Author: The Fix

Why Are Judges Sealing Court Evidence Related To Opioid Settlements?

Experts are calling into question the unexplained decisions to seal evidence surrounding opioid settlements with Big Pharma companies.

Eighteen years ago, West Virginia Judge Booker T. Stephens saw evidence that Purdue Pharma had engaged with misleading and aggressive marketing practices that were getting people hooked on opioids in his state. But instead of allowing that information to become public, Stephens sealed the evidence. Purdue settled with the state, and the damning information was never made public.

“This case was sealed because both sides agreed and asked me to seal it,” he said to Reuters recently. “Obviously when you settle a case of this magnitude and of this nature, Purdue Pharma would not want to let the world know they had engaged in deceptive marketing practices.”

State and federal laws allow court evidence to be sealed when there is a privacy concern, but a recent Reuters analysis found that the practice has become widespread. Although federal law mandates that most evidence be made public, Reuters found that over the past 20 years judges have sealed evidence in about half of multidistrict litigation cases, often without explanation.

This is alarming in cases like that of Purdue, where making the evidence public would have raised awareness of a public safety issue, and potentially saved lives.

“Information that could have really made a difference sometimes doesn’t come to light,” Judge and judicial educator Jeremy Fogel said.

Judges are supposed to explain why they seal evidence, and only seal the documents that contain sensitive information, like medical records or trade secrets. But as sealing evidence has become more common, judges like Stephens simply seal evidence without explanation.

In 1991, Arthur Miller, a New York University law professor, wrote a paper claiming there was no proof that sealing evidence could result in public harm. Reached recently, however, he said that the opioid epidemic and the Reuters analysis of how evidence is handled show that there is a public interest in keeping evidence open.

“Certainly, anything relating to public health or things tied to social policy, you would want to have an explanation as to why something is sealed,” he said.

The question is particularly relevant as a federal judge in Ohio sorts through 2,000 lawsuits against the drug manufacturing industry. Judge Dan A. Polster has sealed most of the evidence in those cases.

A recent court case in Massachusetts has made public reams of internal documents from Purdue, which have highlighted the unscrupulous practices at the company. The outcry shows the importance of having transparency around evidence in the judicial system.

Stephens, the judge who sealed the Purdue evidence 18 years ago, still sees the affects of opioids in his courtroom today. Yet, West Virginia University College of Law professor Jennifer Oliva said that Stephens could have helped fuel earlier awareness of the opioid epidemic if he had not sealed the case.

“That’s bananas,” Oliva said. “He’s not allowed to do that without providing reasons.”

View the original article at thefix.com

28 June 2019
Ohio County Overdose Wave Leaves At Least 3 Dead

Officials were alarmed when 23 emergency calls involving suspected overdose cases were received in the county in under 24 hours.

Police officers in Hamilton County reported an unusual spike in overdose cases last weekend that was likely due to a batch of methamphetamine mixed with fentanyl that was sold as ecstasy pills.

As many as 10 of the overdose cases resulted in death, though the coroner’s office has yet to confirm if overdose was the root cause in all the area deaths that occurred since June 19.

Regardless, officials were alarmed when 23 emergency calls involving suspected overdose cases were received in the county in under 24 hours. Overall, they fielded 54 calls from early Friday to early Monday.

On Saturday, the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition sent out an alert to the local populace due to the high number of overdoses. Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, a co-chair of the Heroin Coalition, believes that the root cause is the highly potent opioid fentanyl.

“Late in May, Tom Fallon, investigative commander for the heroin task force, said investigators learned that a drug supplier was mixing fentanyl with meth and then adding red, yellow or blue food coloring and pressing the mixture into a pill form to be sold as ecstasy,” reports The Cincinnati Enquirer. “The task force has also found other fake pressed-pills sold on the street as pain pills in recent months that were tainted with fentanyl.”

Fallon also noted that there’s been a similar problem with crack cocaine being mixed with fentanyl. This has been an increasing issue across the country as drug sellers learn that adding small amounts of the opioid to a batch of drugs can seriously enhance the effects.

However, since fentanyl is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, just a tiny bit too much can result in a dangerous overdose. Mixing drugs also always increases that risk.

This problem has led experts to name fentanyl as the key driver in a “third wave” of the U.S. opioid epidemic. A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that deaths involving the drug have doubled every year since 2013.

Ohio has seen a surge in these kinds of overdoses since April, particularly on the weekends. Because individuals who are addicted to opioids generally can’t wait until the weekend, this tells authorities like Synan that many of the victims are not addicted to this type of drug.

