Cannabis legalization decreases stock market value of major pharmaceutical firms

> Court filings show the [Sackler] family took in $10 billion in profits from OxyContin...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/health/opioids-pharmacy-c...

> From 2006 through 2014, the Rite Aid in Painesville, Ohio, a town with a population of 19,524, sold over 4.2 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone. The national retailer offered bonuses to stores with the highest productivity.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/judge-says-pharmacies-o...

> Roughly 80 million prescription painkillers were dispensed in Trumbull County alone between 2012 and 2016 — equivalent to 400 for every resident. In Lake County, some 61 million pills were distributed during that period.

It's clearly quite profitable.

In my opinion, giving somebody pills who doesn't need them (what used to be the norm) isn't great but the vast majority of people don't suddenly become junkies. Most people are perfectly fine. You yourself is evidence of this.

But not giving somebody pills who does need them (which is now the norm) is literal torture, and the practice disgusts me. I'm really glad you were fine, but not everybody is so lucky, and the number of people who say as you do but also have the power to enforce their views on everyone else have literally been responsible for torturing others. The only thing worse than sitting in pain and misery is knowing that the means to relieve some of that pain is readily available, but some person decided you shouldn't have them so you get to suffer.

I used one, and really just a preemptive use before I went to work (I only took a half day off).

The weird thing is, though, I felt very normal at work. I had never tried a drug, so I wasn't sure what to look for, but I just felt normal. No pain, no other effects.

I have some from a dentist thing last year, too, and I would say similar now, but with a mild high.

I was never tempted to take extra. I threw them away before I moved countries.

On the other hand, my son just had his out and got 800mg ibuprofen and 625mg tylenol alternating. Seemed to do okay as long as he kept on the schedule.

I know you can consume cannabis orally, but I think smoking wouldn't be good either, since it can cause dry socket.

I think in most cases, Ibuprofen would be enough.

After that, I took over the counter painkillers and just kind of dealt with the pain, as it was better than feeling all wobbly and dizzy.

And that alone means we should be able to prescribe weed where appropriate.

A bad kidney stone will leave you suicidal after awhile. Tramadol was only thing that go me through those.

Nerve pain is harder as it’s long term. Never as bad as a kidney stone. But it is it something you can live with indefinitely. Tramadol works. But then you get long term addiction. I would stop for a month every few months just to detox some.

Eventually I discovered LDN. Which got pain under control. Plus side you can’t take opioids.

Was a nightmare finding a doctor that would prescribe it though.

I had a similar experience, albeit (and thankfully so) much more short term. I had spine surgery (lumbar laminotomy[0]) to address spinal stenosis[1] that significantly weakened my right leg and was prescribed oxycodone after the surgery.

I had prepared for this by acquiring significant amounts of cannabis (concentrate, butter and flower) to address the pain, but for four or five days, cannabis was insufficient to address the pain.

After the first two days I reduced the dosage and frequency of taking the oxycodone as I was concerned about dependency.

I will say that the first two days (full doses at four hour intervals) made me understand why some folks end up dependent on opioids.

My takeaway was that short-term use for acute (vs. chronic) pain, opioids are very effective.

For lesser pain levels, cannabis is also useful, with the caveat that cannabis doesn't actually get rid of the pain, you just don't care.

Your experience (and mine as well as that of many others) make it quite clear that (at least in the US -- elsewhere too, but legal regimes are different elsewhere and I'm not necessarily familiar with those) cannabis should be removed from schedule I (and potentially moved to schedule IV or removed completely) of the Controlled Substances Act[2], which would allow more widespread research into pain management and other medical uses.

I hope you don't find yourself in that situation again.

[0] https://adrspine.com/treatments/lumbar-laminotomy

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_stenosis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act

I’ve found that with medical marijuana you still feel the pain but you just don’t care because you’re stoned, granted I haven’t had pain such as yours.

With ketamine, at low doses you get a disassociated effect without much cognitive load but I haven’t taken it when I was in pain and unfortunately don’t have ready access to it anymore.

I’d taken Vicodin for 2 days after a surgery and quit it immediately because I couldn’t think clearly, nausea, etc and didn’t want anything to do with it.

If I was to say that no one cared about suffering because people are prescribed Oxy for pain simply because it makes me nauseas and paranoid, that would be ridiculous on its face. People simply react differently to different medications, including marijuana.

They're insantly worse the moment I consume.

I know it's hard for those who enjoy cannabis to understand this. But for me it's a highly unpleasant drug. Maybe the most unpleasant of the various recreational substances I've taken over the year. For me it's pain and paranoia.

In the milieux I was in in my 20s it was constantly around, and wow, was I ever happier once I just stopped trying it.

When it became legal here I tried it again. Nope, still sucks.

Why has e.g. Nigeria had fourteen covid deaths per million population while we have had 3100? Differences in reporting probably explain some of that. Some would blame the stingy level of primary care that our government provides to the poor. Others, including expensive private physicians who care for the rich, have noticed how common ivermectin use is in Nigeria. It is possible that ivermectin is of no use against covid (which is a virus not a living protostome), but we don't know that.

Not only has research been throttled, but mere discussion of such research has been throttled on most popular corporate media. What was so terrible about ivermectin, that not only could we not discuss it, but the little discussion that did occur inspired extreme and fairly dishonest official reactions like the many weeks of "You're not a horse!" media campaigns we endured? It's simple. Ivermectin is a cheap, widely-available drug with decades of safe human use. If it had been found to treat covid, there would have been less justification for novel mRNA vaccines with exceptionally curtailed safety tests (the details of which were to be kept under wraps for 75 years). That justification would have seemed even thinner after it became clear that the disease-preventing performance these "vaccines" required a redefinition of the word. If we had an open society that welcomed honest discussion of various possible covid treatments, vaccination could have been concentrated on the elderly and obese, and these firms might have seen e.g. $20B profits rather than $35B.

Now forget about ivermectin (...vitamin D, etc.), and consider the similar treatment received by the Great Barrington Declaration and its signatories, who in retrospect were absolutely right in every respect. Did these experts' message ever show up on cable news? Hmm... why did I mention their yearly revenue? Deluded "unicorn" fans might sniff at $35B (the important number, revenue, is about twice that; more competitive industries see larger such multipliers than two), but it is large enough to totally swamp the self-interest of other industries, such as cable news, politics, and others who influence opinions and governance. Have you ever watched CNN in USA for twenty minutes (yeah, I know) and not seen multiple advertisements for pharmaceuticals? (A similar analysis obtains for the military-industrial complex.)

"...no consensus among studies that cannabis use is associated with reduced opioid use or longer treatment retention when used during methadone maintenance therapy"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31744904/

OP’s point seems to be pretty reasonable to me. If marijuana is outcompeting established anodynes it implies they are in the same category.

1) You couldn't get a DUI at T+1-2 days after smoking. Many states including my own, merely need to show marijuana metabolites in your blood to convict for DUI.

2) Gun rights. You're staring down the barrel of 5+ years in jail of the feds find you in possession of weed with a firearm, even if pot is legal in your state.

Until those two things are fixed, anyone who depends on driving to keep their job or a firearm to protect their family should have some serious reservations about trading the bar for the dispensary.

I was joking, but now I'm curious how many people selling one share would be enough to influence the price.