Callus and Morally Indefensible!

Mercy Health Hospitals in an Op-ed in the May 11, 2017 Kentucky Enquirer talks about the opioid epidemic and calls for a multi-pronged approach in dealing with it. Their program of Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment, SBIRT, has screened thousands of patients.  Unfortunately they do not give any stats that show the program is effective.  They also state we should treat addiction as the disease it is.  That is exactly what Nixon’s commission on drugs advised back in the early 70s.  Instead we got the war on drugs!

As effective as the Mercy Health approach is, there is a more effective action that can drop the number of opioid overdose deaths by more than half. As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, States with medical cannabis laws see a 25% drop in opioid overdose deaths in the first year after legalizing medical marijuana which grows to 33% by year 6.  We can cut our opioid overdose deaths by a third simply by legalizing medical marijuana.

In Colorado which has both medical and recreational marijuana legalization, have seen a drop of 66% since medical legalization was approved in 2012.   They had 479 opioid overdose deaths for 2015 and that dropped to 442 for 2016.

Let us compare Kentucky and Colorado. Colorado has 5.5 million people and Kentucky has 4.5 million. Colorado has comparable medical and addiction services and is similar to Kentucky in many ways.  The only major difference is Colorado has embraced marijuana legalization and Kentucky, even though medical legalization polls at 80% favorability and recreational at 60%, has rejected legalization.  Colorado’s numbers for 2015 were 479 and Kentucky’s were 1278, almost 3 times that of Colorado.

Given the facts of the benefits of marijuana legalization in preventing opioid overdose deaths by more than half, as is the case in Colorado, no one can claim to be serious about opioid addiction and overdose deaths without including cannabis legalization as a tool to fight this epidemic. Cannabis legalization, in reality, has a better record of mitigating this epidemic than any other policy that has been tried or is currently in use! I dare our legislators to name another policy that can drop the number of these deaths by a third.   They can’t.

Veterans suffering from chronic pain and Post Traumatic Stress stop taking an average of 8 different prescriptions for pain meds and meds to deal with the side effects of the various medicines they are given when they start using medical cannabis. Veterans claim far better outcomes than their counter parts who stay on the VA cocktail prescribed for pain and PTSD.

We need credible action to fight this devastating epidemic. What we are currently doing is not effective. Adding addiction services will help but it seems the easiest, most effective and credible action we can take right now is simply to legalize cannabis for medical and recreational uses and watch the numbers fall!  Not taking an action that can provide such benefit in fighting this scourge is not only callus and inhuman but also morally indefensible!

Nothing Less Will Suffice

April 20 is considered, in America and worldwide, as the ‘stoners’ holiday, the day to celebrate all things cannabis. How this particular date has come to be a holiday is murky at best.  It’s something about meeting up after school around 4:20 pm to relax and enjoy marijuana with friends.

This year has witnessed a 420 holiday the likes of which we haven’t seen before. The feeling that legalization is winning and that the facts of marijuana use are finally out weighing the lies and propaganda that has kept this originally racist policy in place for 80 years.

In all this celebrating of the benefits, both medical and economic, of marijuana, one thing stands out. The Federal Government still classifies marijuana under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act as schedule1, dangerous and having no medical value.

The current Attorney General, Mr. Sessions, would take us back to the days of Jim Crow when marijuana prohibition was used to suppress African Americans. Nixon and his boys used it to go after his political enemies as attested to by Nixon Aide John Ehrlichman in a 1994 interview.  Indeed the only drugs listed as schedule 1 in 1970 were those the Administration had associated with Nixon’s political enemies, African Americans and Anti-War Protesters.

One wonders if our Legislators are blind to the wishes of the citizens who favor legalization. Medical use polls at 80% favorability and recreational at 60%.  2017’s 420 holiday saw parades and protests against prohibition and not only did the National news cover it as in past years, but 3 of the 4 local channels, with newscasters giggling and making gestures like they were smoking joints, covered it too!

Seeing all the hoopla, especially by the local stations, made me think that, except for our Legislators, marijuana use has become acceptable in current society. This notion was confirmed on Sunday with the morning paper. There, with the paper was the 23 April, 2017 edition of Parade Magazine with its cover story, ‘What People Earn, Our Annual Report’.  On the cover are listed some of the jobs in the article and right there next to Day Laborer, $10,400, News Anchor, $10 – $12 million and Detective/Deputy Sheriff, $69,000 was Marijuana Retail Exec, $65,000!

Maybe it’s time for our Legislators to catch up. Twenty years of use in California has proven that the claims of those who would continue prohibition are not going to happen.  The citizens know it.  Anybody with any knowledge of the issue both pro and con know it and our leaders should acknowledge it too.  Time has come to end the failed policy of prohibition once and for all both on the State and Federal levels.  Nothing less will suffice!

