prescription // Current TV

Operation Whatever U Want

For people from Niagara Falls, today is a big day. This guy has been out of control... more

teknicolorstatic
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8 Most Abused Prescription Drugs

There’s no doubt that prescription drugs have changed the face of medicine and... more

sunnyspeaks
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Celebrity Doctors and their Responsibilities

In light of recent celebrity prescription drug overdoses, the panel discusses to what... more

perspectives
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1 year ago
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Medical Marijuana

Robert Shia asks the panel if medical marijuana should be legalized in the U.S.

perspectives
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Unemployed and uninsured: how to afford your prescriptions

If you are out of work and your COBRA is gone, read this to get hope and learn how you... more

Glenn_Osrin
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ACLU sues Wal-Mart for firing employee using medical marijuana

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart for the termination of a Michigan employee whose doctor verified his illness qualified for medical marijuana use.

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, fired Joseph Casias in November 2009 after he failed an on-the-job injury-related drug test. Casias suffers from a rare form of cancer in his nasal cavity and brain, and he relied on his doctor's medical marijuana prescription to alleviate the daily pain. Casias is one of about 20,000 legal medical marijuana users in Michigan.

"Medical marijuana has had a life-changing positive effect for Joseph, but Wal-Mart made him pay a stiff and unfair price for his medicine," said Scott Michelman, staff attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project.

"No patient should be forced to choose between adequate pain relief and gainful employment, and no employer should be allowed to intrude upon private medical choices made by employees in consultation with their doctors," Michelman said.

Wal-Mart officials say they are sympathetic to Casias' condition, but the company needed to put the safety of its customers and associates first.

"As more states allow this treatment, employers are left without any guidelines except the federal standard," wrote Lorenzo Lopez, a director of media relations at Wal-Mart, in an e-mail to CNN. "In these cases, until further guidance is available, we will always default to what we believe is the safest environment for our associates and customers."

The ACLU's lawsuit, filed in Calhoun County Circuit Court in Michigan, comes at a time when the controversy over medical marijuana is still being debated in many states. To date, 14 states have laws allowing the use of medical marijuana, which protect legal users from criminalization. But the laws are murky when it comes to protecting users from termination by their employers in some states.

Casias told CNN in March that he never arrived at work high and used the medical marijuana only outside of his work hours.

Michigan is an at-will employment state, which means employers can terminate a worker for any reason except for being in a federally protected class such as race, gender and religion. The ACLU is arguing legal medical marijuana users should also be protected under a Michigan law.

"I was angry they did this to me because I always tried my best," Casias said to CNN in March. He had worked for Wal-Mart for nearly five years to support his wife and two young children. He started at the company as a grocery store stocker in 2004 before moving up to become an inventory control manager. He earned an Associate of the Year Award at Wal-Mart in 2008, a year before his termination.

He has battled with his cancer for more than a decade. The lawsuit says the medical marijuana was able to provide him with pain relief.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/06/29/medical.marijuana.walmart.lawsuit/?hpt=SbinThe American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart for the... more

Chad_Pearce
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1 year ago
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CONTROLLED PRESCRIPTION DRUGS VERSUS MEDICAL MARIJUANA « doctorK's blog

The National debate concerning the legalization of marijuana and, especially, of medical marijuana, continues to rage not just within the general public, but also including special groups of people like mothers and Baby Boomers. Within the Facebook community the groups such as “Moms for Marijuana” and “Baby Boomers for Medical Marijuana” have as their primary goal educating people, challenging the preconceived ideas and battling ignorance with the only effective weapon against it – Knowledge.

I worked in addictions for almost 10 years, and my addiction medicine experience encompasses general drug-addiction clinics, methadone maintenance programs and “detox” and “rehab” departments of a general hospital. I am also certified by the American Society of Addiction Medicine since 2004. My addiction medicine education and experience unequivocally indicate that it is a gross scientific fallacy to classify marijuana in the same group with heroin and cocaine. It is also my opinion that marijuana is much safer than alcohol and most controlled prescription drugs. However, when such an “unorthodox” opinion is expressed, people have the right to know what exactly it is based on.

