Trump II

[Schewe]

There you go. That's all someone needs to know about addiction. Don't cross. I didn't.

Uh huh...so that makes you what, something super human?

The great and powerful Slobodan Blagojevic is immune from becoming an addict or alcoholic, right?

Then you just proved you don't understand addiction and alcoholism. It just hasn't happened to you...lucky you.

How about anybody in your family? Any friends? Ever lost anybody to addiction or alcoholism? Unless you can answer yes, then quit talking about something you don't know about.

[Alan Klein]

There you go. That's all someone needs to know about addiction. Don't cross. I didn't.

And where did you find that I advocate treating addicts like criminals? I specifically said "legitimize all drugs." That would take the crime out on both sides, suppliers and users.

I think an in-between approach is better.   Don't legalize as that will increase the addiction rates, especially with youngsters.  That would be bad for the individual and society.  However, government should provide assistance to the user as an alternative to jailing him.  This enlightened approach is happening in jurisdictions around the country.   

[Schewe]

If you a specific solution, I'd love to hear it.  Frankly, I think it's a difficult problem that won't find an easy solution.

Well, read the PDF from the commission:

Here are the highlights...

Rapidly increase treatment capacity. Grant waiver approvals for all 50 states to quickly eliminate barriers to treatment resulting from the federal Institutes for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion within the Medicaid program. This will immediately open treatment to thousands of Americans in existing facilities in all 50 states.

Mandate prescriber education initiatives with the assistance of medical and dental schools across the country to enhance prevention efforts. Mandate medical education training in opioid prescribing and risks of developing an SUD by amending the Controlled Substance Act to require all Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registrants to take a course in proper treatment of pain. HHS should work with partners to ensure additional training opportunities, including continuing education courses for professionals.

Immediately establish and fund a federal incentive to enhance access to Medication- Assisted Treatment (MAT). Require that all modes of MAT are offered at every licensed MAT facility and that those decisions are based on what is best for the patient. Partner with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the industry to facilitate testing and development of new MAT treatments.

Provide model legislation for states to allow naloxone dispensing via standing orders, as well as requiring the prescribing of naloxone with high-risk opioid prescriptions; we must equip all law enforcement in the United States with naloxone to save lives.

Prioritize funding and manpower to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Customs and Border Protection, the DOJ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the DEA to quickly develop fentanyl detection sensors and disseminate them to federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Support federal legislation to staunch the flow of deadly synthetic opioids through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

Provide federal funding and technical support to states to enhance interstate data sharing among state-based prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) to better track patient-specific prescription data and support regional law enforcement in cases of controlled substance diversion. Ensure federal health care systems, including Veteran’s Hospitals, participate in state-based data sharing.

Better align, through regulation, patient privacy laws specific to addiction with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to ensure that information about SUDs be made available to medical professionals treating and prescribing medication to a patient. This could be done through the bipartisan Overdose Prevention and Patient Safety Act/Jessie’s Law.

Enforce the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) with a standardized parity compliance tool to ensure health plans cannot impose less favorable benefits for mental health and substance use diagnoses verses physical health diagnoses.

Those are some of the suggestions AFTER the first and primary suggestion of declaring a national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act.

This crisis and make no mistake it's a crisis that was first caused by the promotion by pharmaceutical companies making widespread use of lobbyist groups in their efforts to encourage opioid prescribing practices to medical professionals. The pharma industry vastly understated the risk of addiction and overpromised the patient benefits and really downplayed the side effects of opioids. The major players, 5 companies, are under a Senate probe but there's big pushback by lobbyists (why else do you think Trump ignored the call for a declaring a national emergency–which would put a thumping on opioid sales...

Opioid epidemic: Senate committee opens probe of five big painkiller makers

A Senate committee is investigating whether practices at five of the top makers of opioids in the United States fueled an epidemic of painkiller abuse that has led to the fatal overdoses of tens of thousands of Americans.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on Tuesday sent letters to the companies seeking information about sales and marketing materials, internal studies on addictions, details on their compliance with legal settlements and donations to advocacy groups.

The companies are Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson's Janssen division, Insys, Mylan and Depomed. McCaskill is the ranking Democrat on the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The worst offender is Purdue Products who have been accused of engaging in deceptive marketing practices that have helped fuel a national opioid addiction epidemic. Heck even New Hampshire (Trump's drug-infested den) is suing: New Hampshire sues OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over opioid marketing practices

New Hampshire sued OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma on Tuesday, becoming the latest state or local government to accuse the drugmaker of engaging in deceptive marketing practices that have helped fuel a national opioid addiction epidemic.

