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If you have HBO, I highly recommend watching the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Season 9, Episode 5). It may be available on other platforms.

In this episode, Oliver takes on the misguided drug war approaches that have led to the massive number of overdoses due to fentanyl and advocates some serious harm reduction approaches.

Update: here is it on Youtube:

A protection racket is an organized crime in which racketeers threaten and scare people to force them to pay a monetary tribute to the racketeers to avoid future harm. A racketeer can be a criminal, politician, corrupt government, or any one of their organized accomplices.

Few differences exist between protection racketeers and prohibitionists. Prohibitionists promise American taxpayers reliable public safety from illegal drugs at a bargain-basement price. Then they direct massive and expensive drug arrests by law enforcement that ruin millions of lives with fines and other criminal sanctions. Protection rackets don’t always protect.

Part of a prohibitionist’s tribute is called forfeiture, otherwise known as confiscation of the type that emerged as one of the triggers of the American Revolution against the British. Forfeiture might involve the confiscation of a person’s automobile once drugs are found or planted in the vehicle. Exclusion from voting rights, public office, and employment by the FBIare part of a wide portfolio of authoritarian sanctions. No detail is left untouched. Harm prevention is scorned. Fines are still levied in some states for possessing marijuana while not purchasing a state marijuana tax stamp to accompany it. Homes can be raided with no-knock warrants using conventional law enforcement or SWAT teams armed with military hardware, all for some trivial amount of drug cash believed stored in someone’s hallway closet. Evidence tends to come from some informant under legal duress who says it’s there. A drug cash raid for a non-recovered $8000 resulted in the police shooting death of Breonna Taylor. Police officers have been injured or killed in similar military-style confrontations.

Funding for drug war racketeers will continue as long as prohibitionists can manufacture consent by making civilians believe that fire and brimstone await those who smoke marijuana or take forbidden drugs. Decades of relentless public training in the popular detestation of illegal drugs and their consumers has been a steady windfall for various bureaucrats, politicians, and the dominionist religious groups whose members dominate the ranks of drug enforcement. Giving up a drug war is like beating an addiction. Drug war addicts may well need interventional drug treatment to educate them about their destructive habit.

Updates to WordPress weren’t working properly with the theme that I was using for DrugWarrant, and we were losing some functionality (along with images, etc.). So I have switched to another theme. It will take a bit of getting used to, and I’m sure there will be glitches that need to be addressed. Please let me know of any problems you see. Thanks for your patience.

A poll conducted by C. S. Mott’s Children’s Hospital, University of Michigan Health—”Parent perspectives on CBD use in children”, reveals that some parents hesitate giving CBD to their kids because they lack information about its effects. Some think it’s no different from psychoactives like THC or the full spectrum cannabis flower:

Most parents say they either don’t know much about CBD use in children (46%) or they never heard of it prior to this poll (34%); 17% report knowing some, and only 3% say they know a lot about CBD use in children. Most parents (71%) have never used a CBD product themselves, while 24% have tried CBD and 5% use a CBD product regularly.

Parents say the factors that would be very important in deciding whether to give their child a CBD product are side effects (83%), if it was tested for safety in children (78%), how well it works in children (72%), recommendation of their child’s doctor (63%), approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (58%), and product reviews (41%).

Three-quarters of parents (73%) think CBD may be a good option for children when other medications don’t work. Most parents (83%) think CBD products should be regulated by the FDA, and three-quarters (74%) say CBD for children should require a doctor’s prescription. One-third of parents (35%) think taking CBD is basically the same as using marijuana.

Over 90% of parents have never given or considered giving their child a CBD product. Only 2% have given their child a CBD product, while 4% have considered CBD for their child; 1% say their child has used CBD without their permission.

Among parents who have given or considered giving CBD for their child, only 29% say they talked with their child’s healthcare provider about CBD use. Parents’ most common reasons for giving or considering CBD for their child include anxiety (51%), sleep problems (40%), ADHD (33%), muscle pain (20%), autism (19%), and to make their child feel better in general (13%). […]

Parents also demonstrated some inconsistencies in their attitudes about CBD products for children, including the regulation of these products. For example, 83% indicated CBD products should be regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), yet only 58% rated FDA approval as very important to their decision about using CBD for their child. Currently, only one CBD product has received FDA approval for use in children, as a treatment for a rare form of epilepsy. It’s unclear if parents recognize that none of the CBD products they see in stores are regulated by the FDA. […]

One-third of parents in this Mott Poll believe that taking CBD is basically the same as using marijuana, which is consistent with parents’ overall limited knowledge about CBD products. […]

Ignorance about medicines can affect a child’s health. CBD continues to prove itself a side-effect-free treatment for a wide variety of unusually different health problems. Given Congress’s traditional rejection of science that doesn’t suit its own political or moralizing intent, federally funded research establishing the benefits of cannabinoids will continue to receive little or no initiative or enthusiasm.

A decades long government quest to prove that mental, physical, or social harm emerges directly from cannabis consumption has consistently failed. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result provides governments with a convenient excuse for perpetual war of the sort described by George Orwell in his book 1984, in which he illustrates how socially devastating wars get equated with peace.

Federally funded research proposals still trend toward proving something or anything wrong with cannabinoids. Providing the NIDA with a useful Congressional directive to fund scientific research to expose the benefits of CBD and marijuana’s other amazing constituents is necessary to make it happen at the federal level. The move would represent a gigantic step toward eliminating a dimwitted Middle Ages mindset that promotes ignorance and hysteria over the medicinal effects of simple herbs. Medical necessity could emerge and create a critical historical benchmark. Children might finally have the complete right of access to all available medicines and medical interventions they need and deserve.