In fact, those who have not built up a tolerance to opioids are especially vulnerable to fatal overdose if they take fentanyl, which is why fentanyl is only prescribed to individuals who are already opioid-tolerant.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2019
Can Anger Be Addictive?

The Boston Globe examined the potentially habit-forming effects of compulsive anger.

As the political and social arenas around the world transmit images and messages of greater strife and conflict, and half of all Americans reported being angrier in 2016 than they were in 2015, a new article in the Boston Globe asks a pertinent question: can anger be habit-forming?

While mental health professionals stop short at labeling angry behavior as addictive or a dependency, outrage can produce and feed on a rush of chemicals and conditioned responses that in many ways echo the mental and emotional processes associated with addiction.

Though the article cites the 2016 documentary The Brainwashing of My Dad as an example of how a steady diet of anger, fueled by conservative media sources, had a damaging effect on the well-being of the filmmaker’s father, anger is not limited to one side of the political spectrum or the other. What is consistent is the response that regular exposure to angry emotions produced by the body.

As the Globe piece noted, a perceived threat – whether real or imagined – provokes a response in the brain’s limbic system, the region of the brain responsible for emotions, memories and stimulation.

The amygdalae – the almond-shaped neuron bundles linked to both fear and pleasure – inform the brain that a conflict is brewing, which in turn triggers the release of dopamine, which controls not only systems of reward and pleasure, but also movement, as well as a slew of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which send oxygen levels soaring in the blood and glucose skyrocketing in the brain.

As this rush of chemicals produces a physical response – as the Globe piece noted, we get physically tense and verbally louder – it also interrupts our ability to think clearly and produce short-term memories, which accounts for the difficulty in remember what you thought or said while angry.

“The nature of anger is that it shuts off your cortex, your logic center, your thinking – it’s literally overriding that center of your brain,” said Dr. Jean Kim, a psychiatrist for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in the story.

What links anger to addiction is the presence of dopamine, which creates the same “afterglow” response produced after sexual intercourse, eating, exercise – and the use of certain drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and others.

When the brain produces a positive response to stimuli and encourages a repeat occurrence, even if the stimuli has a negative impact on the user, then that reaction correlates to compulsive and even addictive behavior.

Breaking the cycle of arousal to anger can be challenging, just as tackling the patterns of compulsion that surround addictions to drugs, alcohol and other stimuli. The Globe piece cited how Frank Senko, the subject of Brainwashing, stepped away from his compulsive anger a step at a time – when the radio he used to tune into angry broadcasts broke, he began to draw closer to his wife and family, reprogrammed his television remote to avoid the high-stress news broadcasts, and unsubscribed from hyperbolic emails.

“He became happy,” said his daughter, Jen, who directed the documentary. “The last couple years of his life, he was himself again, and we had him back.”

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2019
Kate Middleton’s Brother Details Depression Battle: I Shut Myself Off

“I didn’t want them anywhere near me. I shut myself off, I didn’t communicate with my family at all. But there’s only so long you can hold your breath,” he said.

James Middleton, the brother of Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, is speaking out about his struggles with depression, a condition that he says has been crippling at certain points in his life.

“It’s what keeps you in bed, while anxiety makes you feel guilty for being there. I thought ‘What do I have to be depressed about?’ I’ve been so lucky with my upbringing, I had all the things I wanted,” Middleton told Tatler magazine. “It’s not that I wanted more, but there was something that wasn’t always there… And the more I ignored it, the more it was taking over.”

Middleton said his mental health took a hit in 2011, when he was 23 and his sister married Prince William. That marriage put him in the spotlight.

“Suddenly, and very publicly, I was being judged about whether I was a success of a failure. That does put pressure on you,” he said. “Because in my mind I’m doing this irrespective of my family and events that have happened.”

One day in 2017 Middleton was unable to get out of his car because his depression was so strong. Instead of walking into work he called his doctor.

“I remember not being able to explain. The doctor said ‘James, are you okay?’ And I said ‘No, I’m not.’”

Asking for help allowed Middleton to regain control of his mental health and begin to heal. Today, he says he is doing much better.

“I am happy – I feel like James Middleton again. I feel like I was when I was 13, excited about life. I feel like myself again and I couldn’t ask for more,” he said.

During the time he was depressed, his family was trying to be supportive, but he pushed them away.

“I didn’t want them anywhere near me. I shut myself off, I didn’t communicate with my family at all. But there’s only so long you can hold your breath,” he said.