The lawsuit filed in Merrimack County Superior Court claimed that Purdue Pharma significantly downplayed the risk of addiction posed by OxyContin and engaged in marketing practices that "opened the floodgates" to opioid use and abuse.

The complaint said the Stamford, Connecticut-based company spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s on misleading marketing that has also overstated the benefits of opioids for treating chronic, rather than short-term, pain.

The solution to the problem is actually easier to find if you actually know what the problem is and who caused it. So yeah, Trump screwed the pooch and let his Trump Red States down by NOT declaring a national state of emergency...

[Alan Klein]

Jeff, Many of the recommendations you listed regarding the opiod problem have to do with law enforcement.  I suspect that Trump would support those.

regarding, the other recommendations of how doctors should handle these drugs, etc, I'm not clear as to the recommendations.

As I see the problem, opiods like OxyContin are being prescribed by doctors to relieve very painful medical conditions.  The patient may get hooked and either wants the doctors to continue the pain mediation or winds up buying illegal substances on the street to satisfy his "addiction". 

The main issue to me seems to be at the moment a doctor prescribes the initial medication.  Should we prevent the doctor from prescribing it?  Should we change the guidelines when it can be prescribed? What are those guidelines?  What do we do if the patient become addicted?  The guidelines you posted don't go into those details. 

[Schewe]

While I seriously doubt Trump would ever consider this, decriminalization CAN work if it's combined with addiction treatment, rehab and social support.

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Make no mistake, being addicted to drugs and alcohol sucks and can ruin your life even if it's not a crime. But it's far better to HELP people than LOCK THEM UP. And to those who would say that decriminalization will result in increased drug use, it didn't for the primary reason is people ended up getting help with their problem and addiction treatment can work and allow people to get their lives back and become a useful member of society again.

[Alan Klein]

While I seriously doubt Trump would ever consider this, decriminalization CAN work if it's combined with addiction treatment, rehab and social support.

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?

Make no mistake, being addicted to drugs and alcohol sucks and can ruin your life even if it's not a crime. But it's far better to HELP people than LOCK THEM UP. And to those who would say that decriminalization will result in increased drug use, it didn't for the primary reason is people ended up getting help with their problem and addiction treatment can work and allow people to get their lives back and become a useful member of society again.

Jeff, as I mentioned in my earlier posts, jurisdictions throughout the country are offering rehabilitation.  However, the reason people go into rehabilitation is because drug use or selling drugs are illegal.  If the addict faces jail time, he more likely to opt for a rehabilitation program that is offered.  In many jurisdictions today, their are Drug Courts rather than criminal courts where judges are familiar with addiction issues.  Even if a addict relapses, they continue to work with him with rehab programs rather than sending him to jail. 

However, without the stick, he'd just keep on using.  So the threat of jail time helps rather than impedes.  Also, criminal records are expunged after a period of time if the addict stays clean.  So they can become a full member of society again. 

Frankly, I don't think the Feds should get involved in this part of program leaving it up to the states and local jurisdictions to handle it.  The feds could provide money, but not direct rules especially since jail time is usually a local issue anyway.  The feds should get involved in establishing procedures for prescriptions of legal opioids however.  It's not clear to me what those procedures should be.

[Schewe]

The main issue to me seems to be at the moment a doctor prescribes the initial medication.  Should we prevent the doctor from prescribing it?  Should we change the guidelines when it can be prescribed? What are those guidelines?  What do we do if the patient become addicted?  The guidelines you posted don't go into those details.

Read the article about New Hampshire suing OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s on misleading marketing that has also overstated the benefits of opioids for treating chronic, rather than short-term, pain. Yes, you can use opioids for a few days to treat short-term pain but if you go for more than a few days or weeks, you become addicted–at a much higher rate than Purdue Pharma let on.

Entire graduating classes of medical schools since the 1990's have been told that patients need relief from pain–and I agree, but if the pain lasts more than a short while, then there's other medical problems involved and the opioids are likely masking the problem–or the patient is addicted.

Getting addiction treatment early offers far better outcomes than after a patient is a long time addict, you would agree right? So, shouldn't doctors be taught how to spot signs of addiction? You would think they would be but in general, they aren't unless they specialize in addiction treatment.

As far as a patient's right to pain relief, in terminal cases, I absolutely agree...if somebody has a terminal disease like cancer that causes a lot of pain, hell, give them anything they want including opioids, medical marijuana, alcohol, meditation, massage or anything that eases their last days, weeks or months of life.

But terminal patients aren't the ones with long term opioid addiction that transition to illegal drugs when their doctors finally catch on and quit writing scripts...heck if the doctors could quit over prescribing in the first place or put addicted patients in early treatment we wouldn't be having this conversation...

