https://www.wthr.com/article/13-investigates-cbd-oil-poses-risk-for-failed-drug-tests

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Just follow the money trail ?

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/10/ice-raid-watauga-recovery-centers-tennessee-lawmakers-donations/599087002/

An East Tennessee addiction recovery center that was recently raided by federal drug enforcement agents has contributed more than $20,000 to various legislators and their political action committees in the last four years.

On May 2, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration raided Watauga Recovery Centers, an addiction treatment clinic with locations in East Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.  

Although no one was arrested or charged with a crime, agents looked for medical and financial records, said Dr. Tom Reach, the founder and president of the clinic, according to WJHL.

The $20,000 in contributions are listed as coming from Reach and the center itself. 

The East Tennessee television station initially reported that DEA spokesman Jim Scott said search warrants were issued for multiple locations. Scott refused to answer questions from the USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee, referring inquiries to the U.S. attorney’s office.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Doug Overbey’s office directed questions to an office in Virginia, which declined to comment.

Reach and a spokesperson for the clinic did not respond to a request for comment.

In the last four years, Reach has donated $14,500 to nine lawmakers, according to campaign finance records.

In addition to Reach’s donations, Watauga Recovery Centers has donated an additional $8,400 to many of the same politicians, including the political action committee of the House Republican Caucus.

Among the top recipients of donations from Reach and Watauga Recovery are Reps. Matthew and Timothy Hill.

Since 2015, Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, has received $4,700 in contributions from Reach and the recovery center. His brother, Timothy Hill, R-Blountville, received $2,500 from Reach and the center over a two-year period.

In a joint statement, the Hill brothers said they were surprised to learn about the “DEA visits” to the clinic.

“They have a reputation for successfully treating patients with addiction issues in our community and have often been recognized for their standard of care,” the Hills said, adding they were learning about the developments through the media.

Beyond the Hills, Rep. Micah Van Huss, R-Jonesborough, also received contributions totaling $1,500 in 2016 from Reach and the recovery center.

In 2016 and 2017, Van Huss reported Watauga Recovery Centers as a source of income. His latest statement of interest no longer lists the business as a source of income.

In an interview, Van Huss said he made the company’s website at the cost of about $2,600.

Van Huss said he included the business as a source of income in 2017 because he updated the website.

He pointed out that he was not the only one to receive money from Reach and the center.

“They’ve given to other politicians too,” he said.

Others lawmakers to receive donations from Reach or the recovery center in recent years include former Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, Reps. John Holsclaw and Cameron Sexton and Sen. Jon Lundberg — who received the money when he was a member of the House.

Former Reps. Dennis Brooks and Tony Shipley also received contributions from Reach and the center.

Reach Joel Ebert at jebert@tennessean.com or 615-772-1681 and on Twitter @joelebert29.

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Illinois police: Keep pot illegal — or we’ll kill the dog

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/05/08/illinois-police-keep-pot-illegal-or-well-kill-the-dog/

As Illinois lawmakers debate whether to become the 10th state to legalize recreational marijuana, a few law enforcement officials in the state have put forth this bizarre argument:

Later in the story, a K-9 trainer suggests some or most of the dogs will need to euthanized.

(By the way, if you think it’s weird that a sheriff would have a “personal foundation” capable of spending more than $2 million on drug dog units for other police departments, so did I. It turns out that Sheriff Buffett is the middle child of the billionaire Warren Buffett.)

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, I’d dispute Buffett’s assertion that legalization is a “giant step forward for drug dealers.” This is true only if you consider retailers who sell marijuana legally to be “drug dealers.” If by “drug dealers” you mean cartels and kingpins who sell the drug on the black market and use violence to settle disputes, legalization is actually pretty bad for them.

But let’s get back to the dogs. Even if it were true that marijuana legalization in Illinois would mean that all drug dogs in the state had to be euthanized, that isn’t an argument to keep marijuana illegal. I’m a dog person. But the drug war is not a make-work program for canines. Second, nine states have already legalized medical marijuana. As far as I know, there hasn’t been mass euthanization of drug dogs in those states. Third, the law enforcement officials in the article argue that even if the dogs aren’t euthanized, they have been very expensive to purchase and train, and replacing them or retraining them to disregard marijuana and alert only to other drugs will be expensive. This, again, is not a persuasive argument for keeping marijuana illegal. The debate is really over whether we should be locking people up over a mostly harmless drug. If it’s wrong to do so, the fact that we’ve already spent a lot of money on a system to enforce a policy we now believe to be wrong is an argument against continuing that policy, not in favor of it. Put another way, if you think marijuana prohibition is justified, then spending money on drug dogs is justified. If you think marijuana prohibition is immoral, how much money we’ve already spent on enforcing that policy has no bearing on whether we should continue spending money on that policy in the future.

