Bob in Mich

It looks like NY state has embraced telemedicine for medical cannabis. Hopefully this will help relieve some of the backlog. I heard that the Dent cannabis certification center in western NY had a several month wait for appointments. Dent, as I understand it, will accept some forms of insurance for the required doctor visit. Other clinics, with less wait times, do not accept insurance. I don't believe any insurance companies are yet paying for the cannabis medicine. I do not know the cost of this telemedicine option. https://www.leafly.com/news/health/new-york-mmj-card-telemedicine

If you are saying cannabis is worse for an individual user than opiates, you are terribly misinformed about the relative dangers of opiates versus cannabis. Also, are you implying there is no high with opiate use?

Cannabis is not at the root of today's opiate crisis. It is a horrible shame that so many are dying from drug use, but not all illicit drugs should be grouped into the one bucket. In fact, doing so has contributed to the problem. Users don't have the fear of opiates that they should, partly due to the fact that marijuana wasn't as bad as advertised by such programs as DARE. Counter-intuitively, the illegality of a drug does not speak to it's danger. Cannabis may help current opiate users decrease or even eliminate their dependence. Also, cannabis concentrates could certainly be used as an additional weapon against pain. Wouldn't it be wiser to start a patient on a safer, less addictive option before resorting to opiates, given so many are having problems kicking the opiates after their pain has subsided? I found these articles interesting: https://www.leafly.com/news/health/6-takeaways-from-dr-ethan-russos-cannabis-an-unconventional-solution-to-the-opioid-crisis https://www.leafly.com/news/health/how-cannabis-can-combat-the-opioid-epidemic-an-interview-with-philippe-lucas

Know anyone with a disease? Read this That is the title. It is not pot cures everything or that pot cures all disease, as some of you morons continue to claim. It says, if you know anyone with a disease, read this. Why? Because the knowledge may help you or someone you know, dipshit! Because the endocannabinoid system is involved in a great many bodily processes. It is an intercellular communications network that was not discovered until relatively recently. As stated in one of my first posts, cannabinoids were not researched for the past 75 years and so may be involved in some of the more confounding diseases afflicting us. If I could expand the title I would add .... Know anyone with a Disease? Read this (unless you are too ignorant to understand new information)

I guess the statement from the article could have spelled it out more clearly but the point is obvious, unless you are purposely trying to miss it. Patients can reduce their opiate usage by using the cannabis to help alleviate the pain.

Opiates are highly addictive and quitting them brings on withdrawal symptoms. These are extremely unpleasant and avoiding those symptoms is a big reason many keep using. Cannabis can reduce the impact of those withdrawal symptoms making it, for some, easier to quit the opiates. Cannabis can help with nausea, cramping, body aches, anxiety, and sleeplessness, which are many of the symptoms of withdrawal. Say you take 4 vicodins a day for pain. After smoking cannabis, you find that you now only need one vicodin for your pain. Perhaps, later, after trying cannabis concentrate capsules, you find you no longer need the vicodins at all. Not really sure I see a logic problem. Cannabis is effective against pain. Water is not.

Recall that as a society, we are trying to reduce opiate prescriptions. If a good percentage of chronic pain patients currently dependent on opiates could switch to cannabis based medicines, our society could could cut opiate prescriptions significantly. First hand let me tell you, those individual patients would be much better off for having ditched the opiates. Yes, then people are using cannabis based medicines instead of opiates for pain control so there there would be more cannabis medicine available in our society. Available to both patients and to abusers. If you feel that that is a wash, essentially substituting one bad for another bad, please do some research on possible harms from each. If your inquisitive child or teen stumbled upon a months supply of a pain patient's opiates or a months supply of his cannabis and decided to try it, which would you prefer he found?

The Biology of Cannabis vs. Opioids for Pain Relief https://www.leafly.com/news/science-tech/medical-marijuana-opioid-pain-relief-substitute from the article Opioids and THC in combination offer comparable pain-relieving effects compared to opioids alone. This interaction can be used to reduce opioid doses for pain management and slowly wean patients off opioid medications altogether as they switch to cannabis-based treatments.

Curly, Larry, and Moe, how ya doing boys?