To Justify the Unjustifiable, We Blame the Mothers

Cincinnati’s WKRC, Channel 12 ran a story about a study claiming that marijuana use by pregnant women ‘may’ cause brain damage in the fetus or later mental problems. Setting aside the fact that every one of these studies all say ‘may’ or ‘might’, one must ignore 4000 years of anecdotal evidence.  Women have been using marijuana for menstrual cramps and morning sickness since ancient times and there is no reported evidence of any problems with birth or birth defects in all that time.

Israeli researchers, who have been studying marijuana and it’s properties for decades, and discovered the human cannabinoid system, have yet to find any definitive link between marijuana use and brain damage and in fact have discovered that marijuana use engenders brain cell growth the opposite of alcohol which causes brain cell death.

This idea of brain damage came up after the publishing of a very questionable study from New Zealand which claimed marijuana use caused schizophrenia. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown touted this study in an effort to increase penalties for marijuana use to gin up conservative voters in his election.  It was a big scandal and his health minister quit over the uproar.

Since then this claim has morphed into mental problems in adults and when that didn’t get traction it became mental problems in the developing teen brain and now it has devolved to the fetus and we are blaming the mothers in an embarrassing attempt to keep prohibition going!

Marijuana has been used for thousands of years and has been prohibited for only 80. The push to connect marijuana and mental health problems in the fetus is just another attempt to justify a prohibition that cannot be justified.  Better we spend our efforts in finding the positive uses for marijuana because in 80 years we sure have had a hard time proving any bad ones.

Fortified for Your Protection

The March 25, 2017 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer contained an article titled, ‘Typos in DNA Help Fuel Cancer’. The article said research suggests most cases of cancer are due to random copying errors. The cell, for whatever reason, mutates and not in a good way.  Cells that mutate are programmed to die but due to mutation they replicate and grow.

One would think the ideal solution would be something that could guarantee cell death should mutation occur. There is, according to current data, such a substance but we have made research into it almost impossible.

Early experiments at the Medical College of Virginia showed that tumorous mice injected with THC, the active ingredient in Cannabis, saw the tumors reduced by 33% over the time of the research.

Complutense University in Madrid Spain, in their research found that the active ingredient in marijuana appears to prompt the death of brain cancer cells. The finding is based on work with mice designed to carry human cancer tumors, as well as from an analysis of THC’s impact on tumor cells extracted from 2 patients with brain cancer.

Dr. Donald Tashkin did the largest study to date on marijuana and lung cancer, 2500 subjects. The expectation was that it would be a ‘slam dunk’, that certainly smoking cannabis would increase the likelihood of contracting cancer.  The researchers were surprised to find that marijuana smokers get head, neck and lung cancer at the same rate as nonsmokers.  The researchers concluded that cannabis contains some kind of cancer preventer that needs looking into as soon as possible.

Would that it were so! Currently cannabis is classified as Schedule 1, dangerous and having no medical value.  Never mind the 28 states that have medical marijuana programs, the Government and the Drug Enforcement Administration will not allow any research on marijuana unless it is designed to show harm.  So far legalization in States across America has not supported the Governments position that allowing the citizens access to cannabis would somehow be harmful.  Dr. Tashkin’s study did do something though.  The Government no longer claims smoking marijuana will cause lung cancer.

There is plenty of evidence that bears looking into but until we end our irrational war on cannabis, nothing will happen.

There is currently in the House of Representatives a bipartisan Cannabis Caucus consisting of Rep Dana Rohrabacher R, California, Rep Earl Blumenauer, D Oregon, Rep Jared Polis, D Colorado and Rep Don Young, R of Alaska. In the Senate Senator Jeff Merkly of Oregon is a supporter.  Concerned citizens should contact their legislators and insist support for legalizing cannabis so needed research can be done to ascertain the healing effects of this remarkable plant.

The sooner our ridiculous war on cannabis ends, the sooner we can research and use what might just be our most powerful weapon ever in our long war on cancer. It would not surprise me if one day your Cheerios box has printed on it, ‘Fortified with cannabis for your protection!’

Two Vladimirs, One Hundred Years

The Senior Advisor to President Trump is a man named Steve Bannon, he has the President’s ear. Mr. Bannon, formerly of Brietbart News, the mouthpiece of the Alt- Right, has in the past, proclaimed himself an avowed Leninist, a follower of Vladimir Lenin, first ruler of the Soviet Union.  Lenin like the anarchists of his day, believed in the overthrow of all the current institutions of government and society, replacing them with institutions where power is supposedly devolved to the people.  The Russian revolution of 1917 devolved into a single party authoritarian system using repression and torture to stay in power.

President Trump has issued Executive orders that certainly Lenin himself would be proud of, silencing branches of the Government from responding to citizen inquiries, ordering nonpartisan administrators to answer ‘loyalty questionnaires’ and firing career nonpartisan administrators and replacing them with unqualified ideologues. What is going on here?  President Trump’s actions so far certainly follow the Lenin playbook. De legitimize the institutions of government, society and the press and control and undermine the centers of information and put people ideologically devoted to you in place.