In January of this year Middleton wrote a Daily Mail editorial, in which he described his experience.

“I know I’m richly blessed and live a privileged life. But it did not make me immune to depression,” he said. “It is tricky to describe the condition. It is not merely sadness. It is an illness, a cancer of the mind.”

When he decided to speak publicly about his experience, his parents were apprehensive.

“They were very nervous. They worried I would be exposing myself over what was a very private thing,” he said.

But when Middleton received lots of public support, he and his parents realized that sharing his story was empowering.

“I did it for ownership,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2019
Rolling Stones Guitarist Ronnie Wood Talks Sobriety, Mick Jagger’s Surgery

“I don’t think I’m missing out on anything. I’m just seeing it a bit more sensibly now. I’m high enough and I’m grateful of that,” Woods says.

Ronnie Wood, the famous Rolling Stone guitarist, gave an interview with The Sun in the wake of Mick Jagger’s heart surgery, and the band’s No Filter tour.

Jagger had been told by his doctors that he would eventually need heart surgery; the infamous headliner thought he had plenty of time to complete the band’s tour before being sidelined with heart surgery.

Three weeks before the U.S. leg of their tour was to begin with 17 separate shows, Mick (72), Keith Richards (75), Charlie Watts (78), and Wood (72) all met in a hotel room.

Wood shared with The Sun, “He called us to his room and said, ‘I’ve got to do this now.’ He felt so bad about it. We sad, ‘Don’t feel bad, if it’s got to be done, do it, then we can carry on rocking.’ And now we are ready to rock – luckily.”

“The doctor’s said they’ve never operated on an athlete at 75 before – we had a really good laugh about that. He’s just so fit, he sets aside three hours a day to do exercise and that’s done him plenty of favours in later life. He’s superhuman really.”

On Jagger’s current condition, Wood remarked, “Oh God, he’s even harder to stop now. It’s like, ‘Mick, come here, I want to talk to you, and he’s like all over the place. He’s in really good form.”

Wood, like Mick Jagger, has a big family with many children, the youngest being toddlers. Wood has two-year-old twin girls, Grace and Alice, while Jagger’s youngest is Deveraux, also two-years-old. Deveraux is Jagger’s son with 32-year-old ballerina, Melanie Hamrick. Wood points out his hair is still grey-free despite his age and the demands of parenting and the road.

Wood feels he had a new start late in life with sobriety. He told The Sun, “Since my sobriety, it’s like having a second chance at life, seeing everything with clarify, gratitude. It’s unbelievable. I feel so good. And I have these little blessings is the icing on the cake.”

Woods continued, “With the momentum of youth, you were always chasing a high. The music was high anyway and you want to get higher and higher, so you have a drink, or whatever. You never used to think about it – it was like keeping the high going. But now I can sit back and go, ‘My body is going to collapse if I keep piling it on and do it like you used to.’ I’m still very happy. I don’t think I’m missing out on anything. I’m just seeing it a bit more sensibly now. I’m high enough and I’m grateful of that.’

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2019
My Higher Power Problem in Overeaters Anonymous

Although I have a strong sense of higher power in my life, I did not understand how admitting one’s powerlessness and putting faith in a higher power would aid in eliminating my compulsive eating.

I first encountered Overeaters Anonymous (OA) while hospitalized for having the disability of schizoaffective disorder, albeit in a roundabout way. During my stay, a woman came to the ward to share her story of success from her own schizoaffective disorder, during which she talked about how she lost over 100 pounds from participating in OA. Given that I too struggled with weight loss, I immediately was inspired by her story.

After her presentation, we exchanged contact information, and she began to offer her advice on how to win the battle of weight loss. She recommended I write down everything I eat, and within a few weeks I was counting calories. After being discharged from the hospital, I continued to lose weight, writing all my calories every day without fail for over two years. I lost 70 pounds in total.

I began to fall off with calorie counting when I started working full time, juggling the stress of my disability simultaneously. I began gaining weight again, then becoming further stressed when I started graduate school in social work while still working full time. While my mental wellness has become stronger and stronger, I still today struggle with compulsive eating and weight gain.

Given my friend’s success with OA, I wanted the program to work for me as well. I attended a meeting in my neighborhood, but immediately felt alienated with the higher power concept. Although I have a strong sense of higher power in my life, I did not understand how admitting one’s powerlessness and putting faith in a higher power would aid in eliminating my compulsive eating. No matter how much I prayed, the change never happened. I shed many a begging tear.