Let’s begin with the known fact that there has never been one single case of a fatality associated with marijuana use, and it has been used by humans for over 10,000 years for both medicinal and recreational purposes. How many substances do we know that fit this characterization? Not many, I assure you, especially when we look among substances used as medicine or even for recreational purposes. Even such over-the-counter remedies as Aspirin and Tylenol can produce severe organ damage and fatal outcomes when the “toxic” dose of these substances is ingested. But there are no known cases of fatal marijuana intoxication because amazingly, the cannabinoid receptors, as opposed to opiate receptors, for example, are quite scarce in close proximity to the vital centers in the brain stem, the centers responsible for breathing and circulation. With marijuana use sleep will supervene long before any dangerously “toxic” effects can take place.

Now let’s look at such dangerous consequences of alcohol, heroin and controlled prescription drugs as physical dependence and associated physical withdrawal syndrome. No one will venture to deny that alcohol, opiates, barbiturates and benzodiazepines produce severe physical dependence with (frequently life-long) methadone maintenance therapy that becomes necessary for opiate addicts and the well-known cycles of the “revolving doors” of “detoxes” and “rehabs” for benzodiazepine addicts. In fact, the benzodiazepine/methadone combination is so dangerous that some physicians (who are, thankfully, in the minority) seriously believe that such a combination is more dangerous than heroin itself, and will deny methadone maintenance to patients using those substances. As we know, benzodiazepine withdrawal is very similar to alcohol withdrawal, and it is characterized by hallucinations, severe anxiety, seizures and even death. Opiate withdrawal is generally not life-threatening, but it sure is brutal. It is easy to see why I so strenuously object to current DEA classification system, and urge my colleagues do the same. It makes no scientific sense at all to classify the substance like marijuana which has neither a documented physical withdrawal, nor any fatalities associated with its use as Schedule I (which totally ignores the remarkable medicinal properties of Cannabis Sativa, but this is another matter), while classifying Codeine as Schedule III and benzodiazepines as Schedule IV. What better ally could I wish for than the American Medical Association itself which now not only recognizes the medicinal properties of the Cannabis plant, but also urges the Government to change its classification from Schedule I drug, while the Canadian veterans already won the right to have this natural remedy paid for by their government!

Let’s look more closely at the main argument that the marijuana “opponents” offered (at least until very recently) as their “trump card” objection to the legalization of that substance. This objection is based upon the so-called “gateway drug” theory that basically states that, even if marijuana is not dangerous in itself, it serves as a “gateway drug” to the use of other, much more dangerous substances. This “theory” is by now discredited by the science of addiction medicine as invalid. Here are the reasons why. There is no “cause and effect” relationship between a substance use and a subsequent addiction to another substance. Most of us have tasted alcohol, consumed caffeinated beverages, eaten sweet foods or even smoked cigarettes, but we have not “progressed” to being cocaine or heroin addicts as a result. As Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook explains, most people who are addicted to anything became addicted not because they had used some “gateway” drug, but because they are somehow genetically prone to this or that particular addiction, such as alcoholism, for example. People don’t become alcoholics because they may have smoked a joint that “led” them to alcohol abuse, they are alcoholics because they have a genetic predisposition to become dependent on that particular substance. The opiate addicts whom I treated for many years began their addiction careers not because they were exposed to marijuana, but either as a result of a primary exposure to heroin, or as a result of opiates having been prescribed to them by medical professionals. Here we deal with yet another aspect of this story – the substance’s addiction liability, or the percentage of people who develop an addiction-spectrum disorder after an exposure to a particular substance. Marijuana has an addiction liability of 3%, compared with 10% for alcohol, 18% for cocaine, up to 21% for opiates, and between 50 and 75% for nicotine. This is why even our President has such trouble quitting cigarettes out of all the substances that he had “tried” while a young man. This constitutes yet another big reason why the classification of marijuana as the Schedule I substance is nothing short of ridiculous. It was recently discovered that the same brain centers become activated when a person is craving sugar and cocaine. Are we now to consider sugar as a “gateway drug” to cocaine? Well, this would follow if the so-called “gateway drug” theory were valid. But it is not valid. A colleague whom I befriended on Facebook brought up an interesting question; he pointed out that most patients in “detoxes” and “rehabs” smoke cigarettes, and this is very true. This alone would invalidate the “gateway drug” theory in my opinion.