But if we are going to talk about cost, do you know what else is expensive? Arresting and jailing people for pot. The Chicago Reader estimated that in 2010, Cook County alone spent more than $78 million arresting and prosecuting people only for possession of marijuana. If we’re really worried about the golden years of drug dogs, that kind of money could purchase them a pretty nice retirement community. I’m thinking bubbling streams, platinum fire hydrants every few feet and a lifetime supply of top-shelf kibble.

But I want to address another part of this story that isn’t getting much attention. I’ve written quite a bit about drug dogs in Illinois, and it turns out they’re pretty terrible at detecting drugs. In 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a review of drug dog searches conducted over three years by police departments in the Chicago suburbs. Just 44 percent of dog alerts led to the discovery of actual contraband. For Hispanic drivers, the success rate dipped to 27 percent. The following year, I obtained the records of an Illinois State Police drug dog for an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008. In nearly 30 percent of cases where the dog “alerted” no drugs at all were found. In about 75 percent of cases, the dog alerted either to no drugs or to what police officers later described as “residue,” which basically means no measurable quantity of a drug and not a significant-enough amount to merit criminal charges. Only 10 percent of the alerts resulted in a seizure of a large-enough quantity of drugs to charge someone with a felony.

This is pretty consistent with statistics from other states, as well as one fascinating academic study, which have shown that drug dogs are far more likely to merely confirm the hunches and suspicions of their handlers than they are to independently detect illicit drugs. The dogs’ high error rates often make them no more accurate than a coin flip. The problem of course is that the entire purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect us from searches based solely on a government official’s hunch or suspicion. There’s a reason some legal scholars call drug dogs “probable cause on a leash.”

The K9 trainers I’ve interviewed over the years have told me that drug dogs could actually be trained to only alert when there is a significant quantity of an illicit drug — that is, to ignore “residue.” The reason they aren’t is that police departments don’t want them trained that way. They want dogs that alert as often as possible. They want the dogs to err on the side of false alerts.

Why would police want a dog that falsely alerts? That’s the exact question the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked in a drug dog case a few years ago. The answer is incentives. Searches can lead to evidence of other illegal activity. One incentive is that police officers, particular those in drug enforcement, often evaluated based on the raw numbers of arrests. More searches mean more opportunities to make arrests.

But the more important incentive is civil-asset forfeiture. If the police find even the slightest bit of pot, sometimes even just residue, they can often justify taking a driver’s cash, jewelry or even the car itself. The owner of the property — even if completely innocent — then must endure a number of legal and procedural barriers to getting the property back. Take, for example, the K-9 whose records I reviewed several years ago.

In one case, the discovery of 2 grams of marijuana led to the seizure of $5,190 in cash. In another, 2 grams of pot led to the arrest of the vehicle’s seven occupants and seizure of the $2,000 they had between them. In another, 3 grams of marijuana led to 9 arrests and seizure of $2080. In yet another, one motorist caught with 1.2 grams of pot was arrested and forfeited more than $9,000. Another motorist wasn’t arrested, but had more than $2,000 in cash taken from him because the officer found what he says in the report was marijuana residue. It’s unclear if the residue was either subjected to a field test or taken to a lab for testing.

So over 11 months, this drug dog with an error rate of somewhere between 30 percent and 70 percent may have subjected dozens of people to illegal searches, but the pooch also brought in $11,000 for the state police. The dog is, er, a cash cow.

One particularly lucrative part of the state for police is the I-55/I-70 corridor near the town of Collinsville, which brings in a half-million dollars or more per year for local police. A local police officer pulled over Terrance Huff in 2011 while he was returning from a “Star Trek” fan convention. After the dog “alerted,” the cops searched Huff’s car from top to bottom. They found only what they called “shake,” or marijuana residue. K9 trainers who watched the video of the stop say the dog and officer interactions look like a dog that alerted on command, rather than when the dog detected an illicit substance. Huff later sued. During discovery for his lawsuit, he learned that the officer who pulled him over sometimes “trained” his dog by rubbing marijuana on the bumpers of cars parked in motel parking lots. If those cars were to be later pulled over and sniffed — voila! — instant probable cause for a search.

The police in Illinois aren’t worried about the well-being of drug dogs. They’re worried about the well-being of drug cops. Lots of law enforcement jobs — K9 cops, drug task forces, narcotics detectives — depend on the government’s continued pursuit of marijuana. So, too, do the revenue streams of many police departments and prosecutors’ offices. When there’s a threat to that revenue, they’ll do anything to protect it, including making threats to euthanize dogs, or warning that if we dare to stop cops from taking money from people without due process, we’ll soon see headless bodies hanging from bridges.

Illinois cops have been using their police dogs to violate the rights of people living in or passing through that state for decades. If marijuana legalization puts a damper on that practice, that’s a feature of reform, not a bug.

