{inserts usual vitriolic rant against big pharma, egotistical hurried physicians,and mention the evils of xanax, etc.}

Weaver95: Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found

I'd like to take this opportunity to smugly point out that it is biochemically impossible for the human body to overdose on cannabis and that cannabis is not physically addictive.

enjoy your legally available, high cost and incredibly addictive/dangerous drugs!

And this. Booze and rx meds are a bezillion times worse and are more damaging to the mind and body, as well as being a societal hazard.
OMFG! Anyone can grow it and medicate on their own! How can people make money off this!
Panic and prosecute.

Weaver95: I'll never understand how someone can complain about cannabis when we see articles like this one all the time.

My SO is a pharmacist, and he constantly tells me that most of his patients would be better off just smoking. He comes home incredibly disheartened at the amount of opiates he dispenses on any given day.

Weaver95: I'd like to take this opportunity to smugly point out that it is biochemically impossible for the human body to overdose on cannabis

When you smoke it.

You can OD when using tinctures/oils.

More proof we should completely deregulate the industry.

Weaver95: Daniwould: Weaver95: I'll never understand how someone can complain about cannabis when we see articles like this one all the time.

My SO is a pharmacist, and he constantly tells me that most of his patients would be better off just smoking. He comes home incredibly disheartened at the amount of opiates he dispenses on any given day.

i'm still hoping that someone will stand up and admit that we lost the war on drugs. if we admit that the entire country has a drug problem then maybe we can stop treating drug abuse as a criminal issue and start treating it as a medical problem and really do something about our massive drug abuse issues.

What really kills him is that you have to jump through 3-6 months of hoops to get a medical marijuana card, but you can go to the walk-in and a PA will give you a prescription for a ridiculous amount of Percocet/Vicoden/Xanax on the spot.

Weaver95: Schedule I.

Drug scheduling is political. And you know it. I can cite legitimate uses for half to 3/4 of the drugs on the Schedule I list. But they have no legitimate medical use because the DEA made them Schedule I because they have no legitimate medical use because the DEA made them Schedule I, etc.

Weaver95:

I just don't get it. science should be the basis for our drugs laws, and the science says that we can develop low cost effective medicine from cannabis - everything from antibiotics to cancer medication through pain relief...and yet we won't even consider taking cannbis off Schedule I.

Truth. It's ridiculous. My SO also has issues with the fact that a pharmacist can come to work on various prescribed opiates (it's a grey area, granted), but prescribed marijuana? That's a fire-ing.

namatad: LOL maybe obama in the last year of his second term

Why do people keep thinking that Obama will completely change the way he acts in his second term? Has any President ever done that?

Weaver95: yeah, but what I don't understand is how nobody can challenge the DEA on that issue.

There're people who can challenge the DEA. They're the President of the United States, the FDA, and Congress.

I don't see any of them stepping up in favor of sanity on the short-term.

Weaver95: 'f*ck you' isn't a valid basis for government drug policies.

Americans get the government we deserve.

Occam's Chainsaw: Americans get the government we deserve.

What the fark has my generation done to deserve this?

GAT_00: What the fark has my generation done to deserve this?

Apathy, 2000-current, with a brief lapse in 2008. Shallow materialism. The social consciousness of a fruit bat.

Occam's Chainsaw: Apathy, 2000-current, with a brief lapse in 2008.

We'd be less apathetic if we had anyone to fight for us, if the government didn't decide to punish us so they could get their SS checks without a tax raise, never mind ours.

Occam's Chainsaw: Shallow materialism.

No more so than our parent's generation, and far less than the Greediest Generation. Most of us are quite thrifty, but we consider the Internet as a requirement. So will every generation past us, in whatever form the Internet is then in. Just because we're the first doesn't mean we're wrong.

Occam's Chainsaw: The social consciousness of a fruit bat.

We recognize nearly as a whole that limited legalization should happen, we support equal rights more than any other generation, and we have no social consciousness? We're quite aware of problems, we just have no ability to fix them. The powers in charge would rather listen to the Walker Brigade, and even if we all turned out, we'd be outvoted. Plus they have the money. Why shouldn't we be apathetic?

Daniwould: Truth. It's ridiculous. My SO also has issues with the fact that a pharmacist can come to work on various prescribed opiates (it's a grey area, granted), but prescribed marijuana? That's a fire-ing.

I work in a Fitness For Duty industry but worked with a guy who was far end continual pain case. He was deeply, deeply drugged on narcs but was allowed to work in a FFD job alongside me because he went weekly for testing to prove his levels were within prescription.

