Author: Frank

Suspicious Okra Mistaken for Marijuana in Massive Raid

~ Frank ~ Leave a comment

As a physician I thoroughly disagree with the growing trend to legalize marijuana and dispense it in states already such as Colorado and California. I already know from contact with drug abusers that I see in treatment that the predictable is already happening. Abusers and suddenly taking ‘vacations’ to Colorado, finding the underground network that supposedly hooks them up ( I can’t resist that ironic pun ) with MDs who for a fee reportedly will write a prescription for vagaries such as fibromyalgia and enable the person to obtain “medical marijuana.” I like many others predict that Mafia and other powerful crime organizations will, if they have not already started to do so, move in on the dispensaries and enter this new arena of potential drug trafficking. ERs in the areas of medical marijuana dispensary concentration will see a rise in visits related to problems with the so called “medical marijuana.” After all the enterprising marijuana growers since the days of the Vietnam war are no dummies and have been using old fashioned simple Mendelian genetic crossbreeding practices to increase the potency of modern marijuana to 10 to 20 times the concentrations of THC in the new varieties. So the cases of emergency room walk in’s psychotic from the new “medical marijuana” will rise. And we will have a new cohort source of drug abuse.

It really confounds me that Republican legislators around the country are virtually drooling in greedy anticipation of medical marijuana tax based revenues so they can stick to their mantra of not raising taxes, when only a few years ago they were morally adamantly against any talk of NORML’s lobbying for the legalization of marijuana. So much for principles…

In any case, here is a comical story about okra and marijuana that I think anyone on either side of this medical marijuana dilemma will find hilarious: http://tinyurl.com/lfmb6lq

Enjoy a good laugh.

Regards to all

 

Federal DOJ Serves Notice To Take Over LA County Jail

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As a serendipitous

follow up to an earlier post in my still fledgling blog, I had an article on the national issue of overcrowding of jails at all levels in the USA of inmates with chronic mental health issues [read: chronic unremitting psychotic illnesses that require lifetime psychiatric treatment and management].

Today my ever trusty search bots on the look out for topics like this of interest to me, and to you the reader I hope as well, learned the the Federal Dept. of Justice is seeking to take over supervision or operations of the Los Angeles County Jails one of the largest county jail systems in the county. For more detail on this use this link http://bit.ly/1CNElNT.

As an nudge from this writer, it is really worthwhile if you have an interest in this kind of legal action which sort of had its heyday in the Civil Rights Era of the 1960-2 and 1970’s in desegregation issues ranging from busing of school children across school districts to taking over entire states’ university systems and electoral processes. But the present tidbit that makes for interesting reading is a link contained at the end of the above link that reprints that DOJ letter of notice to the LA County Jail system.

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Today I want to enter into a not widely appreciated topic which is on the face of it very controversial, the use of an abused drug/medication for intractable psychiatric depressions. This drug poses some very unique dilemmas for the psychiatric health care systems in the western world. First, it is in certain circles, e.g., the goofy idiotic rave club culture and its offshoots, an abused drug whose extent of use now may not really be known; but a few years ago it was getting enormous play in the 24 hour media and one would think that every young adult between 18 and 39 who danced in clubs or went to concerts was high on this stuff, getting raped and jumping off buildings, or going psychotic and “never coming back.” Second, it is a generic drug having passed of branded status decades ago and now cheap and offering the pharmaceutical companies no real inducement to develop as a new drug unless they blatantly did what they do with “me too” drugs as I call them: develop a known medication for a new use, bring it out under a new name and charge an unjustified sociopathic gazillion dollars a dose because it is able to patented and sold under a new idiotic name for a different indication or illness. Such is how our drug development system is perverted these days of hypercapitalism. Third, this drug has been used for a legitimate use and crucially and responsibly so for a few decades.

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Another Mentally Ill Inmate Dies in Prison

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It would be easy to haul off irresponsibly and start blaming anyone and everyone in the NC state prison system for its latest sad tragedy, that of an inmate reportedly dying of thirst apparently this past March 12, 2014 according to a story, September 27, 2014, in the Charlotte Observer in an Associated Press story likely in other major papers in the state. It was written by Michael Biesecker, long time reporter in NC who along with other reporters such as Lynn Bonner of Raleigh has written extensively on the long term painful changes the state, like so many other states, has gone through in its own version of mental health reform. For the complete story, follow this URL, http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/09/26/5201687/nc-inmate-died-of-thirst-after.html.

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One Advocate’s Recommendations to Rebuild America’s Mental Health System

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To build on the first post in this blog and series, I reprint below one pragraph of the article penned by Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum MD May 29, 2014, a veteran psychchiatrist in the US whose opinion I respect highly. His entire article on rebuilding the American mental health system from the US edition of the British newspaper The Guardian is found at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/29/-sp-fix-america-mental-health-system-ideas. Continue reading →