Heroin addiction and other opioid addictions are more prevalent in states without legal cannabis.EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written when heroin dealers and pharmaceutical companies were rejoicing about the defeat of the Florida medical marijuana “Amendment 2” ballot initiative in 2012.
In 2016, however, Florida voters approved Amendment 2. Read here for more information.
Florida’s Amendment 2 failed to pass in 2012.
The law needed approval from 60% or more of Florida voters, but it only got 58%, even though early polling showed 88% of Floridians supported it.
The businesses and individuals who benefited from the defeat of Florida medical marijuana include heroin street dealers, pharmacists who provide heroin-like drugs such as OxyContin, police, prisons, prison guards, doctors, politicians, the drug treatment industry, the booze industry, and pharmaceutical companies.
Who spent money to defeat Amendment 2, and how did they reduce voter support so Amendment 2 failed?
Corrupt casino mega-billionaire, lobbyist for Israel, and Republican candidate funder Sheldon Adelson handed $3 million to an anti-cannabis organization called Drug Free Florida.
Drug Free Florida is run by Mel and Betty Sembler, whose infamous and now-shuttered “Straight, Incorporated” Florida drug treatment centers were notorious for abusing children.
Mel Sembler is a long-time GOP insider who was a major fundraiser and donor (along with Sheldon Adelson) for Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential campaign.
Drug Free Florida is also run by the Florida Sheriffs Association, a tobacco industry lobbyist, and former White House “drug czar” Carlton Turner.
Adelson’s money comes from casinos that help people get addicted to gambling, alcohol, and prostitution.
Playing both sides, Adelson also makes money from business involvement with addiction clinics.
And he’s funding cannabis researchers who’re working on synthetic CBD (cannabidiol) pharmaceutical medicines.
Marijuana legalization would allow us to grow our own medicine. Sheldon Adelson opposes that because he wants to make money selling inferior chemical versions of natural compounds like CBD.
Adelson’s investment in addiction clinics also explains his opposition to marijuana.
He surely knows about recent research showing that in states with legal marijuana, people use less pharmaceutical and illegal opioids such as Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet, and heroin, and consequently have less problem with addiction to those substances.
The Journal of the American Medical Association found that 13 states that allow citizens to use marijuana had way lower rates of opioid-related deaths than states without legal marijuana.
Marijuana is a safer, more effective medicine for chronic pain when compared to the pharmaceutical opioids that are usually prescribed for chronic pain.
In fact, people trying to kick heroin and other opioids say marijuana is better than methadone as a replacement for opioid drugs.
Recent opioid research reveals intriguing facts and conclusions related to cannabis.
For example, remember the ridiculous “gateway theory” that claims marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to heroin?
The actual fact is people who use legally-prescribed pharmaceutical opioids are influenced by a gateway effect that makes them more likely to use illegal opioids like heroin.
Which all leads back to why Adelson and the many others who paid big money to defeat Florida’s medical marijuana law are celebrating.
They decreased voter support by telling lies about the proposed law, and about marijuana. Many of their advertisements contained reefer madness propaganda.
And the sad thing is, enough Floridians believed the propaganda that the law failed to pass.
Drug companies are happy because Floridians can’t legally get marijuana, so they have to use prescription painkillers.
Heroin dealers are happy.
Police, prosecutors, drug rehabbers, and prison industries are happy, because the continued illegality of cannabis in Florida guarantees continuing arrests, trials, “treatment,” and incarcerations of “marijuana criminals.”
Adelson and the pharmaceutical and drug treatment industries are happy, because people who don’t have a legal supply of medical marijuana often turn to pharmaceuticals and heroin, get addicted, and end up as customers for drug treatment clinics.
It’s all about money.
The City of Chicago and a few other government entities are trying to do something about the addiction and loss of life caused by the pharmaceutical opioid industry.
Chicago filed a lawsuit against five pharmaceutical companies alleging they deceptively marketed opioid painkillers like Percocet and OxyContin, even though the companies knew opioids don’t work well for chronic non-cancer pain and are highly addictive.
The City’s lawyers note that prescription painkillers cause most drug overdose deaths, that overdose deaths have tripled since 1990, and that sales of prescription painkillers have quadrupled since 1996.
In 2012, nearly 20,000 people died from prescription opioid painkiller overdoses.
The lawsuit alleges that pharmaceutical companies Purdue Pharma L.P., Cephalon, Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Endo Health Solutions Inc. and Actavis take in $8-10 billion in annual sales revenues in part because they falsely overestimate the safety of their prescription painkillers.
“They knew—and had known for years—that opioids are too addictive and too debilitating for long-term use for chronic non-cancer pain,” the lawsuit says. “To expand the market for opioids and realize blockbuster profits, Defendants needed to create a change in medical and public perception that would permit the use of opioids for long periods of time to treat more common aches and pains, like lower back pain, arthritis, and headaches.”
When you look at all the medical conditions marijuana helps, you see that getting rid of headaches, cramps, arthritis pain, and other problems are at the top of the medical marijuana benefits list.
Too bad pharmaceutical companies, cops, drug warriors, and a corrupt billionaire brainwashed Florida voters so they blocked millions of Floridians from legal access to life-saving marijuana.
