As life expectancy in North America plummets for the first time in decades, medical professionals are being forced to look into effective alternatives to opioid medications
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 63,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, up 21 percent from 2015. The last thing anyone wants to see is another massive percentage increase for 2017.
At the same time, the report noted that Opioid-related overdoses hiked a worrying 28 percent in those years, killing roughly 42,249 people, aged 25-54. And many of those victims took their prescribed medications IN-LINE with their doctors’ instructions.
To get some even more worrying perspective on these numbers, roughly 15,500 people died from Heroin overdoses, as compared with about 14,500 from prescription painkillers. Many doctors remember a time when drug addicts overdosed from street drugs like Heroin.But when pills prescribed on the doctor’s room saved lives and didn’t take them,
Benjamin F. Miller, chief policy officer of Well Being Trust, told reporters,“These are not simply numbers – these are actual lives. Seeing the loss of life at this dramatic rate calls for more immediate action.”
Even President Trump’s recent public announcement about the Opioid crisis, dramatic as it was, fell short of actually doing anything to address doctors directly, and hold them accountable for irresponsibly handing out dangerous drugs like Opioids instead of offering their patients a less deadly better option.
As the Opiate crisis in America deepens, with drug companies and doctors alike propping up this subversive multi-billion dollar industry for the sake of their coffers, people wonder if CBD from Cannabis could be a viable option.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center showed that medical cannabis and CBD can lead to a 64% decrease in opioid use and a 25% decrease in overdose deaths. According to physician Jonathan Spero, who works with medical cannabis patients at The Healing Clinic in Illinois, many of his patients he sees are willing to forgo opiate painkillers in lieu of medical cannabis or CBD Oils, “Most of the patients want to get off of their narcotics, which is refreshing for me, because I was an emergency room physician for 15 years,” Spero stated. “They want to use cannabis instead of narcotics, which is very unusual to hear.”
Cannabis is much safer than the majority of pharmaceutical medications available on the market today. There are minimal side effects, it’s non-addictive, and in the case of CBD and many other extracts, non-psychoactive as well.
But will anyone wo has the power to enact real change and step up to the mark on this one, before it’s too late? The answer to that lies, unfortunately, in the ‘bottom line’ and as usual in these cases, money talks, while everything else walks…
[Image credit- Pixabay]