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https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/5/9/our-government-is-murdering-its-own-citizens

I am no longer “entitled” to my life I guess. Since I’m not a taxpayer thru payroll any longer, they do not see me as having any value to this nation. I have accepted that my only future is to have no future at all.  That’s what they have left me with. I’m not good enough, wealthy enough or important enough to save and treat humanely or morally.

I’m being discarded like the trash that my government thinks I am because I have a need for medicines that they are uneducated about and don’t understand. 

The whole “Opioid Crisis” is just a massive coverup for our government’s inability to stop the flow of illegal drugs that are entering this country by the truckload every stinking day. They are the ones that have failed. They are the people that have gotten us all in trouble. They are the ones that created a “drug problem” in this country.

LEE HORTON

Lee Horton lives in Texas. He has osteoarthritis, neuropathy, stenosis, Ankylosing Spondylitis, fibromyalgia and numerous broken bones due to workplace injuries and accidents. Before he was disabled, Lee worked for 40 years as an operating engineer in heavy construction.

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us. Send them to editor@painnewsnetwork.org.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.

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www.journalistsresource.org/studies/society/drug-policy/methamphetamine-crystal-meth-drugs

Amid the United States’ ongoing opioid crisis, government agencies are documenting the rise of another highly addictive drug: methamphetamine.

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that from 2010 to 2014, the number of drug overdose deaths involving methamphetamine more than doubled, jumping from around 1,400 to nearly 4,000 (opioid-related overdose deaths, at 28,647 in 2014, have overshadowed these numbers).

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment suggests that http://templatelab.com/national-drug-threat-assessment-2017/ is high in the U.S., with many states reporting greater availability since 2013.

The DEA substantiated these reports using purity (the amount of methamphetamine present compared to other substances), potency (how much of the drug is needed to have an effect) and price data. The price of methamphetamine per gram has decreased (it stood at around $58 in September 2016) as its purity has increased.

Nearly 30 percent of agencies responding to the DEA’s 2017 National Drug Threat Survey said that methamphetamine was the greatest drug threat in their areas. Thirty-six percent reported it is the drug that most contributes to violent crime.

In light of these trends, Journalist’s Resource collected recent research and resources to answer questions reporters new to the topic might have.

What is methamphetamine?

Methamphetamine is an addictive drug classified by the DEA as a Schedule II stimulant. It affects the central nervous system, stimulating dopamine receptors in the brain and producing euphoric effects. It can be smoked, snorted, injected or taken by mouth. One form of the drug is crystal methamphetamine, which resembles clear or bluish glass shards. Methamphetamine and crystal methamphetamine are commonly called by slang names including ice, crystal, meth, speed, crank and chalk.

How is it made?

Methamphetamine is a synthetic drug, which means it’s made in a lab, not grown in a field like marijuana or opium poppies. Producing meth thus depends on the availability of the ingredients needed to create it, also called precursors, including ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and phenyl-2-proponone (P2P). These first two ingredients might ring a bell from trips to the pharmacy. Pseudophedrine is a decongestant used to alleviate cold and allergy symptoms. Ephedrine was commonly used in weight-loss products. Dietary ephedrine products were banned by the FDA in 2004, but the drug is available over the counter for some conditions, like asthma. P2P is a schedule II controlled substance not commonly available in consumer products. The household availability of some meth precursors, though, fostered small, domestic laboratory operations in the early 2000s.

The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act (CMEA), signed into law in 2006, attempted to curtail these efforts by regulating the sale of over-the-counter ingredients, including ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and phenylpropanolamine. Some producers skirt these regulations, martialing teams of people to obtain legal quantities of these ingredients (sometimes repeatedly, through the use of false identification documents), which together net sufficient quantities for production. This practice is often referred to as “smurfing.” (The term, a nod to the cartoon characters, has been used at least since the 1980s in the context of money laundering to describe a process through which droves of people break up larger transactions into smaller ones so as to avoid suspicion.)

These restrictions might also drive manufacturers to synthesize meth with other ingredients. Much of the methamphetamine found in the U.S. today is produced in Mexico using phenyl-2-proponone and trafficked across the border, according to the DEA’s report. This reflects a broader decline of domestic production of methamphetamine since the passage of CMEA and an increase in international production. Domestically, however, conversion laboratories are popping up, particularly in California. These labs transform smuggled methamphetamine into a saleable product.

What are some of the effects of the resurgence of methamphetamine?

Methamphetamine has been linked to a number of health risks, including hepatitis C infection, stroke, psychosis and other forms of psychological distress. A longitudinal study of 278 people who were dependent on methamphetamine but not schizophrenic or manic, published in Addiction in 2014, found that violent behavior increased after subjects used methamphetamine. Methamphetamine users also face a higher risk of death than people who use other drugs, including cannabis, cocaine and alcohol.

