Lest We Forget...

[The Digital Nomad]

http://realneo.us/va-difficult-position-300000-brain-damaged-veterans-may-need-illegal-marijuana

 

The article is heavy reading about the USA fixation on pills and its prohibition of marijuana as medicine. It will effect more new patients in the future if we do not stop the pills now. - DN

 

"The arguments around marijuana and PTSD start running in circles at a certain point. Scientists say more research is needed. Activists counter that the federal government has blocked research because marijuana is illegal. The American Medical Association has called for controlled studies to settle this and other questions about the effectiveness of marijuana."

--

 

"

February 12, 2011 New York Times feature - For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results:

 

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

 

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

 

But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers, are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems, among them drug dependency, suicide and fatal accidents — sometimes from the interaction of the drugs themselves.

 

"

 

"Thousands of troops struggle with insomnia, anxiety and chronic pain — a combination that is particularly treacherous to treat with medications. Pairing a pain medication like oxycodone, a narcotic, with an anti-anxiety drug like Xanax, a so-called benzodiazepine, amplifies the tranquilizing effects of both, doctors say.

 

Similarly, antidepressants like Prozac or Celexa block liver enzymes that help break down narcotics and anxiety drugs, extending their effects.

 

“The sedation is not necessarily two plus two is four,” said Cmdr. Rosemary Malone, a Navy forensic psychiatrist. “It could be synergistic. So two plus two could be five.”

 

Regarding the scope of this crisis, a General watching his troops turned into pill-junkies told the Times:

 

“I’m not a doctor, but there is something inside that tells me the fewer of these things we prescribe, the better off we’ll be,” Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army who has led efforts on suicide, said in an interview."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13drugs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp

 

--

 

"RESOLVED, That our AMA support review of marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance, its reclassification into a more appropriate schedule, and revision of the current protocol for obtaining research-grade marijuana so that it conforms to the same standards established for obtaining every other scheduled drug for legitimate research purposes; and be it further"

 

--

 

we are still at war, with pill pushers. Will we let them shove more pills into us? Make more money pushing dangerous drugs, while a safer alternative is kept illegal only because corporates and governments are afraid they will lose their control over us.

 

-DN

[bobandtorey]

i go to the V.A all the time and see the long lines for their pills i was glad that the V.A is OK with mmj at first they were not they new that if they did not change their ways people would not get their pills the V.A could not let that happen