I believe that we, as medical professionals, should not be puppets to the DEA and its outdated and scientifically faulty scheduling classifications. Without brave doctors, and nurses, and researchers who are not afraid to stand up and proclaim the scientific truths we would never have legalized medical marijuana in one single State. Let me point out something more: if marijuana had even a fraction of the dangers caused by alcohol, we would not be having this conversation at all. But we ARE having this conversation, and it is a necessary conversation, just as it was a necessary conversation during the days long passed, when the courageous thinkers of those days asserted, often sacrificing their own safety, that the EARTH IS NOT FLAT.The National debate concerning the legalization of marijuana and, especially, of... more

Monkey_Films
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2 years ago
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All of Us Use Drugs, But Only Some of Us Go to Jail | | AlterNet

Despite a $40 billion a year "war on drugs," our country is swimming in them. They aren't going anywhere.
May 22, 2010 |

Despite a $40 billion a year "war on drugs" that is premised on the goal of creating a "drug-free society," our country is swimming in drugs.

Most people start using drugs before they even leave the house in the morning. Yes, that first cup of coffee is what many of us need to start the day. The next drug that millions of Americans use, sometimes up to 20 times a day, is our nicotine! And then, after a long day of work, many of us head to a local bar or to our refrigerator and pour ourselves a cocktail, ice cold beer or a nice glass of wine.

And I'm just getting started. There are over 100 million Americans who have used marijuana. Thirty years after Nancy Reagan told us to "Just Say No," half of high-school seniors will try marijuana and 75% will try alcohol before they graduate. And what about the college students who use Ritalin to help them focus and put in long hours at the library? And how about all of the superstar athletes who use performance enhancing substances? What about all of the men (and women) who are deeply grateful forthe "little blue pill"? And how about the businessmen who stay up until three in the morning with the help of a "little bump"?

Drugs are so popular because people use them for both pleasure and for pain. Drugs can be fun. How many of us enjoy having some drinks and going out dancing? How many of us enjoy a little smoke after a nice dinner with friends? Many people bond with others or find inspiration alone while under the influence of drugs. On the flip side, many people self-medicate to try to ease the pain in their lives. How many have us have had too much to drink to drown our sorrows over a breakup or some other painful event? How many of us smoke cigarettes or take prescription drugs to deal with anxiety or stress? Throughout recorded history, people have inevitably altered their consciousness to fall asleep, wake up, deal with stress, and for creative and spiritual purposes.

While it is clear that drug use doesn't discriminate and the majority of us are using one drug or another, the reality is that the war on drug users does discriminate. More than 1.8 million people are arrested every year on nonviolent drug charges. In New York City, "moderate" Mayor Bloomberg's police arrested close to 50,000 people for marijuana possession in 2009 - and 87% of those arrested were black and Latino, despite similar rates of marijuana use as whites. The reason for the discrepancy is that the NYPD stops and frisks blacks and Latinos - but not white people. Last week the New York Times ran a front page story that showed blacks and Latinos were nine times more likely to be frisked than whites.

The racist enforcement of drug laws is not limited to just New York or just marijuana. Thanks to the mass incarceration of people for nonviolent drug law violations, the U.S. is the world's leading jailer. The U.S. has 5% of the world's population but has 25% of the world's prison population. Nationally, blacks are 13 times more likely to be incarcerated on drug charges as whites, despite similar rates of drug use.Despite a $40 billion a year "war on drugs," our country is swimming in... more

Monkey_Films
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2 years ago
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The Future Will Be Medicated

Welcome to the future — pop a pill and have a nice day.