Dude told me his monthly pain pills cost thousands at times, but if he was allowed to smoke weed and work, he'd take his medical costs down to maybe half that, or less.

/never gunna be allowed in my industry but I thought it was striking
//as it was the poor bastard couldn't even walk that well because of how bad it hurt

Occam's Chainsaw: GAT_00: What the fark has my generation done to deserve this?

Apathy, 2000-current, with a brief lapse in 2008. Shallow materialism. The social consciousness of a fruit bat.

mostly the first one. we young people don't have the money to afford our own senators and congress-critters, so why bother?

Not my car.

Now THAT's what I call "Safe and Effective".

FDA! FDA! FDA!

Ringshadow: Daniwould: Truth. It's ridiculous. My SO also has issues with the fact that a pharmacist can come to work on various prescribed opiates (it's a grey area, granted), but prescribed marijuana? That's a fire-ing.

I work in a Fitness For Duty industry but worked with a guy who was far end continual pain case. He was deeply, deeply drugged on narcs but was allowed to work in a FFD job alongside me because he went weekly for testing to prove his levels were within prescription.

Dude told me his monthly pain pills cost thousands at times, but if he was allowed to smoke weed and work, he'd take his medical costs down to maybe half that, or less.

/never gunna be allowed in my industry but I thought it was striking
//as it was the poor bastard couldn't even walk that well because of how bad it hurt

The toxins in the prescription meds accumulate in your vital organs and joints as well as the intestines. It makes the pain worse.

Threads like this remind me that farkers *sound* incredibly confident, but are utterly farking clueless.

GAT_00: We'd be less apathetic if we had anyone to fight for us

And you'll never have anyone to fight for you until you're not apathetic. No votes = no clout.

GAT_00: No more so than our parent's generation

Fair enough, but that's a tallest-midget situation. Call me jaded, but the generation currently at or under 30 made it a part of our identity. You see less of it now that times are hard, but rewind the clock five years. How much of popular media was about what you owned and how much you had? I don't recall entire genres of music from the 1980s (a prior pinnacle of greed) talking about your jewelry, auto fleet, private jet, car accessories, and the quantity of money you were willing to waste and / or literally throw in the air.

GAT_00: We recognize nearly as a whole that limited legalization should happen, we support equal rights more than any other generation, and we have no social consciousness?

When you have zero interest in putting forth the effort necessary to affect that change? Nope. So much of our energy, what we care about, is misplaced. How many people under 30 genuinely care that mass media is unrepentant propaganda, when they can just reflexively tumblr or twitter their way around it? How many care about wholesale disenfranchisement, when they can't even be bothered to f*cking vote? Environmentalism is great, environmentalism is good. Jobs, energy independence, universal equality, all noble things. And caring about them, excellent. But getting up off your f*cking ass and doing something about it is what counts, and the single most important issue facing our generation is that the republic will be dead and buried before we ever get a shot at the levers of power. And that, no, our generation doesn't seem to notice nor care about. They see it as inherent in the system, as opposed to a deliberate structuring of the system to the betterment of some, and a movement that must be opposed if you'd like your children born in a free country. Our generation is the cusp. We're the ones that will watch the shackles latch on and the yoke come down, and history will wonder why we stood idly by.

GAT_00: Why shouldn't we be apathetic?

Case in point.

Tone it down a bit, you can't sell to the dead, oh and thanks for the jobs, creator.

FTA: "Even though more people are driving more miles, traffic fatalities have dropped by more than a third since the early 1970s to 36,284 in 2009. Drug-induced deaths had equaled or surpassed traffic fatalities in California, 22 other states and the District of Columbia even before the 2009 figures revealed the shift at the national level, according to the Times analysis."


Methinks they're lowballing the drug figures just a tad:

Acid Blockers Linked to Pneumonia Risk (new window)

"May 26, 2009 -- An estimated 33,000 deaths a year from hospital-acquired pneumonia may result from the practice of routinely prescribing proton pump inhibitors and other acid-suppressing drugs during hospitalization to patients who don't need them.

Use of acid-reducing drugs was associated with a 30% increased risk for developing pneumonia in a newly reported study."


33,000 - and those are JUST the acid blockers. No mention of NSAIDS, opiates of tranquilizers here.

Big Pharma is BIG KILLER.


_{//Take your pills and shut up}

Occam's Chainsaw: I don't recall entire genres of music from the 1980s (a prior pinnacle of greed) talking about your jewelry, auto fleet, private jet, car accessories, and the quantity of money you were willing to waste and / or literally throw in the air.

