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When Donald J. Trump was campaigning for office, he promised to fight the U.S. epidemic of opioid addiction, overdoses and deaths – from heroin, prescription medicines such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, and even deadlier super opioids fentanyl and carfentanil – and improve substance use disorder treatment and availability.
As Salon.com reported, “To battle this deadly crisis, President Donald Trump in March created the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Epidemic, an advisory committee designed ‘to review the state of drug addiction and the opioid epidemic and make recommendations regarding how the Federal Government can best address this crisis.’ ”
But Salon doesn’t hold out much hope for its success because all but one of the announced commission members “have a record of conflating cannabis consumption with opioid addiction.”
The problem with that conflation is:
- Marijuana (or cannabis) is not an opioid.
- No one in recorded history has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.
- Marijuana has shown some promise as both a painkiller substitute for prescription opioids and an aid to getting addicts off of opioids. States with legal marijuana have lower opioid use and overdoses.
You could add another problem, if you think a president keeping his campaign promises qualifies:
- Trump said he would leave marijuana legalization to the states, even though it is still an illegal drug under federal law.
The commission is led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who Erik Altieri – executive director of drug reform nonprofit NORML – says has zero credibility on fighting the opioid epidemic because, although he talks big, he’s ignored the findings of his own task force for years, failed to fund other measures, demonized marijuana use, and still uses arrest as the number-one anti-drug addiction weapon.
Another prominent Trump appointee, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also has denounced marijuana, and suggested that it is only a little less awful than opioids. He recently asked Congress to reject a proposed law to leave marijuana enforcement to the states.
Thirty states have now approved medical marijuana – mostly by voter referendum – but some state legislatures and governors have been dragging their feet or trying to limit its use to a ridiculous extreme (No smoking! No edibles! No oils!)
Marijuana use should not be unrestricted, but then neither should aspirin or antibiotics. Currently it’s difficult to study marijuana as thoroughly as other drugs because federal regulation puts it in the same class as heroin, and more restricted than the aforementioned deadly super-opioids. That makes no sense.