Surfing the net over my cup of coffee, I dug up a mainstream article that painted a grim picture of American mental health. According to USA Today, the number of Americans taking antidepressants in 2005 was 27 million people, or 10% of the entire population of our country – and this was five years ago, before the government looted our economy. The 2005 number doubled from 1996, so I hesitate to imagine what it’s at now.

Since depression is caused by stress, I figured I’d dust off a dictionary and find out what stress was. Of course I had a general idea, but I wanted an exact definition. It turns out that stress is “the consequence of the failure of an organism “human or animal” to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined.”

Now it makes sense. First we were subjected to 9/11 and Iraq War II, two imagined threats that our own government made actual by carrying out a false flag operation and playing the role of the ruthless warlord aggressor. Next, that same government turned the U.S. into a surveillance grid prison planet, shattering our personal privacy along with the Bill of Rights this country was founded on. Always under the electronic eye, we have become suspects in our own homes and streets, in the places we shop and work. And it’s not a game – the authority on the other end of those cameras has the power to lock us in a dark dungeon and throw away the key.

At this level of stress, it’s a wonder any of us can still form a coherent sentence. We should be drooling in our cereal bowls, vacant eyes gazing out the kitchen window at the heavily chemtrailed sky. The reason many of us are still sane has more to do with pharmaceuticals than emotional fortitude, but this is to be expected. Aldous Huxley spelled it out for us in Brave New World – the future will be medicated. In 1984, Orwell described a dystopia which thrived on madness, where nervous breakdown was the watchword and citizens grew old before their time. Welcome to the future – pop a pill and have a nice day.

But what kind of sanity do pharmaceuticals provide? The drugs themselves are often times more dangerous than the conditions they claim to cure. According to the dictionary, we need to respond appropriately to these emotional and physical threats to relieve our stress, and the best and perhaps only way to do this is to educate ourselves and then learn how to peacefully say the word no to tyranny. This can prove stressful too, but at least we’ll be confronting the issue directly instead of attempting to escape psychological trauma by swallowing a happy pill.

For those of you who can’t escape the clutches of antidepressants, don’t be too hard on yourselves – it’s actually not your fault. This was done to you by Controllers who are very good at their jobs, and as citizens we do what we can to cope with the nightmare our once-beautiful country has become.

Bryan DiTolvo
Infowars.com
March 26, 2010Welcome to the future — pop a pill and have a nice day. Surfing the net over... more

rodstradamus
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2 years ago
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Keep your hands off our hormones people

Seeing that trans-people often depend on hormones, there is often the fear of them... more

transreporter
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2 years ago
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Misdiagnosed

A collection of my prescriptions after 3 years of being misdiagnosed, arranged into a... more

greggleason
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Weapons of Mass Prescription

Mike Adams, The Health Major www.naturalnews.com March 1, 2010 Weapons of Mass... more

rodstradamus
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Autopsy Results!!! Coroner: Pneumonia, drugs killed Brittany Murphy

Coroner: Pneumonia, drugs killed Brittany Murphy By ANTHONY McCARTNEY AP... more

ctpatriot1970
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2 years ago
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Prescription narcotics cause more deaths than both heroin and cocaine

I wonder how much this would happen if Big Pharma and doctors were held responsible... more

Monkey_Films
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2 years ago
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13 comments

Prescription pill found in child's homemade brownie

A bad batch of brownies sent two children to the hospital in Medford. The... more

HowdyDo
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2 years ago
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21 Websites to Get Prescription Payment Assistance

For individuals and families already struggling with finances, a devastating diagnosis... more

eva2
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I Made A Spectacle Of Myself!

Wearing glasses suck. You have to squint to see someone, if you’re bald, you... more

jrn
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2 years ago
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Keith Olberman dedicates entire episode of Countdown to Healthcare Reform Special Comment

This is amazing.

asherp
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2 years ago
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41 comments

Get longer lashes!

Thanks big Pharma for yet another pointless product for us to make fun of.

EdJoyProductions
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2 years ago
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Pharmacist Filled Prescriptions Incorrectly

Connecticut officials are accusing a Bridgeport pharmacist of filling more than two... more

ebindelglass
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2 years ago
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