# Larry Krasner (Philadelphia DA) Sues Big Pharma, Drops All Marijuana Possession Charges



## Xzi (Feb 17, 2018)

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/02/16/krasner-big-pharma-marijuana-possession/

This is how I believe the government should be approaching weed and the opioid crisis, instead of attacking the former and endorsing the latter.  Impressive when a state takes the right stance so aggressively.


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## TotalInsanity4 (Feb 19, 2018)

Happy for 'em. Hopefully the decriminalization of marijuana will help tear down the school-to-prison pipeline.

Of course, for that to work, there needs to be well-paying labor opportunities set up in low-income neighborhoods. That are legal, of course


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## Subtle Demise (Feb 26, 2018)

What opioid crisis? At least where I live, the closest thing any doctor will prescribe is tramadol, and street prices are through the roof because of ever increasing regulations. All this anti-opioid propaganda is doing is hurting the people who actually need them for chronic pain management.


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## chrisrlink (Feb 26, 2018)

oh boy sessions is gonna be pisssed


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## Xzi (Feb 26, 2018)

Subtle Demise said:


> What opioid crisis? At least where I live, the closest thing any doctor will prescribe is tramadol, and street prices are through the roof because of ever increasing regulations. All this anti-opioid propaganda is doing is hurting the people who actually need them for chronic pain management.


Personal anecdotes are one thing, but we've been over-prescribing opioids for around a decade now.  People are getting hooked from their doctor and then moving on to street heroin/phentanyl and ODing.  At very high rates in many states.  It's possible your state was one of the worst hit, which is now why it's harder to get opioids there.


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## Subtle Demise (Mar 4, 2018)

Xzi said:


> Personal anecdotes are one thing, but we've been over-prescribing opioids for around a decade now.  People are getting hooked from their doctor and then moving on to street heroin/phentanyl and ODing.  At very high rates in many states.  It's possible your state was one of the worst hit, which is now why it's harder to get opioids there.


When opioids are Schedule I drugs (which I suspect they will be soon), you will find many more deaths from black market fentanyl from China. I'm all for legalization of marijuana, but we can't start vilifying other drugs just because we don't use them or don't agree with their use. Opioids are very useful medicine when used correctly, and seeing more regulation against them only means more proliferation of black market drugs and less availability for people who actually need them.

Also, I believe the over-prescription of antibiotics is a FAR greater threat to public health than anything else at this point in time. When doctors give a Z-Pack to everyone who comes in with a cough, they're breeding super bacteria.

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Also, if after that White House opioid summit that Congress decides to re-schedule opioids to Schedule I, you better believe it'll be a full-spectrum ban. That means anything that acts on any opioid receptors. No more kratom, and you can forget finding Imodium on store shelves now that an effective psychoactive dose has been discovered. 
The DEA won't be satisfied until anything that derives even the slightest bit of pleasure has been declared a "controlled substance." 

Let us not forget also that addiction is truly a vast minority. I know many people who have been prescribed benzos and opioids and they are still sitting in their medicine cabinets.

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Also, if after that White House opioid summit that Congress decides to re-schedule opioids to Schedule I, you better believe it'll be a full-spectrum ban. That means anything that acts on any opioid receptors. No more kratom, and you can forget finding Imodium on store shelves now that an effective psychoactive dose has been discovered. 
The DEA won't be satisfied until anything that derives even the slightest bit of pleasure has been declared a "controlled substance." 

Let us not forget also that addiction is truly a vast minority. I know many people who have been prescribed benzos and opioids and they are still sitting in their medicine cabinets.


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## Viri (Mar 4, 2018)

Wait, some good news coming out of Philly gov? That's something rare. Our mayor is shit, our city council is corrupt as fuck. But, at least this is some good news. Also, Philly already decriminalized weed like 4 years ago, I think.

Also, pain killers aren't to be fucked with. I had a tooth abscess from an infected wisdom tooth. That shit is enough to bring a grown man to tears. You wanna jump out a window over that shit. Anyway, dentist gave me pain killers for it, an antibiotics. It went away. Tooth got ripped out, and they refilled my prescription. After a while, I found my self making up bs excuses to take them. My mouth stopped hurting, but I kept taking them, because they made my mood feel better. "Oh, ow, my tooth hurt a tiny bit, better pop another one". I got another wisdom tooth pulled, and got even more pills. Same thing happened, I found my self finding bs excuses to take another one, even though my mouth stopped hurting.