A study published in the American Journal on Addictions in 2014 suggests that certain social outcomes, including homelessness, drug dealing, being a victim of violence and prostitution are associated with crystal methamphetamine use.

Research exploring connections between methamphetamine use and criminal behavior indicates that meth users “have more extensive criminal records and are more likely than other drug users to commit property crimes.” Kentucky Department of Corrections data indicates that the percentage of offenders who used methamphetamine in the 12 months before their incarceration has increased sharply over the past five years. In 2012, 23.5 percent of offenders in the state reported using illicit methamphetamine in the 12 months before their incarceration; by 2017, this figure was 43.9 percent.

Are there treatments for methamphetamine addiction?

A number of treatments exist for methamphetamine addiction, including cognitive behavioral therapy and other drug counseling and addiction support services. Unlike treatment for opioid misuse, there aren’t medications that specifically block the effects of or curb cravings for the drug.

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This will surprise absolutely no one, but I don’t have great deal of love or respect for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Never have, and in all likelihood, never will. On Tuesday, the acting head of the DEA (and not sparkly vampire) Robert Patterson was testifying at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic of “Challenges and Solutions in the Opioid Abuse Crisis.” What followed was best described as an “old-fashioned Alabama ass-whuppin'” by some of the elected representatives, who seriously could not believe the words tumbling from Patterson’s stupid mouth.

As summarized by Marijuana Movement, it began with Tennessee Democratic representative Steve Cohen asking why cannabis is still a Schedule I drug, on par with such drugs as heroin. Patterson responded, with a straight face, “The reason why it remains in Schedule I is the science.”

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) drew forth the most outrageous statement from Patterson when he asked out of the 64,000 drug-related overdose deaths in 2016, how many were opioid-related. (44,000.) When he asked about cannabis-related overdose deaths, Patterson responded that while there had not been any “official” deaths of that kind recorded in 2016, he nevertheless was “aware of a few deaths from marijuana.”

“You are aware of a few deaths from marijuana?” Johnson asked. At that point, Patterson said that he didn’t have materials in front of him to reference, but that he believed these deaths were caused by “adulterated” cannabis.

It pretty much went off the rails when Patterson was later questioned about numerous studies showing the medical benefits of cannabis to treat medical conditions, including those where opioids are frequently prescribed, or studies showing that states with regulated cannabis programs had a decrease in opioid prescriptions. Patterson hadn’t read any of them, wasn’t familiar with them, nor could he site any studies showing that cannabis led to other illicit dangerous drug use.

The DEA’s Robert Patterson is the worst type of mouth breathing moron—one that embraces his willful ignorance, and makes no effort to expand his small-minded and narrow worldview. Which is morally vile when you consider that by just reading a few fucking studies, he could perhaps help enact policies that could literally save tens of thousands of lives.

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Make the most of upcoming opportunities to engage members of Congress while they are back home. Upcoming in-district work periods are currently scheduled for May 25-June 4, June 29- July 9, and July 27-Sept. 3. If you are interested in engaging with a member during one of these periods call their local/district office to make an appt.

You claim that they ignore your petitions, your letters, your emails, your faxes…  you call them for an appointment… you may end up with 10-15 minute  ONE TO ONE time with your Federal representative

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www.nationalpainreport.com/want-to-talk-with-the-fda-heres-your-chance-8836221.html

The National Pain Report has done a number of stories recently that have received numerous comments from people complaining about the federal (and in some cases their state) government. The reaction is that recent policies that have been adopted do not have the patient in mind.

This story, published on April 25, set off a firestorm of commentary from chronic patients and providers.

We’ve been talking with Terri Lewis Ph.D. about trying to create a survey from that story that could capture objective and subjective data from you.

She’s done just that, with the goal of having your input inform the FDA as the agency determines where to place the focus on alternatives and new drug development. They are holding a hearing on July 9.

Take the survey here.

The survey will be live until June 17^th to give Dr. Lewis time to tabulate and submit to the FDA by the June 25^th deadline.

FDA is challenged with determining how to balance the need to ensure continued access to persons who rely on opioids for continuous pain relief while addressing the ongoing concerns about safe use, abuse and misuse.  Many of you will not be able to attend this so we are taking your voices to Washington DC with us.  You can register to attend or view this hearing.

For Lewis, this survey will not only help let the FDA know what chronic pain patients, their loved ones and their providers are experiencing in 2018, but also will help her develop some data about individual states. Her initial focus is on the July 9^th hearing.

“This survey is designed to create some patient focused due diligence on chronic pain that our government simply needs to see,” she said.

The National Pain Report is happy to partner in this effort and will share some of the objective results in the coming weeks as people begin to fill out the survey.

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Reconstruction of what politician looked like before death.

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https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2018-05-09/us-judge-blocks-dea-from-suspending-drug-distributor-over-opioid-sales

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