[Schewe]

However, without the stick, he'd just keep on using.  So the threat of jail time helps rather than impedes.

No, it turns addicts into criminals...did you even bother to read the Time article about Portugal?

Addicts have a disease...you don't treat a disease by putting addicts in jail.

Frankly, I don't think the Feds should get involved in this part of program leaving it up to the states and local jurisdictions to handle it. 

Because the states have shown such an excellent track record of dealing with the problem that the commission wanted Trump to declare a national state of emergency?

The locals and states are asking for federal help...so, what, just tell them to fix it themselves–and here's some money to throw at it?

Heck the DOJ is gonna try to shut down legal marijuana (which ironically could be very useful for opioid addiction treatment) which is a case where the Feds SHOULD let the states decide.

Legalized Marijuana Could Help Curb the Opioid Epidemic, Study Finds

In states that legalized medical marijuana, U.S. hospitals failed to see a predicted influx of pot smokers, but in an unexpected twist, they treated far fewer opioid users, a new study shows.

Hospitalization rates for opioid painkiller dependence and abuse dropped on average 23 percent in states after marijuana was permitted for medicinal purposes, the analysis found. Hospitalization rates for opioid overdoses dropped 13 percent on average.

At the same time, fears that legalization of medical marijuana would lead to an uptick in cannabis-related hospitalizations proved unfounded, according to the report in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

“Instead, medical marijuana laws may have reduced hospitalizations related to opioid pain relievers,” said study author Yuyan Shi, a public health professor at the University of California, San Diego.

“This study and a few others provided some evidence regarding the potential positive benefits of legalizing marijuana to reduce opioid use and abuse, but they are still preliminary,” she said in an email.

Somebody should clue in Sessions and Price–maybe cut back on the anti-marijuana rhetoric?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Trump's 'fire and fury' North Korea remark surprised aides: officials

QUOTE  August 9, 2017 / 7:41 PM  "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's vow to respond with "fire and fury" if North Korea persisted in threatening the United States caught his foreign policy and military aides by surprise, two administration officials with direct knowledge of how the issue unfolded said on Wednesday.

"President Trump's comment was unplanned and spontaneous,” said a senior administration official who deals with the Korea issue and who requested anonymity.

The comment was "all Trump," said another administration official who, like the first, requested anonymity.

Both officials said Trump, known for his off-the-cuff remarks, had not run that language by his senior aides beforehand.

At an event on Tuesday on the topic of Americans over-using opioids, Trump said: "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

U.S. officials and analysts cautioned against engaging in rhetorical shouting matches with Pyongyang, which in turn said it was considering a strategy to fire missiles at the U.S.-held Pacific island of Guam, where there is a military air base. "


The man is a danger to his country. Shouting matches will not lead to anything useful. On the contrary.

Cheers,
Bart

[Schewe]

Uh no Donald, it was Obama and not you who set the modernizing of the the nation’s nuclear arsenal in place. But, what else is new, Trump lies again?

Fact-checking Donald Trump's misleading tweet about U.S. nuclear arsenal

Donald J. Trump  ✔ @realDonaldTrump
My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before....
6:56 AM - Aug 9, 2017

Our ruling
Trump said, "My first order as president was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before."

What Trump did shortly after taking office was neither his first order nor a unique action; every new president in recent years has requested a Nuclear Posture Review. In addition, the ongoing nuclear modernization plan -- which dates back to the Obama administration and will take decades to complete -- would not have notched achievements in six months sufficient to be characterized as "far stronger and more powerful than ever before."

We rate the statement False.

[Schewe]

Trump's 'fire and fury' North Korea remark surprised aides: officials

Maybe so, but the White House is apparently telling people not to pay attention to what Trump said...

WHITE HOUSE URGES WORLD TO IGNORE DONALD TRUMP


Doesn't know what he's saying, apparently.

Apparently North Korea shouldn’t “read too much into” the president’s “fire and fury” comments.

Yesterday, four days into his 17-day “working vacation” at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, Donald Trump took a break from his whatever it is he is doing to aggressively threaten North Korea, a country not typically known for having a thick skin. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump told reporters during a meeting that was ostensibly focused on America’s opioid crisis. “They will be met with fire and fury and, frankly, power the likes of which the world has never seen before.” Earlier in the day, The Washington Post had reported that the Hermit Kingdom has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead, allowing it to be fitted on a missile. The news was terrifying enough on its own without Trump ad-libbing his response. The Dow Jones, perhaps unsurprisingly, faltered for the first time in days, breaking its 10-session winning streak amid mushrooming headlines like, “Can SF plan for surviving a North Korean nuclear strike?” World leaders, too, were on edge. The comments were “not helpful in an environment that is very tense,” New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English told the Guardian. In a statement, China’s foreign ministry advised both the U.S. and North Korea to avoid using “any words or actions” that would further inflame the situation. Even Senator John McCain, who has rarely met a potential war he didn’t like, denounced Trump’s rhetoric as unhelpful.