Then, I looked it up online, turns out tons of people get addicted to pain kills through dentist prescription, and not even know it. I ended up throwing the pains out, because I was scared of how much I wanted them.


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## Deleted User (Mar 4, 2018)

Well I originally wrote a reply explaining my opinion of a topic which I don't know much about (I don't live in America, nor have I ever been there and I've never touched illicit drugs).

Can someone please provide an open-minded explanation of what America's drug situation is? My limited understanding is below

- Lots of people in America have drug problems
- Weed is harmless in moderation provided it hasn't been laced with cocaine
- People found guilty of dealing drugs are not permitted to go to school
- Foreigners with drug-related charges on their criminal record are without exception denied American visas
- Punishing drug addicts doesn't work
- More and more states in the US are legalising marijuana

And adding information from the comments and article above
- The war on drugs has been a fucking failure (why?)
- Lots of people have opioid problems due to prescription drugs



TotalInsanity4 said:


> Happy for 'em. Hopefully the decriminalization of marijuana will help tear down the school-to-prison pipeline.


What happens to people caught smoking marijuana in states where its illegal?


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## Plstic (Mar 4, 2018)

Subtle Demise said:


> What opioid crisis? At least where I live, the closest thing any doctor will prescribe is tramadol, and street prices are through the roof because of ever increasing regulations. All this anti-opioid propaganda is doing is hurting the people who actually need them for chronic pain management.


opioids are a huge issue in the Chicago suburbs.


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## FAST6191 (Mar 4, 2018)

leafeon34 said:


> Well I originally wrote a reply explaining my opinion of a topic which I don't know much about (I don't live in America, nor have I ever been there and I've never touched illicit drugs).
> 
> Can someone please provide an open-minded explanation of what America's drug situation is? My limited understanding is below
> 
> ...




In order then
Sure, same as anywhere really.
Any substance has the potential to mess with you but yes the harms of it are both way below many legal substances and in general parlance most would consider it safe.
By school many would mean college/university. Also "dealing" may just mean the weight you have on you when you are caught. Also while some admissions places might overlook it then it is more that federal loans/aid are denied to various types of convictions and that tanks your chances as much as anything (in case you had not heard college/university in the US is an expensive hobby).
It applies to more crimes than that but it is a major thing for denial of visas.
It might work in some cases but I can see more harm than help in many cases.
Seemingly, much to the dislike of the federal government. Afraid I have not looked into the remaining states and what is likely to go there -- some may have taken a moral stance but that sweet sweet tax revenue and less crowded jails has a habit of changing moral convictions.

Short version. People like to get high. Millennia worth of history demonstrates this. Getting high is also quite manageable for a lot of people so a particularly amusing thing is when people are told it is super bad and will ruin you instantly you fairly quickly find out you have been lied to.

Yes but that warrants further exploration. Many opiates are amazing painkillers, some of the best modern medicine knows of, and can touch or manage things almost all other types (or maybe even all other types) will not. Habit forming was once the word but addictive is the currently preferred one, and they are good at that too with the added bonus that the tolerance to them builds up rather quickly and withdrawal is not just "irritable and feel like shit" of many other things but actually dangerous in and of itself. It has also been noted that many doctors in the US will give them out far far more readily than many other places, not necessarily like sweeties/candy but it makes most medics I know elsewhere in the world pause. Reasons for this vary but some have looked at a massive PR campaign by the opiates sector a while back. At the same time many legislators in many states, and the people enforcing the laws, displayed one of the all too common spectacular failures in understanding of medicine when seeing the resulting effects and trying to do something. In quite a few rural places many of the doctors and pharmacies that would prescribe them get shut down (often quite hard) not necessarily for lack of medical judgement but for some arbitrary amount they might have gone over or something. This may in turn mean both people with truly legit concerns now have to travel silly distances to get anything and others may be left in the lurch, drug dealers have no such qualms and "recreational" opiates are far far cheaper than proper prescription pills (if they can even get them all). There have also been cases of people being prosecuted because the amount they had, all prescribed, was also over so much.
Overdosing, which is incredibly easy for a lot of them, is really dangerous. Among the more fun ones are respiratory failure and all sorts of heart things. 
For added fun there is a simple drug called naloxone, or Narcan if you prefer the brand name, which fairly spectacularly reverses effects* (go find and watch a video of it) and which can be quite restricted for whatever reason. http://pdaps.org/datasets/laws-regulating-administration-of-naloxone-1501695139 is pretty good, and a nice study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2661437/ .

