Amanda Holpuch @ Alternet writes (February 13, 2016):
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider the role legal marijuana could play in the prescription opioid epidemic.
Warren asked for more research into medical marijuana and painkiller addiction in a letter to the CDC director, Thomas Frieden.
Both opioid over-use and the resulting death rate is on the rise. Prescriptions for opioids doubled between 2000 and 2014, according to the CDC
Elizabeth Warren has a plan that makes a lot of sense..
Specifically, Warren requested the agency to provide more information on
“the use, uptake and effectiveness of medical marijuana as an alternative to opioids for pain treatment in states where it is legal”.
She also asked them to look into
“the impact of the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana on opioid overdose deaths”.
So.. what’s been the hold-up elsewhere (?)
One way to find answers is to look at who stands to lose
Turns out it’s all of the usual suspects.. and it is not about public health or safety as many of the special interest prohibitionists claim:
It’s about profits & wads of cash paid to buy our legislators to protect special interest corporations that would stand to lose $billions of taxpayers money if marijuana prohibition ends and becomes a legal alternative to opioid pain killers
• Big Alcohol conglomerates,
• Big Pharmaceutical corporations, and
• the Prison Industrial complex.
With Police organizations acting as mid-level managers following the dictates of, and protecting the “interests” of the aforementioned corporations
Our politicians are being bought, not just the typical republican corporate shill, but Dems too;
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has long been opposed to legalization, recently doubling down on her belief.
This comes as a bit of a surprise because about 65% of Democratic voters support ending marijuana prohibition. It becomes less surprising when you dig a little deeper though, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s election campaign received a pretty major ‘donation’ from the alcohol industry.
Wasserman Schultz’s campaign alone received somewhere around $330,000 from the alcohol industry since 2006.
I chose to include Debbie Wasserman Schultz because she is the Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, not to single her person out. Her gig is mostly with the Alcohol lobby which has spent amounts rivaling the lobbying money buying political influence coming from Big Pharmaceutical corporations along with lobbyists from the Private-for-profit Prison Industrial Complex where mass incarceration and keeping prison beds full is a top priority.
Back in January of 2013 Bill Moyers had this report:
...how Amgen got a huge hidden gift from unnamed members of Congress and their staffers.
They slipped an eleventh-hour loophole into the New Year’s Eve deal that kept the government from going over the fiscal cliff. When the sun rose in the morning, there it was, a richly embroidered loophole for Amgen that will cost taxpayers a cool half a billion dollars.
[...]
Since 2007, Amgen employees and its political action committee have contributed nearly $68,000 to Senator Baucus, $73,000 to Senator McConnell’s campaigns, and $59,000 to Senator Hatch.
— emphasis added
..And people are angry, and puzzled why our legislature can’t seems to allow Medicare to negotiate for much lower prescription drug prices
Coin operated politics is nothing new, just getting a whole lot worse
— So Kudos to Elizabeth Warren for her tireless fight to help make for a better life & world for all of the people — all of the time — and showing just exactly how success is made to happen