According to the White House, however, the whole “fire and fury” thing is getting completely blown out of proportion because the media, and the international community, are making the mistake of taking whatever Trump says literally.

Politico’s Josh Dawsey reports that individuals close to the situation have said not to “read too much into” anything the president said on Tuesday. Inside the West Wing, the language was not taken “too seriously,” either. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, en route to Guam, which North Korea had just threatened to bomb in retaliation, also said there was nothing to worry about. “I think Americans should sleep well at night,” he said. “Nothing I have seen and nothing I know of would indicate that situation has dramatically changed in the last 24 hours.”

[Chris Kern]

Trump's 'fire and fury' North Korea remark surprised aides: officials. . . .

The man is a danger to his country. Shouting matches will not lead to anything useful. On the contrary.

Two insecure fat guys with funny haircuts screaming bellicose threats at each other through their respective news media: isn't that the classic definition of diplomacy?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Maybe so, but the White House is apparently telling people not to pay attention to what Trump said...

No worries about that, the rest of the world stopped taking Trump serious some time ago. The IMHO worrying part is that the USA will not be taken seriously either when there actually might be a reason to do so ...

Cheers,
Bart

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

To clarify a bit further, the concerns of the 'rest of the world' including some of the WH staff, is also mentioned in the afore mentioned Reuters article.

QUOTE  Being a White House national security staffer is a tough job in the most ideal of circumstances. But if colleagues are afraid of backstabbing or unable to establish productive working relationships with one another, the environment becomes unbearable. In their respective memoirs, former Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta both griped about how coordination between the U.S. national security bureaucracies can be slowed or stopped over personality differences and individual self-interest.

This is why all of the staff changes, resignations, and score-settling in the media between top NSC and White House officials in the Trump administration are so concerning. If left unchecked, the healthy competition and inter-personal rivalries that often give the president more policy options can breed mistrust, hindering workflow and coordination. The NSC must nip this problem in the bud before it grows any worse and negatively impacts the president’s work.

The past few weeks of NSC activity have been so dizzying that it is becoming difficult to monitor who retains the confidence of the president and who is falling out of favor. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, the man at the top of the hierarchy for ensuring the president is properly briefed, has removed several officials he believed were either undermining his authority or suspected of leaking to the press. Derek Harvey, the NSC's top Middle East adviser, was shown the door in late July and reassigned to another part of the government. Rich Higgins, the man responsible for strategic planning at the NSC, was let go after distributing a controversial memo about government bureaucrats allegedly attempting to destroy Trump's agenda. Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior intelligence director, who the intelligence community considered too inexperienced and too close to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, is no longer working in the White House. The staff turnover is apparently something McMaster views as a necessity in order to streamline the process and eliminate threats to his own power.

Even more disconcerting than the resignations and firings, however, is the ongoing smear campaign against McMaster himself, a three-star Army general who has served his country with distinction in numerous war zones across multiple deployments over a span of decades.



And this is only one part of the Administration's personnel policy. I've read that many /most vacancies do not even have proposed candidates for the continuity of doing ordinary business as usual.

QUOTE " However, the difference between those instances and the current one is that all of the other administrations had a relatively orderly - if spirited - national security decision-making process. After the heated arguments and feuding, final decisions would eventually get made.

The Trump administration, in contrast, is still hobbled by a lack of staffing in the State Department, a development that will reduce Foggy Bottom’s influence on the NSC if not rectified. The vicious innuendo, personality-laced leaks to the press, and the anonymous public airing of grievances that has dominated the Trump White House during its first six months is placing the ego of government officials above what is most important: giving the president sound recommendations. "

Cheers,
Bart

[Peter McLennan]

My solution: legalize all drugs. If you want to kill yourself, go ahead.

Absolutely.

[Peter McLennan]

NOT heroin, it's fentanyl and it ain't coming over the border just from Mexico, it's coming over from Canada

Proof, please. When in doubt, blame Canada.  Just like 911. 

[Alan Klein]

Read the article about New Hampshire suing OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma spent hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s on misleading marketing that has also overstated the benefits of opioids for treating chronic, rather than short-term, pain. Yes, you can use opioids for a few days to treat short-term pain but if you go for more than a few days or weeks, you become addicted–at a much higher rate than Purdue Pharma let on.