*sometimes up to and including blocking the effect of what the person took so they then want to go find some more or go into withdrawal.

Varies from state to state, possibly county to county/force to force and even officer to officer (possibly point in time if they are supposed to have an arrest quota). Many will not care if you are sitting there in your house with a joint, some will tell you to put it out when walking by on the street, and it may be a weapons drawn and hit the deck situation in other places. It can also be an aggravating factor if they want you for something else or fancy searching you/your car.


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## TotalInsanity4 (Mar 4, 2018)

leafeon34 said:


> What happens to people caught smoking marijuana in states where its illegal?


Depends on whether or not you're white. If you're not, and the police officer isn't particularly friendly, they'll typically use it as an excuse to lock you up


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## CallmeBerto (Mar 7, 2018)

Sounds good to me. This should have never been an issue in the first place. Oh lobbying right nvm then carry on.


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## aykay55 (Mar 7, 2018)

Subtle Demise said:


> What opioid crisis? At least where I live, the closest thing any doctor will prescribe is tramadol, and street prices are through the roof because of ever increasing regulations. All this anti-opioid propaganda is doing is hurting the people who actually need them for chronic pain management.


Dude, have you ever stepped foot in the Northeast?

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But as @TotalInsanity4 said above, race does play a big roll in this. Thankfully, the US has a much more loyal police force than “some other countries”, but it still happens. And not just white. Go to a majorly black, hispanic, Indian area, it’ll be all the same. Not enough is being done to get people off of drugs, the root of why others start in the first place.


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## Subtle Demise (Mar 8, 2018)

aykay55 said:


> Not enough is being done to get people off of drugs, the root of why others start in the first place.


I don't think it's the government's job to protect people from themselves. The most they should do is maybe set up an educational coalition (these are all the negative effects of "x" drug). That really shouldn't be the government's job either, plus it'd probably full of misinformation like the D.A.R.E. program they push in elementary schools. As a grand show of the total failure of that prgram, many of the stoners in my school ironically wore D.A.R.E. t-shirts.

Anyway, people will use drugs for one reason or another. Usually it's because of chronic pain or anxiety or some other unless that isn't treated by the less regulated medicines. People use opiates, benzos, marijuana, etc. because they actually work and do what they're supposed to. Side effects like euphoria are usually secondary to people seeking out these "black market" substances. 
Psychological and physical dependence is a real and dangerous possibility, (were included) but I strongly feel that the types of crippling addictions that keep getting brought up are a vast minority. Those types of people will do what they do and won't care about the consequences. They will use whatever they can get their hands on for a fix and no government program is going to stop that. They'll just say something like "A DEA raid just caused the price of heroin to double? Guess I'm not getting groceries this week!" A responsible casual opioid user on the other hand wouldn't even think of buying heroin and just take a couple Vicodin his friend gave him and be good with that. I'd actually venture that most drug users are productive and otherwise law-abiding citizens, and you'd never know they used unless they shared that with you.

Anyway, I think this dragged on long enough. I made my own thread in this forum about drug prohibition in general, and I'll be happy to debate this topic in there.

As for getting back to this thread's topic, I'm glad there are steps being made to push back against the feds and the pharmaceutical companies in regards to marijuana.  In the end, I believe it is futile because weed is still public enemy #1 in the federal government's eyes, and until we can pass a constitutional amendment declaring sovereignty of mind and body, where the Supreme Court can declare the entirety of the CSA unconstitutional, we will never win this war.


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## weatMod (Mar 8, 2018)

oh yeah wonderful they will still rob your of $25- $100
 for nothing and  not a single one of the actual victim of perdue or other big pharma companies will see  one red cent of the money from that lawsuit
it will just go to the worthless parasitic bureaucracy 
how progressive


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## Subtle Demise (Mar 8, 2018)

weatMod said:


> oh yeah wonderful they will still rob your of $25- $100
> for nothing and  not a single one of the actual victim of perdue or other big pharma companies will see  one red cent of the money from that lawsuit
> it will just go to the worthless parasitic bureaucracy
> how progressive


It's always one step forward, two steps back with legalization, so any sort of pushback feels like a win, even if it's not one. There are a lot of forces lobbying to keep all "street drugs" illegal so they can further "innovate" and push their much more dangerous alternatives. Just look at the progression from raw opium to fentanyl. The latter probably being one of the deadliest drugs to ever exist. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to say that the cartels themselves are funneling money into government's all over the world to keep weed illegal.


