Dr. Sanjay Gupta Schools Jeff Sessions on Medical Marijuana and Opioids
By Brandon Turbeville, Natural Blaze
In the latest demonstration that free access to marijuana in a supposedly free society is an idea whose time has come, none other than CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, the notoriously biased news organization’s Chief Medical Correspondent, has written an op-ed in the form of an open letter to US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking that Sessions to open his mind to the fact that marijuana is a powerful medicine and possible tool for easing the opioid epidemic.
Gupta acknowledged his own ignorance related to medical marijuana only a few short years ago and wrote of how he came to change his mind. Gupta wrote of the number of stories and cases he personally witnessed where marijuana provided relief to a number of health problems as well as growing evidence that marijuana could be one more solution to the opioid crisis.
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In his article, “Dr. Sanjay Gupta To Jeff Sessions: Medical Marijuana Could Save Many Addicted To Opioids,” Gupta writes,
Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works. I changed my mind, and I am certain you can, as well. It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally. I realize this is an unconventional way to reach you, but your office declined numerous requests for an interview, and as a journalist, a doctor and a citizen, I felt it imperative to make sure you had access to our findings.
Mr. Sessions, there is an added urgency, as we are in the middle of a deadly opioid epidemic that has been described as the worst self-inflicted epidemic in the history of our country.
The drug overdose scourge claimed about 68,000 US lives in 2017, just over 45,000 of them from opioids alone. Every day, 115 Americans die from opioid overdoses. It has fueled a decline in an entire country’s life expectancy and will be remembered as a sad and tragic chapter in our collective history.
These are desperate times, and while some may consider making medical marijuana widely available to be a desperate measure, the evidence has become increasingly clear of the important role cannabis can have.
We have seen real-world clues of medical marijuana’s benefits. Researchers from the Rand Corp., supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, conducted “the most detailed examination of medical marijuana and opioid deaths to date” and found something few initially expected. The analysis showed an approximately 20% decline in opioid overdose deaths between 1999 and 2010 in states with legalized medical marijuana and functioning dispensaries.
It’s not the first time this association between medical marijuana and opioid overdose has been found. Though it is too early to draw a cause-effect relationship, these data suggest that medicinal marijuana could save up to 10,000 lives every year.
Unfortunately, Gupta is only speaking for medical marijuana and agrees that it should be heavily regulated, an unfortunate caveat to the growing move to legalization. This is a step in the right direction but it’s also veering off the path to truly successful healthcare and personal freedom.
If an adult cannot consume a plant of his choice, then he is not living in a free society. It’s that simple.
The answer is not tepid government-controlled consumption, it is the elimination of laws related to marijuana to begin with.
Yes, fund marijuana research to discover more positive properties. Develop marijuana compounds that are most useful in health contexts. But let Americans buy, sell, and produce marijuana without fear of armed men in costumes coming to throw them in cages.
All that being said, however, Gupta’s opinion piece shows that Americans, after decades of intense brainwashing, are finally starting to change their attitudes and opinions on cannabis on a large scale.
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Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria,and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 1,000 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.