Entire graduating classes of medical schools since the 1990's have been told that patients need relief from pain–and I agree, but if the pain lasts more than a short while, then there's other medical problems involved and the opioids are likely masking the problem–or the patient is addicted.

Getting addiction treatment early offers far better outcomes than after a patient is a long time addict, you would agree right? So, shouldn't doctors be taught how to spot signs of addiction? You would think they would be but in general, they aren't unless they specialize in addiction treatment.

As far as a patient's right to pain relief, in terminal cases, I absolutely agree...if somebody has a terminal disease like cancer that causes a lot of pain, hell, give them anything they want including opioids, medical marijuana, alcohol, meditation, massage or anything that eases their last days, weeks or months of life.

But terminal patients aren't the ones with long term opioid addiction that transition to illegal drugs when their doctors finally catch on and quit writing scripts...heck if the doctors could quit over prescribing in the first place or put addicted patients in early treatment we wouldn't be having this conversation...

You didn't answer my question in the details I asked.  What do you want the Feds to do exactly regarding the doctors who prescribe opioids to prevent the problem we now have? 

[Alan Klein]

No, it turns addicts into criminals...did you even bother to read the Time article about Portugal?

Addicts have a disease...you don't treat a disease by putting addicts in jail.

Because the states have shown such an excellent track record of dealing with the problem that the commission wanted Trump to declare a national state of emergency?

The locals and states are asking for federal help...so, what, just tell them to fix it themselves–and here's some money to throw at it?

Heck the DOJ is gonna try to shut down legal marijuana (which ironically could be very useful for opioid addiction treatment) which is a case where the Feds SHOULD let the states decide.

Legalized Marijuana Could Help Curb the Opioid Epidemic, Study Finds

Somebody should clue in Sessions and Price–maybe cut back on the anti-marijuana rhetoric?

If an addict beats someone up to steal money for his habit, or an alcoholic kills someone while driving drunk, then both of them belong in jail.  Having a disease does not excuse the alcoholic or addict for his actions.  On the other hand, if the offense is minor, like someone drives drunk for the first time but there are no injuries, or an addict gets caught selling small amounts of drugs to support his habit, then a judge would have the discretion to mandate a treatment program or jail if the offender refuses the program.  If the threat of jail time can get an addict or alcoholic into a treatment program, that's better than handing him drugs forever so he can stay an addict.  It will also keep him out of jail. 

Regarding marijuana, Congress passed laws making it illegal.  It's not up to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to decide if they're legal or not.  The DOJ is suppose to enforce federal laws.  If you want to legalize it,  then get Congress to change the law.   In any case, I don't know how legalizing marijuana will alleviate opioid addiction.  People in  heavy pain need opioids or some other drug that's effective.  Weed won't eliminate pain that's severe.  Legalizing weed to replace opioids is fraught with danger.  Also, people are substituting one addiction for another.  Legalizing weed raises frequency of car accidents and other health issues.  I think it would be better if we work to get people free of all addictions.  Otherwise it's like changing deck chairs on the Titanic. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Uh huh...so that makes you what, something super human?

The great and powerful Slobodan Blagojevic is immune from becoming an addict or alcoholic, right?

Then you just proved you don't understand addiction and alcoholism. It just hasn't happened to you...lucky you.

How about anybody in your family? Any friends? Ever lost anybody to addiction or alcoholism? Unless you can answer yes, then quit talking about something you don't know about.

If being normal is super human, then yes, I am. And so far, I stayed, consciously, immune to drugs and alcoholism. I love drinking, good beer (amber ale mostly) and bourbon... just never got drunk. As for "happening" to me... you mean, drugs are like bird shit or meteorite... it just happens to you?

If I am "super human," what does it make you, for instance? You know, humans are gifted with willpower and reasoning... absence of which would make you... ?

I had relatives alcoholics - precisely the reason I never allowed myself to get drunk (I do drink, however).

As for addiction, you call it "illness," I call it "cleaning the gene pool."

[Peter McLennan]

 If the threat of jail time can get an addict or alcoholic into a treatment program, that's better than handing him drugs forever so he can stay an addict.

But it doesn't.  The threat doesn't work. Otherwise, the number of addicts would be decreasing.

Regarding marijuana, Congress passed laws making it illegal.

Ever done any research about how and why they passed those laws?

Legalizing weed to replace opioids is fraught with danger.  Also, people are substituting one addiction for another.  Legalizing weed raises frequency of car accidents and other health issues.

Alan, the depth and breadth of your knowledge is amazing.  How ever did you learn so much?