Because music before rap never talked about having money, whores and drug use.

Occam's Chainsaw: And you'll never have anyone to fight for you until you're not apathetic. No votes = no clout.

We have no money. I don't care how loud we scream, we won't be listened to.

Occam's Chainsaw: We're the ones that will watch the shackles latch on and the yoke come down, and history will wonder why we stood idly by.

I think you're missing the right trigger. The media is a monopoly? Fine, we don't listen anyway, and they won't listen to us. I think we do far more than you think, it just doesn't make media waves because we won't be listened to. Social media is ours. It's also our trigger. We will go up when they come for the Internet.

FTA: "Drug-induced deaths are mostly accidental overdoses but also include suicides and fatal diseases caused by drugs."

...except that a high proportion of "accidental overdoses" are suicides that are covered up by the family ("Note? What note?", or ignored by the police and coroners to protect the family (and, often, keep an insurance policy from defaulting).

Every day I walk to work, stepping over people passed out on the sidewalk, often with needles stick out of them. The cops come by all the time, but there's just nothing they can do and they know it. Throwing these people in jail will cost money, and most of them have no interest in rehab.

This is the result of decades of backward drug policies. Treating heroin the same as pot, shrooms, or LSD makes absolutely no sense to me.

The pharmaceutical industry produces much needed medications that...

Oh you almost had me.

I took an EMT course back in the early 1990s and it was well known at the time the most overdosed drug was Valium.
Coincidentally it was also the most perscribed drug at the time.

But lets spend trillions getting those dangerous potheads!!!

Ringshadow: Daniwould: Truth. It's ridiculous. My SO also has issues with the fact that a pharmacist can come to work on various prescribed opiates (it's a grey area, granted), but prescribed marijuana? That's a fire-ing.

I work in a Fitness For Duty industry but worked with a guy who was far end continual pain case. He was deeply, deeply drugged on narcs but was allowed to work in a FFD job alongside me because he went weekly for testing to prove his levels were within prescription.

Dude told me his monthly pain pills cost thousands at times, but if he was allowed to smoke weed and work, he'd take his medical costs down to maybe half that, or less.

/never gunna be allowed in my industry but I thought it was striking
//as it was the poor bastard couldn't even walk that well because of how bad it hurt

This is such a common story, it's sad. Medical marijuana could help so many people with pain, anxiety, anger etc., and at a fraction of the cost of meds. Instead of helping people obtain medical marijuana, the government makes it extremely difficult and gives random-ass people prescribing power who just write scripts for copious amounts of drugs - makes a ton of sense.

This is bad news...for BIG PHARMA!

cirby: FTA: "Drug-induced deaths are mostly accidental overdoses but also include suicides and fatal diseases caused by drugs."

...except that a high proportion of "accidental overdoses" are suicides that are covered up by the family ("Note? What note?", or ignored by the police and coroners to protect the family (and, often, keep an insurance policy from defaulting).

Yup. I know a few local "accidental deaths" from overdoses that everyone knows were suicides, but the wives and kids really needed that insurance money. I'd guess that maybe as high as half of such deaths are not unintentional at all. As suicides go, not a terrible way to go.

mediablitz: Weaver95: I'd like to take this opportunity to smugly point out that it is biochemically impossible for the human body to overdose on cannabis

When you smoke it.

You can OD when using tinctures/oils.

Can you provide a citation? I'm curious how much tincture/oil would it take to OD.

I should note, at risk of replying to myself, that we've been seeing huge increases in suicide since 2007. With no way of telling which of these are "accidental" and with increases in obvious suicides (jumping off bridges, shooting yourself in the head, etc.) it stands to reason a chunk of them are suicides, and always have been.

GAT_00: Because music before rap never talked about having money, whores and drug use.

Sure, the Rat Pack and whatnot. But that's not all they sang, nor their contemporaries. I'm not trying to be glib here. I cannot recall a single time in "modern" musical history (post-1800) where materialism and singing the virtues thereof were a defining characteristic of a musical genre. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. I like learning.

GAT_00: We have no money. I don't care how loud we scream, we won't be listened to.

And with that attitude, you'll never be. There are two motivators for self-serving narcissists, AKA politicians: greed and fear. You may not be able to target the first directly, only tangentially vis-a-vis losing their access to the money trough. But the second...

GAT_00: We will go up when they come for the Internet.

And the frog in the boilin' pot says, "I'll jump when it gets too hot." Start hoppin' now, froggy, or you'll be soup before you know it.