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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

Yes, with all this drama about the opioid crisis (sequel to the meth crisis, sequel to the crack epidemic, sequel to LSD crisis (Charles Manson), sequel to the reefer madness, sequel to the original Prohibition), people miss the point that they have very valuable uses.

What youngsters and middle aged folks like me don't really grasp (I'm starting to) is that getting old fucking hurts, sometimes a lot. Having a managed opioid addiction is a hell of a lot better than being bedridden, both physically and mentally.

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The most frustrating part of the failed War on Drugs is that pain management doesn't have to be Sophie's choice between being in pain or being addicted to opiates, but thanks to a chilling effect on research due to the DEA's classification of cannabis as Schedule I, the mainstream medical establishment sees long-term opiate use to manage chronic pain as acceptable practice.

29 states plus Puerto Rico, Guam, and DC all recognize the medical benefits of cannabis including pain management. Presumably there's something when smoking the plant (whether THC or CBD, or some other as-of-yet undiscovered chemical) that's proven to be beneficial. In the face of the opioid epidemic, isn't it time for the DEA and the Federal government to think that there might be something to this stuff?

Instead, the current classification is that cannabis has a higher abuse potential than cocaine, Vicodin and methamphetamines!

It’s the terpenes and assorted ‘flavoring’ chemicals that are responsible for a lot of the as-of-yet officially unattributed effects of cannabis. They are responsible for the difference between indica and sativa, too.

Check out myrcene, for instance: https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-myrcene-an-abundant-ter...

I suspect it's like laughing gas. It has more to do with making the patient not care as much about the pain (distraction) rather than direct pain management though numbing / blocking receptors.

You'd suspect wrong. It has anti-inflammatory elements along with interacting with receptors in nearly every facet of the body. It has a psychoactive element that makes it popular for recreational use, but there truly are medicinal uses for it.

Does it actually block pain receptors?

You'll realize how much it sucks when you're young and end up in pain and nobody will give you anything.

I had a tooth become infected. Tooth pulp, nerve, bone, everything. It was so inflamed/infected that when I finally could get in to see a dentist the local anesthetic wouldn't have any effect and large parts of the root canal were done with partial sensation. It's 100% the worst thing I've ever experienced. I was a fully grown man sitting on the floor in my bathroom crying on the phone to my mother asking what to do.

Dentist told me to take ibuprofen. When I went to the hospital because putting a bullet through my face was starting to sound preferable to waiting for the dentist, they told me to take ibuprofen. When I tried to purchase Tylenol 1s from a pharmacy (an OTC drug here), I got treated like a drug addict by the pharmacist (which didn't use to happen until some news station did a story about how pharmacists weren't really screening people trying to purchase a legal, over the counter medication...).

I get that it's a problem, but so is pain. If there's no alternative for pain management, then let me risk an opioid addiction, please?

It's on the verge of being a moral panic!

A few years back it was meth, then before that cocaine/crack and before that? Heroin! We've come full circle!

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