Subsequent visits to OA meetings did not clarify the concept of higher power. I wanted to philosophically discuss the nature of what it is, with others sharing how they worshipped, how they experienced their higher power as a force in their lives. Yet when people told their stories of recovery and abstinence, they merely referred to their spirituality in bare sentences. “I leaned on my higher power, and I was reformed.” “Hold on, and the miracle will come. It’s just around the corner.” This told me nothing about the strength of their spiritual senses.

I also experienced confusion about how the spirituality of the 12 steps applied to overeating overall. I felt that compulsive overeating was different from alcoholism and substance abuse, in that it does not result in as much harm towards others. And while virtually anyone would prefer not to be around people who are heavily drunk or on mood altering drugs, overeaters are not as shunned or disparaged. Further, there is nothing comparable to the issues of body image that are always closely entwined with overeating and which are sometimes the focus of discussion in OA meetings. Body positivity is a current movement in which people embrace all shapes and sizes as equally valid. There are also people who are sexually attracted only to those who are overweight or obese. This external perspective can have an effect on how we perceive our own behaviors around food and may even cause some people to reconsider whether they need to lose weight or participate in a program like OA. I can’t think of anything similar when it comes to alcoholism or drug addiction.

My personal faith includes the world manifesting according to the plan of a higher power that may not have my abstinence from compulsive eating in mind. Just because I ask for better eating habits, that does not mean that my desire will be granted. What of people who die due to tragic circumstances? Why do people suffer in general? I have cried and begged to my higher power for sobriety, and it has not been granted.

For me, OA meetings are not enriching enough to make time for in my busy schedule. Virtually everyone at the meetings I attended were older retired and disabled women, none of whom worked. I did not find mutuality with them, not due to their different life stages, but because they did not have the same packed schedule as me. It was easy for them to attend multiple meetings per week and calmly remain connected with their higher power, while I could barely manage to make time in my schedule to relax and be mindful. I did not see them as people I could imitate, and my attempts at finding a sponsor yielded similar feelings.

Attendees also were not people I wanted to be around in general. In previous years when I weighed less, incidentally when unemployed and still on disability benefits, I achieved weight loss because I frequently went to the women’s gym in my neighborhood. I made friends and got support from people in a mutual and empowering way, and I improved my physical health by exercising in classes and in the weight room. This felt like a more proactive use of my time than sitting in a circle idly, talking about an ambiguous higher power with physically inactive older adults.

My past experiences have taught me the winning combination to fighting compulsive overeating: counting calories by writing my food intake down, eating healthy foods, and attending the gym at least three times a week. Although this proves more difficult today because I am busy with full-time work and graduate school, I now manage to go twice weekly. I hope to bump it up to three times in the near future.

Although OA is not compatible with my sense of higher power, my investigation into the 12 steps proved to be an enriching experience. Many people have found recovery with 12-step programs, and it is important for me to understand how specifically it transforms lives, especially as a social work student. When people talk to me about how it benefits them, I can empathize and identify on a fundamental level. The 12 steps also symbolize a spiritual progression, from chaos and despair to spiritual wisdom and groundedness. My sense of spirituality is somewhat congruent with these concepts.

I personally embrace harm reduction as the resolution to my compulsive overeating. This is the concept that complete abstinence needs not be the immediate goal of recovery, but rather that one can taper off by reducing the harm of current practices. This lends to taking a practical step-by-step approach to recovery, inviting the idea that recovery is a journey and not a destination.

Harm reduction also seems more forgiving and affirming. These days, addiction is not always characterized as a disease that one remains afflicted with for their entire life; it’s often considered a behavior that is rooted in the need to address a certain underlying condition, such as stress or trauma. Relapse and slip-ups merely fall in stride with the bigger picture of life, and it’s not helpful to think of it as all-or-nothing.

I hope to achieve recovery in the near future with my own eating, but I also need to celebrate what I have already. I have a loving family and a wonderful network of friends who are passionate about mental health and social work. I have achieved wellness despite my grave disability of schizoaffective disorder, and I am successfully completing more obligations than many can muster. Although weight loss is not happening now, I know that my higher power has the best plans for me in mind, and that I should have faith in everything unfolding in its due time.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2019
Stopping Booze Even Temporarily Has Health Benefits

Researchers found that taking a break from drinking helped reduce risk factors for cancer, diabetes and other health conditions.

