Free Republic

The U.S. is said to be suffering from a crisis in deaths from opioid overdoses, prompting legislative and other efforts to clamp down on physician prescribing of these drugs. This article is an effort to identify the causes of these deaths, using data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)through 2015, and the Wonder database compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Users of cannabis, cocaine and heroin are victims of discrimination and should no longer be called druggies or junkies, an international drug legalisation pressure group declared yesterday. It called for an end to negative language for drug users and their habits in order to ensure their human rights are respected. As part of the drive to persuade people to think differently about drugs, the words addict and even drug user must be thrown out, a report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy said. It urged newspapers and broadcasters to encourage more positive attitudes by calling a drug user a...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Raising Kentucky’s cigarette tax by $1 a pack has strong support from voters across the state, according to a poll released Thursday and funded by anti-smoking interests. In all, 69 percent of those surveyed in December said they favor higher per-pack taxes in an effort to reduce smoking and spend the extra revenue on state budget needs. A majority of residents in all parts of Kentucky back a tax increase, which advocates estimate will generate more than $266 million per year. The support ranges from 61 percent of residents in western Kentucky to 77 percent in...

SLINGERLANDS, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Reports claim addicts have begun hurting their pets to get ahold of a pain killer given to pets with arthritis. Veterinarians at The Animal Hospital in Slingerlands said they don’t carry the drug Tramadol in-house because they’re worried addicts will use it for themselves instead of their pets. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration declared Tramadol a controlled substance three years ago. Since then, the commonly used pain medication for pets with arthritis became available only as a prescription at pharmacies. “There’s unfortunately always the risk of abuse with any of these medications, and it’s a sad...

Melissa will do anything to feed her online-shopping addiction — even if that means subsisting off a diet of microwaveable soup. “I’ll eat only ramen in order to shop,” she says. The 34-year-old — who works in sales at Red Wing Heritage, a leather goods brand, and asked that her last name not be used for professional reasons — receives two to three packages a week at her East Village apartment thanks to her daily binges. “I love coming home and there’s a package,” she says. “It’s like there’s a prize at my door.” Americans spent a record $341.7 billion...

Hawaii lawmakers are asking how much marijuana a driver can safely consume before getting behind the wheel of a car. It’s an issue they want to tackle now that Hawaii is setting up medical marijuana dispensaries. So Rep. Cindy Evans and 15 other lawmakers introduced a resolution asking the state Department of Health to study whether a person can safely drive while under the influence. Marijuana is the illicit drug most frequently found in the blood of drivers who have been involved in accidents, including fatal ones, but the role marijuana plays in those accidents is often unclear because it...

One upstate New York city is planning an unconventional approach to combating a growing heroin epidemic: Letting addicts shoot up on government property under the supervision of medical professionals. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick unveiled his controversial proposal to open a supervised injection facility during an interview with The Associated Press released Monday. The facility would provide a space for users to inject pre-purchased drugs with clean needles under the watchful eye of healthcare professionals who could, in theory, keep them safe and direct them to addiction services."My father was a drug addict. He split from the family when I was...

San Francisco — The homeless are a challenge for almost every American city, but nothing like they are for San Francisco. The city’s mild, year-round climate, famously liberal “live and let live” attitude, and a dense network of social services have made the problem worse than ever there. The city has some 3,200 people living on its streets, and the number is growing. Two recent news items brought the issue into sharp focus. First, a light pole collapsed downtown, crushing a car and barely missing the driver. The cause? It had been corroded by urine aimed at it by street...

M. Simon of Classical Values responded to a recent posting concerning Obamacare by linking to a piece by Milton Friedman "The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise". I confess to being so intrigued by the title that I read it to see where this came from. Socialism has a meaning: government ownership of the means of production. If Friedman's point was that there are two choices: free markets or command and control, this is true. But prohibiting something is not socialism. Many libertarian ideologues believe that drug prohibition is a net loss for the society emphasizing the substantial crime and...

The irony cannot be lost on U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Can it? The Madison Democrat, whose office dropped the ball on a report last year pointing to serious problems at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah, fired off a press release Tuesday night nodding and saying ‘Amen’ to the initial findings of a review that reiterated what Baldwin’s folks have known for some time. “These initial findings substantiate the troubling concerns my office has heard from current and former employees and patients at the Tomah VA,” the senator said in the statement. “As the investigation builds on this...

