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Research shows that fewer opioid prescriptions are written in states that have access to legal marijuana. Could there be a connection between decreased opioid use and marijuana legalization? [1]
America’s ongoing opioid crisis is no secret. With thousands dying from prescription painkiller overdoses each year — nearly as many as traffic deaths — even the U.S. government has been forced to take action. As awareness of the epidemic continues to grow, further hazards of the pharmaceutical class of drugs are being revealed — including potentially higher numbers of deaths caused by their use.
The FDA gave permission on November 29 for large-scale, Phase 3 clinical trials of Ecstasy for people suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Many people swear the currently-illicit street drug has saved their lives, and if the trial is successful, it would establish Ecstasy as a legitimate prescription drug. [1]
Preliminary trials of Ecstasy, also called MDMA, for PTSD have been successful, but a large-scale trial is necessary before the FDA can approve it. [2]
A sad and disturbing study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that opioids appear to dull people’s natural parenting instincts. [1]
In recent months, numerous stories have been in the news concerning children who were left alone with parents or caregivers who had overdosed on prescription opioids or heroin.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced on October 4th, 2016 that plans to reduce opioid manufacturing by 25% next year are underway, citing a shrinking market and the epidemic of abuse as primary reasons.
The official change, or Final Order, has been published in the Federal Register. And, as The Verge reports:
Medical marijuana is legal in about half of the United States, and the DEA missed its chance to legalize it on the national level when it passed on rescheduling marijuana this past summer. But in Canada, doctors have been given the green light to prescribe heroin to severely addicted patients.
Are we living in a parallel universe or something?
Before coming to write for Natural Society, I worked for a national law firm. I primarily wrote about lawsuits, the majority of them concerning prescription drugs. It was there that I began to learn how dangerous many drugs can be, and how desperately the pharmaceutical industry wants the public to place blind trust in its products.
Doctors are blamed and so is Big Pharma; but no matter who is actually at fault, America is in the throes of a full-on addiction to pharmaceutical painkillers. The epidemic isn’t being driven by any illicit drugs, but by a surge in the use of prescription opioid painkillers.
Does your insurance cover the latest cancer drug that costs $159 to make, but sells for $106,000? The cost of cancer drugs has skyrocketed lately by more than 5000%, and this is not the exception, but the rule. Despite this gob-smacking display of greed, we continue to finance not only the pharmaceutical industry, but ‘charitable organizations’ that are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing. [1]
Hippocrates, the ‘father of modern medicine,’ has known for his quote ‘let food be thy medicine.’ Many of us live by that quote, and even doctors are adopting a more natural, holistic approach in the medical field.
One doctor in Houston, Texas takes that advice to heart. Instead of prescribing an infinite number of expensive pharmaceutical drugs to his patients, Dr. Garth Davis makes eating right the foundation for people’s health.