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## aykay55 (Mar 8, 2018)

Subtle Demise said:


> I don't think it's the government's job to protect people from themselves. The most they should do is maybe set up an educational coalition (these are all the negative effects of "x" drug). That really shouldn't be the government's job either, plus it'd probably full of misinformation like the D.A.R.E. program they push in elementary schools. As a grand show of the total failure of that prgram, many of the stoners in my school ironically wore D.A.R.E. t-shirts.
> 
> Anyway, people will use drugs for one reason or another. Usually it's because of chronic pain or anxiety or some other unless that isn't treated by the less regulated medicines. People use opiates, benzos, marijuana, etc. because they actually work and do what they're supposed to. Side effects like euphoria are usually secondary to people seeking out these "black market" substances.
> Psychological and physical dependence is a real and dangerous possibility, (were included) but I strongly feel that the types of crippling addictions that keep getting brought up are a vast minority. Those types of people will do what they do and won't care about the consequences. They will use whatever they can get their hands on for a fix and no government program is going to stop that. They'll just say something like "A DEA raid just caused the price of heroin to double? Guess I'm not getting groceries this week!" A responsible casual opioid user on the other hand wouldn't even think of buying heroin and just take a couple Vicodin his friend gave him and be good with that. I'd actually venture that most drug users are productive and otherwise law-abiding citizens, and you'd never know they used unless they shared that with you.
> ...


(I don’t want to bump your other thread, so I’ll post my reply here. Apologies to OP)

Though I do agree with the fact the government can’t stop you from doing it, they really aren’t doing enough to really inform the public of the dangers of drugs. People don’t really know how dangerous drugs are, they don’t seem to understand the consequences of addiction. They plan to just do a “one-and-done”, but then they go back. They just can’t stop. Now, the type of drug does matter. Some less dangerous drugs like nicotine and marijuana don’t do much the first couple doses, but drugs such as heroine and opioids literally change your body’s chemistry after one to two uses. I can say that only about 30% of people actually do drugs due to some kind of depression/anxiety/disorder, while the other 70% do it just to “try it” or “fit in”. I feel drugs do more bad than good, a lot more bad. We shouldn’t take any direct action on drug availability as that plan will crash and burn. We should make rehab and other resources cheaper and more available to the public, so those who *want*  get off drugs *can*. The key words are *want *and *can*. You can’t make someone stop what they’re doing, but you can aid those trying to stop already but find it impossible, as many of us can sympathize. Those opioids are torturous! I wish the government did more to help the general public, not just inform them of the harms of drugs, but also the resources available to help stop. Here’s to a better future, to a government that really cares about its people.


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## CallmeBerto (Mar 8, 2018)

I refuse to believe that people don't know drugs are bad. I mean holy crap the government oversells it to the point where they say that weed is bad for you. I do agree there should be cheaper systems in place to help the people who want to get off drugs can. There also needs to be some kind of program to help these people get training and jobs.


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## FAST6191 (Mar 8, 2018)

CallmeBerto said:


> I refuse to believe that people don't know drugs are bad. *I mean holy crap the government oversells it to the point where they say that weed is bad for you.*


Might that be part of the problem? If you get lied to that badly, like maybe meeting a random dope smoker who is otherwise a perfectly reasonable and functioning human being, you in turn wonder what goes for the other things, some of which may actually be quite bad.


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## Xzi (Mar 8, 2018)

FAST6191 said:


> Might that be part of the problem? If you get lied to that badly, like maybe meeting a random dope smoker who is otherwise a perfectly reasonable and functioning human being, you in turn wonder what goes for the other things, some of which may actually be quite bad.


Which is why we need to have honest education and literature for all drugs, as well as further research into each of them and re-scheduling for some of them.  Making weed schedule I, but having trusted doctors prescribe what is basically heroin for pain when a little THC would've done the trick does not instill confidence that the federal government is being truthful about the effects/side effects of drugs.

On that note, California and Colorado are both likely to have decriminalization of Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) on the ballot this November.


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