One has to wonder, with Mr. Trumps ties to the Russians, (the Russians said they were in contact with the Trump campaign throughout the election cycle), and another Vladimir, are we witnessing a compromised President being handled from afar by the Vladimir of 2017? Mr. Trump has created for Mr. Bannon, a permanent seat on the National Security Council.  A Leninist, is sitting on the National Security Council!  Saint Reagan must be spinning in his grave!  When one considers all this it seems very suspicious.

Until it is clear what the connections are between the Russians, Mr. Trump, his Senior Advisor, his Secretary of State, and his National Security Advisor, America should be on guard and be wary, be very wary.

The Vladimir of 2017 is every bit as dangerous as was the Vladimir of 1917, one hundred years ago. Let us not forget the threat posed by both.

Hitting the Lottery or “I sent you a Boat!”

The world is watching Colorado and is finding out that everything we have been told by our Government about marijuana has not been factual, to put it nicely.

Colorado legalized medical marijuana in 2012 and recreational in 2014. They have paid more than 150 million in taxes on 1.3 billion in sales for 2016 and have created more than 20,000 full time jobs in the process and none of the predicted harms of legalization have materialized.

California has had an easy access medical marijuana program for 20 years and NONE of the terrible things we have been told will happen should cannabis be legal have happened!

All we have to do is copy Colorado’s regs and standards and git on with it!

What in the name of Heaven are we waiting for?

The people in our eastern counties are praying for something to replace the coal industry. God has one ready to go for us and we are ignoring his help! It’s like the old joke about the guy trapped on his roof in a flood. He prays and prays and God comes to him and says God will save him. Later a helicopter comes by and offers to pick the man up. “No, no, thanks anyway but God said he would save me.” After a while a boat comes and offers to pick up the man. Again he says no because, “God will save me.” Later on that night the waters rose and the man drowned. When he gets up to heaven He asks God, “Why, why God, didn’t you save me?” and God replies, “I sent you a boat and a helicopter, why didn’t you get in?”

Let’s take this winning lottery ticket the good Lord has given us, an industry safer and healthier than coal, and do good with it! Alleviate the suffering of our eastern counties, create thousands of jobs, garner millions in revenue, enable billions in economic activity and put that money to work for the citizens of our great state.

It would seem that if we get to the end of this session and nothing is done, one could reasonably conclude the Republican controlled legislature is being derelict in its duty to improve the lives and the well being of our citizens and our state!

 

A Private Sector Activity

During the 2016 Presidential campaign and leading right up to the election, Senator Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader in the Senate and Kentucky’s senior Senator campaigned on the idea of a ‘War on Coal’ as the reason for job loss in our eastern counties. He spoke of how Republicans will bring coal jobs back to the State. Imagine the surprise in our eastern counties when old Mitch was recently quoted as saying that job creation was, ‘a private sector activity’. Expressing the idea that government does not create jobs.

Government creates jobs by its very existence and actions. Can Government bring coal jobs back? In a word, no. The market mostly decides what happens in a given industry and automation and cheap gas is ending coal. Are there actions State legislators could take to bring an industry to Kentucky? Yes, legislative action could free an industry from oppressive and unscientific laws and regulations to allow an industry to reach its maximum potential. Is there an industry that could replace or create more jobs and prosperity statewide than the coal industry? Yes there is.

The cannabis industry will create more jobs than trying to save a dying coal industry. All Kentucky’s citizens are waiting for is the Assembly to move forward on cannabis legalization and stand back and let the market grow.

Colorado, for example, has allowed for medical cannabis since 2012 and in 2014 began recreational legalization. The industry in 2015 paid 146 million in taxes on 947 million in sales and has created 18,000 full time jobs in the industry with 2.5 billion in economic activity. Colorado’s population is an estimated 5.5 million and Kentucky’s is 4.5 million. We would probably see an 800 million dollar market with about 2 billion in economic activity. We wouldn’t have to work that hard to set it up. Simply set up a committee to borrow Colorado’s program and adapt it to gain maximum benefit from this lucrative industry. We could be up and running in 2 years if we do it right and before we are done there will be Kentucky cannabis products being sold nationwide!

California’s citizens have had access to cannabis for 20 years and Colorado for 5 years. They have yet to experience any of the terrible things that those who oppose legalization have claimed would happen for the last 80 years. The prohibitionists have been completely wrong about every prediction of doom and gloom if marijuana is legal. Those prohibitionists should have zero credibility on this issue as they have been wrong at every turn and should not even be included in the discussion.

Is job creation a, ‘private sector activity’, as Senator McConnell claims? Certainly when government lets a contract jobs are created. In the case of cannabis, government simply has to follow the science and get out of the way. Kentucky’s newly elected Assembly with a Republican majority has the opportunity to bring a billion dollar industry and more than 15,000 jobs to the state in 2017. They should git to work as soon as the Assembly opens. Our eastern counties are desperately awaiting action and do not want to hear their leaders say job creation is a, ‘private sector activity’ as an excuse to let them down once again!