Hydrolife Magazine October/November 2016 (USA Edition)

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by Kyle L. Ladenburger
Contributions
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Compassion?
Kyle L. Ladenburger
examines the struckdown
bill that would
have opened the door
for FDA trials designed
to examine the efficacy
of using MMJ to battle
the opiate epidemic.
In May 2016,
the United States House Rules Committee
took into consideration a bill designed to
create a task force to investigate current
practices of pain management and pain
medication prescribing in an effort to
help combat the ongoing opioid epidemic.
The task force will be comprised of
several government agencies including
the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA),
the Food & Drug Administration
(FDA) and the
Office of National Drug
Control Policy.
Two proposed amendments
to the bill were
brought to the floor that
would have included
investigations into the efficacy
and potential of medicinal cannabis
as an alternative to opioid painkillers and
both were immediately denied.
The first amendment was from Republican
representative Dana Rohrbacher
(California) and would have required the
task force to study the potential for marijuana
to serve as an alternative to opioids
for pain management.
The second amendment, brought
forth by Democrat representative
Jared Polis (Colorado), would have required
the Centers for Disease Control
& Prevention (CDC) and the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate
the differences between medical
applications of marijuana and opioids
for pain management. Representative
Polis’s amendment also required an
official study of opioid overdose rates
“Two proposed amendments to the bill were
brought to the floor that would have included
investigations into the efficacy and potential of
medicinal cannabis as an alternative to opioid
painkillers and both were immediately denied.”
between states that do not allow medicinal
cannabis use and those that
do. Recent studies have shown that on
average opioid painkiller overdose is
almost 25 per cent lower in states with
medicinal cannabis laws.
The problem? Both amendments were
quietly voted down as the committee
ruled them to be out of order.
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