Today, sobriety is trendy, and more and more people around the country are stepping away from alcohol and giving sober life a try. Anecdotes and research show that giving up booze can boost your happiness, help you lose weight and improve your liver health even if you’re just abstaining temporarily.

“The findings of these studies are actually very surprising,” Aaron White, the senior scientific adviser to the director at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told NPR.

White pointed to a study published in the British Medical Journal last year. Researchers concluded that taking a break from drinking helped reduce risk factors for cancer, diabetes and other health conditions.

“They found that at the end of that month — just after one month — people, by and large, lost some weight,” White said. “They had improvements in insulin sensitivity, their blood pressure numbers improved and their livers looked a little healthier.”

Another British study published in 2016 followed participants of “dry January.” Eighty-two percent of participants reported a sense of achievement, 62% reported better sleep and 49% said they had lost weight.

Stephanie Forte, who was sipping virgin cocktails at a Los Angeles bar recently, was not surprised by those results, since she had seen similar effects herself when she stopped drinking.

“Oh my gosh. Well, one thing that was noticeable to pretty much everybody was my overall health and, like, my skin, my eyes. … I lost weight,” she said.

Her friend Kathy Kuzniar lost 30 pounds and felt reinvigorated.

“I’m creative again,” she said. “And I know I wouldn’t be doing those things if I was still drinking.”

Forte said that she is seeing more and more people opt to stay sober, even when they are out among people who are using alcohol.

“Not everybody wants to get wasted when they go to the bar,” she said.

Chris Marshall, who has been sober for 12 years, wanted to give people the chance to have the same community experiences that they would have in bars or clubs, without the alcohol. He opened a sober bar in Austin that has seen great success.

“All my drinking was really centered around community and wanting that connection so badly with other people,” he said. His establishment, Sans Bar, gives people that opportunity. “What I want to create across the country are these little incubators for social connection.”

With that, people won’t need to explain their sobriety.

“You know, alcohol is the only drug in which you have to give a reason for why you don’t do it,” Marshall said.

View the original article at thefix.com

27 June 2019
California’s #Weedwise Campaign Aims To Combat Illegal Pot

The public information campaign will highlight the potential health risks of consuming illegal marijuana.

In an effort to stem California’s flourishing black market marijuana trade, the state’s cannabis regulatory bureau has launched a digital public information campaign called “Get #weedwise,” which will encourage consumers to buy marijuana products from licensed businesses.

The three-year, $1.7 million campaign, which kicked off June 21, is also intended as a warning to unlicensed businesses and growers, which will be targeted for shutdown as part of a larger campaign that is also focused on expediting business licenses.

The #weedwise campaign will be disseminated via ads on mobile phones and social media sites as well as billboards; Lori Ajax, chief of the state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control, which is overseeing the ads, noted that its focus will “directly impact consumer safety by clarifying that only cannabis purchased from licensed retailers has met the safety’s standards.”

Digital ads will detail health risks that can be incurred by purchasing illegal cannabis, including exposure to chemicals, mold, metals and even fecal matter.

Consumers who wish to confirm that their retailers of choice are licensed are directed to the state’s online database, where they can enter information about businesses by address or license number.

A confluence of high taxes and buyer loyalty to black market sources has helped to undercut California’s attempt to earn a revenue windfall from cannabis since Proposition 64 legalized it for recreational use in 2016.

Legal business owners have also complained to state officials about these issues, as well as a perceived lack of action against illegal businesses, which are estimated to number more than 1,000 in Los Angeles alone. However, the ad campaign has been largely met with a positive response.

“It’s overdue, said Virgil Grant, a dispensary owner and co-founder of California Minority Alliance, a cannabis industry group. “If consumers turn against unlicensed shops, then they can’t exist.”

Bureau spokesperson Alex Traverso told KOVR, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, that the Get #weedwise campaign is one part of a larger, three-pronged effort to curb illegal sales that will include the closure of illegal businesses and growers, and expediting licenses to business.

“When you have a government agency saying here’s how you know what’s legal and illegal, we feel like that’s a linchpin for success,” said Jerred Kiloh, president of the United Cannabis Business Alliance in Los Angeles.

View the original article at thefix.com

26 June 2019
Surgeons Are Still Prescribing Too Many Opioids

Though opioid prescriptions have declined, surgeons are still prescribing more than the recommended number of pills.

Surgeons are still prescribing far too many opioids to their patients following surgical procedures, increasing their risk of long-term opioid use or addiction.

