New Study Shows Why Big Pharma Hates Medical Marijuana (washingtonpost.com)

HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that a new study shows that painkiller abuse and overdose are significantly lower in states with medical marijuana laws and that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. The researchers "found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law... In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical-marijuana state prescribed 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers in a given year."

[P]ainkiller drug companies "have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization..."

Comments

Candy

[amiga3D]

My wife had damaged the occipital nerve on the left side of her head in an accident. She had excruciating pain from this and went repeatedly to various doctors trying to get some help. They handed out hydrocodone and oxycodone like it was candy. After exhausting all options locally she was sent to a pain center. Their answer? More pills. I remember sitting there with a humongous bottle of hydrocodone and told her if you take all this shit it's going to kill you. I got her in to the pain clinic at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the doctor there did a nerve ablation that gave her relief from the pain. It came back and she had to have further treatment but the last 3 years have been pain free. It seems that if doctors can't figure what to do they just throw pills at it.

Re: Companies shouldn't have political power

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Bernie called for the immediate removal of pot from the Controlled Substances Act, which would effectively legalize pot at a federal level.

The DNC platform language calls for a "pathway toward legalization", which is, of course, vague enough to be fairly meaningless and unenforceable against HRC once in office. And it barely passed, 81-80.