Early on in this thread there were some postings about the difficulties encountered in trying to discuss cannabis use with your doctor. I still recommend first talking to your doctor about 'your friend' that uses cannabis to gauge the doctor's reaction. The stigma is lessening but not with all doctors. https://www.leafly.com/news/health/marijuana-stigma-hurts-doctor-patient-relationship-study-says

Comedian John Oliver had a cannabis segment a month or so ago on HBO. He touches on many of the problems encountered by medical cannabis users, researchers, and businesses using a bit of humor https://www.leafly.com/news/pop-culture/watch-john-oliver-break-down-federal-vs-state-cannabis-laws from the article For this week’s “Watch This,” catch up on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight segment from April 2017, which focuses on cannabis (or, as he refers to it, “basically catnip for people”). In a condensed under-17 minute segment, he navigates through marijuana’s original ban that arose from racial stereotypes, Nixon’s disdain for the substance (and, bizarrely, for Jewish people), how federal law clashes with state laws, and the restrictions behind researching its benefits or effects, all while freaking the eff out of any stoned viewers named Greg. Note: The actual video has some bad language, so may not be safe for work viewing

Cannabis Drug Halved Convulsions in Company-Funded Epilepsy Test https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-25/cannabis-drug-halved-convulsions-in-company-funded-epilepsy-test A cannabis-based drug halved the frequency of convulsive seizures in sufferers of a rare, catastrophic form of epilepsy in a late-stage study funded by GW Pharmaceuticals Plc. The median monthly frequency of convulsive seizures fell to 5.9 from 12.4 among children with a drug-resistant form of Dravet syndrome who took the company’s Epidiolex cannabidiol oral solution. That compared with only a slight decline among patients taking a placebo. Results of the randomized controlled trial -- by researchers in New York, London, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Paris, Melbourne and Boston -- were published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A mindless stoner. Just like you accuse me of being. Gotta be right, right?

Survey of Canadian medical cannabis consumers shows them often replacing pharmaceuticals with cannabis. https://www.leafly.com/news/science-tech/cannabis-replacing-pharmaceuticals-canada from the article Breaking down the results by drug classes, Lucas and Walsh found that: 30% of respondents replaced opioids with cannabis 16% replaced benzodiazepines 12% replaced antidepressants The substitution effect reaches beyond just the medicine cabinet; cannabis also helped patients curb other types of substance use: 25% of respondents replaced alcohol with cannabis 12% of respondents replaced cigarettes/tobacco with cannabis 3% of respondents replaced illicit drugs with cannabis

RSO (Rick Simpson Oil) is touted as a cannabis treatment option for many health problems including cancer. Canadian Rick Simpson is credited with reviving medical interest in this essential oil. https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/what-is-rick-simpson-oil

Wait just one minute there. I called you a pompous prick. I feel that label is at least in the running for most accurate.

bump check it out. It is pretty accurate

bump check it out. It is pretty accurate

Right after the election Robert Reich spoke about authoritarianism and Trump. Nailed it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cgYsrfMhDs

NY state is finally publishing the names and locations of doctors that can approve for medical cannabis, if the doctors agree to be 'outed' https://www.leafly.com/news/health/find-new-york-medical-marijuana-doctor-using-map

timing means a lot though.

At the recommendation of Jeff Sessions. Nothing to see here. Move along folks

I understand the collective bargaining point but I think that management has lost sight of the goal of making this prohibited in the first place. Since it is not performance enhancing, the league was trying to protect the image of the game, imo. So, today they suspend players that fail urine tests for cannabis. They then make a public announcement of the failure and suspend the player, damaging the player and the league's reputations. Why not suspend only those players that have been arrested for cannabis crimes? At that point, those players have put themselves in the public eye and have indeed damaged the league's reputation. Players that use cannabis discreetly don't damage the reputation UNTIL the league publicizes the test failure.

NY now allows 'chronic pain' as a qualifying condition for its medical cannabis program https://www.leafly.com/news/health/chronic-pain-now-qualifying-condition-new-york-state-heres-means-patients From the article “We all know opiates are over prescribed, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that there are a certain percentage of patients that are taking opiates but are still not under pain control” she said. “They’re living in a chronic pain scenario even on traditional medication. This is where the opportunity for medical marijuana is … so that they can get off their opiates or maybe even get off of pain.”

Drug Interactions : How does cannabis interact with other common drugs https://www.leafly.com/news/health/cannabis-cannabinoids-drug-interactions