According to a recent analysis by Kaiser Health News and Johns Hopkins, surgeons still prescribe many times the recommended amount of pain medications. By analyzing Medicare data, the researchers found that some patients who undergo coronary bypass and knee surgeries took home more than 100 pain pills for the first week following their operations. Thirty pills would be the maximum amount recommended by current standards, researchers noted.

Andrew Kolodny, director of the advocacy group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, said, “Prescribers should have known better.”

The researchers looked at data from 2011 to 2016. Even though opioid prescriptions started to decline during that time, the number of pills being prescribed was well above the recommended safe levels. Dr. Chad Brummett, associate professor at the University of Michigan, said that even if the prescription amounts have continued to fall since 2016 they are likely still too high.

“When prescribing may have been five to 20 times too high, even a reduction that is quite meaningful still likely reflects overprescribing,” he said.

Members of the medical community pointed out that surgeons were taught for years to mitigate pain by using opioids, but now they are being asked to drastically change the way they manage patients’ pain. Dr. David Hasleton, senior medical director in Utah said that it can be difficult to talk to doctors about their prescribing habits.

“Globally, we were overprescribing by 50%,” he said Dr. David Hasleton, senior medical director. “If you go to a prescriber to say, ‘You are overprescribing,’ it never goes well. A common reaction is, ‘Your data is wrong’ or ‘My patients are different than his.’”

In fact, that’s exactly what happened when Kaiser reached out to the top prescribers. Most didn’t comment, but some expressed surprise that they were prescribing more opioids than their colleagues. Others said that their patients are not at risk for long-term opioid use, although data shows that 6% of people who receive opioids after a surgery will go on to use them long term.

“I can absolutely tell you I don’t have even 1% who become long-term opioid users,” said Nebraska surgeon Janet Grange.

Oregon surgeon Audrey Garrett, was surprised to learn that she was a top prescriber, and equally surprised to hear that 6% of patients given opioids will develop long-term use.

“That is a shocking number,” she said. “If it’s true, it’s something we need to educate physicians on much earlier in their medical careers.”

View the original article at thefix.com

26 June 2019
Debate Swells Over Medical Marijuana And Gun Ownership

Currently it is illegal to possess both marijuana and a legal firearm, even if you are using marijuana for a medical purpose.

“Is allowing the combination of high-powered pot and gun use a good idea?” queries Alex Halperin of The Guardian.

This debate is no joke. It involves the clashing of numerous contentious elements—federal marijuana prohibition, state marijuana legalization, the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution and growing tension around gun policy as Americans have numbed to the frequency of mass killings.

Currently it is illegal to possess both marijuana and a legal firearm, even if you are using marijuana for a medical purpose. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) made this clear in a 2011 Open Letter to All Federal Firearms Licensees:

“Federal law prohibits any person who is an ‘unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance’ from shipping, transporting, receiving or possessing firearms or ammunition… There are no exceptions in Federal law for marijuana purportedly used for medicinal purposes, even if such use is sanctioned by State law.”

The same goes for anyone selling or providing firearms or ammunition to people who use marijuana.

Marijuana remains a controlled substance—i.e. a prohibited drug—in the eyes of the federal government. Under the Controlled Substances Act marijuana is defined as having no medical value and a high potential for abuse.

Some see this rule as a violation of their constitutional right to bear arms. In April, the governor of Oklahoma signed House Bill 2612, barring state or local agencies from denying medical marijuana patients “the right to own, purchase or possess a firearm just because they’re a medical marijuana patient.”

And a federal bill introduced in the House of Representatives (also this past April), H.R. 2071, would extend this protection across all states where medical marijuana use is legal.

“Why am I going to give up one of my rights because I found an organic plant that some are uncomfortable with? I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to trade my rights like baseball cards,” said Joshua Raines, a 31-year-old Army veteran, according to the Dallas News.

Using CBD oil reduced the number of Raines’ seizures from up to 40 per month to just two or three. But he’s opted to stay out of Texas’ Compassionate Use Program, which allows CBD for intractable epilepsy, because he does not want to give up his right to purchase a firearm. So according to state policy, Raines’ use of medical marijuana is illegal.

Halperin suggests that with the current lack of sufficient research on the effects of marijuana (due to the fact that it is restricted by the federal government) allowing marijuana users access to firearms may “exacerbate” gun violence in the U.S.—though he does acknowledge the anecdotal evidence that medical marijuana has helped many people including Raines.

As access to marijuana—both medical and recreational—expands as more states legalize it, the debate will also grow from here.

View the original article at thefix.com

26 June 2019