San Francisco spends $165 million a year on services for homeless people, but all that money hasn't made a dent in the homeless population in at least nine years. And in fact, the city's homeless tally may have long been underestimated. In addition to the 6,436 homeless adults counted during one night last year, a separate daytime count specifically of homeless youth found 914 children and young adults living in San Francisco without parents or guardians and without a roof over their heads. These findings are part of a new report by Harvey Rose, the budget and legislative analyst for...

Ever the paragon of civility and class, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) used a provocative homophone Tuesday to describe Republicans’ association with the Koch brothers. “Senate Republicans, Madame President, are addicted to Koch,” Reid said from the Senate floor, pausing a few seconds before continuing his remarks. “In fact, Senate Republicans hardly need the [National Republican Senatorial Committee] anymore, which for decade after decade was their main funding tool for the Republican Senate. Not any longer — the Koch brothers take care of that.” It was Reid’s latest broadside against the GOP and “Koch-backed groups” that have aired advertisements...

Jesse Wachter's neighbors knew him as a "down-to-earth" guy who retired to hang out with his little white dog and tool around in his golf cart and Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Now they've learned that the 63-year-old resident of the Mid Florida Lakes mobile-home park, who hadn't been seen in weeks, is dead — buried in a grave covered with bags of mulch outside his home.... ....Several years ago, Wachter helped abduct his son's children from their mother in a violent confrontation near Orlando, court records show. His son, Jesse Jr., and the children's mother, Jessica Thigpen, remain held in the Lake...

We’re told studies have proven that drugs like heroin and cocaine instantly hook a user. But it isn’t that simple – a set of little-known experiments carried out over 30 years ago tells a very different tale.Drugs are scary. The words “heroin” and “cocaine” make people flinch. It's not just the associations with crime and harmful health effects, but also the notion that these substances can undermine the identities of those who take them. One try, we're told, is enough to get us hooked. This, it would seem, is confirmed by animal experiments. Many studies have shown rats and monkeys...

Touted as a way to quit smoking, the latest data raise concerns that electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, may actually be a gateway for teens into tobacco use. ~snip he said. “Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Many teens who start with e-cigarettes may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and conventional cigarettes.” Most addictions to nicotine start at a young age,...suggest that a vast majority of students who use e-cigarettes also turn to conventional tobacco products as well. ~snip Whether e-cigarettes are actually safer than regular cigarettes isn’t clear; a recent study found that e-cigarettes can...

Anyone who hasn't worked with addicts doesn't know how charming and persuasive they can be. The addict is the distilled ego focused on a single burning need. All the cleverness and intelligence of the human being, the attributes that we would ordinarily use to work, create, befriend and empathize, become tools for protecting the addiction and the supply ... becomes a death sentence. A death of the soul followed by the death of the body. While I sat there, trying to ignore the noises, the shrieks of pain, the pleas for help and the mumbles, the Republican Convention was beginning...

Those who study psychology, psychiatry, and sociology may understand some aspects of the natural man, but when dealing the spiritual man they are empty and void of wisdom. The world’s wisdom is incapable of effectively dealing with the spiritual part of man known and understood only by God. When man has a physical problem, he should perhaps consult a professional familiar with the physical body. When he needs financial investment advice, he should visit a professional financial adviser. When a man is confronted with a spiritual problem, he should consult the word of God and seek counsel from a man...

SAN FRANCISCO — With a couple of old desks, a beat-up couch and an off-white white board, the office space at 149 Turk Street, in this city’s seedy Tenderloin district, is hardly remarkable. A collection of worn detective novels sits on the bookshelf, a couple of American flags hang limply from the wall and a coffee machine constantly percolates in the back kitchen. It is the tenants who set 149 Turk apart: a ragtag group of current and former drug users who make no apologies about their fondness for illegal narcotics, intravenous experiences and the undeniable rush of getting high....

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader - including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing - his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate. "I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."

A Florida law requiring welfare recipients to pass a drug test before receiving benefits is being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU contends that the law is an unconstitutional “search and seizure.” “Welfare must be made available based upon need,” explained ACLU spokesman Bertram Petty. “It cannot be made contingent upon passage of a drug test. Drug addiction is not a crime. Therefore, the state has no ‘probable cause’ for seizing anyone’s urine and subjecting it to any test.” Petty dismissed the argument that applying for welfare benefits is a voluntary act and that no one is...