DEA Pain Hearings Tomorrow
The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security will be holding oversight hearings tomorrow on the DEA's Regulation of Pain and Medicine. This is long overdue. Our position is that DEA is effectively causing the torture by denial of opiate medication of millions of pain patients around the country, by prosecuting doctors and thereby frightening other doctors into not being willing to prescribe them. See our topical archive on the issue for further information.
Among the presenters to the committee tomorrow is our friend Siobhan Reynolds, head of the Pain Relief Network. She has posted the prepared version of her testimony here.
The Judiciary Committee makes live video feeds of all hearings available on its home page here.
They're Trying to Clone Drug-sniffing Dogs!
It's horrible because it's true:
SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean laboratory that produced the world's first cloned dogs is looking to get into the business of cloning canines, first by cloning drug-sniffing dogs, a lab official said on Tuesday.
The laboratory at Seoul National University, implicated in a scandal for fabricating data in embryonic stem cell studies, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Customs Service to clone drug-sniffing dogs, said Kim Min-kyu, the researcher who heads the cloning project for the team. [Reuters]
You've gotta hand it to these guys. What better way to overcome the ethical dilemmas facing the cloning industry than by getting involved in the drug war, where ethics are all but unheard of.
There's something brilliantly Orwellian about armies of drug-sniffing dog clones chasing hippies and snarling at school children. It's just a matter of time until they build robots to do that, and when that happens I just don't know what I'm gonna do. The big-time crooks will have their own robots to commit crimes for them, so our prisons will be filled with poor suckers who couldnât afford a Stash-Bot 6000 to take the rap.
For the time being, it's worth noting that cloning in the drug war is nothing new. Anonymous sources have informed me that the new ONDCP documentary Stoners in the Mist is actually cloned from the original Reefer Madness, and drug war mouthpiece Mark Souder is actually cloned from red-scare fear-monger Joseph McCarthy.
Positive Drug Tests Don't Prove Impairment
Maybe you've heard the story: Worker gets injured on the job. Employer, anticipating hefty workers compensation claims, administers drug test. Wouldn't you know it, injured employee tests positive for marijuana and is denied compensation due to presumed impairment.
Of course, since marijuana remains detectable for weeks after use, it is just wrong to presume that a positive result indicates impairment at the time of the accident. Still, many companies continue to fire injured employees for marijuana, rather than compensating them for on-the-job injuries that had nothing at all to do with their off-the-job marijuana consumption. It is a morally-reprehensible and scientifically-fraudulent practice, but one which serves the financial interests of its practitioners and thus continues.
Finally, for the first time that I know of, this sickening practice has been challenged successfully in court:
While the Tennessee Supreme Court has certainly made the right decision here, one shudders to think how many marijuana users have been thrown to the dogs under identical circumstances. The premise that marijuana ruins lives â almost universally false though it is â somehow becomes a justification for profiteers seeking to validate the most despicable treatment of people who've used marijuana.
These events serve to remind us that prohibition is more than police, prisons and politics. It an idea â corrupt to its core â which infects everything, entering our schools and workplaces to spread false prejudice and obscure even the most obvious truths.
Of course, since marijuana remains detectable for weeks after use, it is just wrong to presume that a positive result indicates impairment at the time of the accident. Still, many companies continue to fire injured employees for marijuana, rather than compensating them for on-the-job injuries that had nothing at all to do with their off-the-job marijuana consumption. It is a morally-reprehensible and scientifically-fraudulent practice, but one which serves the financial interests of its practitioners and thus continues.
Finally, for the first time that I know of, this sickening practice has been challenged successfully in court:
The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that a worker whose hand was crushed by machinery at his workplace was not to blame for the accident despite his admitted marijuana use off the job.So often in drug policy reform, we must celebrate victories of common sense that could be taken for granted if anti-drug hysteria had not permeated every aspect of our lives. How absurd is it that McIntosh even had to prove his lack of impairment? After all, it is perfectly clear and undeniable that a positive test for marijuana doesnât prove impairment at all. There was never any evidence of impairment at any point throughout all of this, yet it had to be decided by the state's highest court.
â¦
The state law establishing the drug-free workplace program presumes that any injuries to an employee found to have been using drugs or alcohol were caused by the drug use. But the court noted that the law also allows employees to enter evidence to rebut that presumption.
â¦
The co-worker and the shop foreman both testified that McIntosh didn't appear to be impaired by marijuana use before the accident.
McIntosh, who had worked at Interstate for five years, contended the injury was caused by the actions of an inexperienced employee. [Forbes]
While the Tennessee Supreme Court has certainly made the right decision here, one shudders to think how many marijuana users have been thrown to the dogs under identical circumstances. The premise that marijuana ruins lives â almost universally false though it is â somehow becomes a justification for profiteers seeking to validate the most despicable treatment of people who've used marijuana.
These events serve to remind us that prohibition is more than police, prisons and politics. It an idea â corrupt to its core â which infects everything, entering our schools and workplaces to spread false prejudice and obscure even the most obvious truths.
Rudy Giuliani Hates Medical Marijuana, But He Loves OxyContin
Rudy Giuliani has again lashed out at medical marijuana on the campaign trail:
Giuliani has less than no credibility on this issue because he worked for a company that is in direct competition with medical marijuana. It's really that simple. His claims that medical marijuana is part of a broader legalization conspiracy are also ironic considering that Giuliani played a key role in keeping OxyContin legal after it was linked with widespread abuse. Giuliani personally met with former DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson and persuaded him to leave Purdue alone. Meanwhile, abuse of pharmaceutical drugs, particularly OxyContin, has become the fastest growing drug problem among America's youth.
To be clear, I don't believe OxyContin should be illegal. Patients must be allowed to choose medicines based on what works for them, whether it be OxyContin, medical marijuana, or tree bark. But the transparent hypocrisy of Giuliani's behavior is so over-the-top that it is just impossible to ignore.
"I believe the effort to try and make marijuana available for medical uses is really a way to legalize it. There's no reason for it," the former New York mayor said during a town hall-style meeting at New Hampshire Technical Institute.I've already written about the potent irony of Giuliani's opposition to medical marijuana, but if he wonât shut up about this, neither will I. If Rudy Giuliani won't stop talking trash about medical marijuana, and endorsing pharmaceutical alternatives, I wonât stop bringing up the fact that he worked as a hired consultant for OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.
He also said there are better alternatives.
"You can accomplish everything you want to accomplish with things other than marijuana, probably better. There are pain medications much superior to marijuana," he said. [AP]
Giuliani has less than no credibility on this issue because he worked for a company that is in direct competition with medical marijuana. It's really that simple. His claims that medical marijuana is part of a broader legalization conspiracy are also ironic considering that Giuliani played a key role in keeping OxyContin legal after it was linked with widespread abuse. Giuliani personally met with former DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson and persuaded him to leave Purdue alone. Meanwhile, abuse of pharmaceutical drugs, particularly OxyContin, has become the fastest growing drug problem among America's youth.
To be clear, I don't believe OxyContin should be illegal. Patients must be allowed to choose medicines based on what works for them, whether it be OxyContin, medical marijuana, or tree bark. But the transparent hypocrisy of Giuliani's behavior is so over-the-top that it is just impossible to ignore.