Hydrolife Magazine August/September 2017 [USA Edition]
One of the best parts about a budding industry like the marijuana industry is the personalities that emerge. For more than a year in these pages, we’ve worked hard to bring you the latest information, history, how-to methods, and products surrounding cannabis. In this issue, we’re focusing a little more on people, including Jim McAlpine, founder of the 420 Games and Power Plant Fitness. He graces our cover after working with San Francisco-based photographer Mark Rutherford.
One of the best parts about a budding industry like the marijuana industry is the personalities that emerge. For more than a year in these pages, we’ve worked hard to bring you the latest information, history, how-to methods, and products surrounding cannabis. In this issue, we’re focusing a little more on people, including Jim McAlpine, founder of the 420 Games and Power Plant Fitness. He graces our cover after working with San Francisco-based photographer Mark Rutherford.
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heal<br />
Can<br />
Help Overcome<br />
OPIOID by Dinafem Seeds<br />
ADDICTION<br />
?<br />
Opioid consumption in the US has reached such an<br />
alarming level that experts are talking about it in terms<br />
of being a pandemic. Some have turned to cannabis<br />
to help their addiction, but does MMJ really help?<br />
They call it the opioid pandemic and it has already become<br />
the main cause of accidental death in the US. In fact,<br />
opioid painkillers and heroin are responsible for an overdose<br />
death every 19 minutes. In the last decade alone, the National<br />
Institute of Drug Abuse reported a 2.8-fold increase in the<br />
US overdose mortality rate due to opioid drugs. According<br />
to official sources, in 2014, more than 28,000 people lost their<br />
lives to opioids. Heroin addiction in the US was previously<br />
associated with minorities and disadvantaged social groups,<br />
but this recent pandemic is also affecting a new group of<br />
people. While overdose death figures amongst Hispanic and<br />
African Americans remain unchanged, the number of deaths<br />
amongst white, middle-class Americans is soaring. All of these<br />
alarming figures make us wonder what is going on in the US<br />
and why the American society is hit that badly by the addiction<br />
to these substances.<br />
THE CAUSE OF A CRISIS<br />
This unprecedented phenomenon seems to stem from the<br />
addiction to the opioid painkillers that doctors have been<br />
prescribing, rather lightly, to their patients for years. Drugs such<br />
as Vicodin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone are prescribed daily in<br />
the US—the number of prescriptions per year in the US amounts<br />
to 259 million, which equates to a pill bottle per adult—creating<br />
a social fabric that gets used to operating under the effect<br />
of these legal drugs. In a society where painkillers are the<br />
answer to the slightest feeling of pain, the situation is reaching<br />
unbearable levels, as opioid painkillers are highly addictive<br />
and responsible for other negative effects.<br />
64<br />
grow. heal. learn. enjoy.<br />
myhydrolife.com