us that you can't become addicted to these drugs if you are in a lot of (underlying) pain.
That sounds like shit to me.

Back to the dope...
The chairman of our National Council on Drugs is advising our government that "the evidence for medical cannabis is weak".

[test_recordings]

The evidence is weak because no-one is looking. The people with the power don't want to look...