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'Feeling Better is Snake Oil, Not Medicine'
Posted by Freedom To Exhale June 7, 2004
Source: Portland Press Herald (ME)
Posted on Marijuana.com by Greenbud

Drug czar John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, speaks to the annual meeting of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors. Walters said he favors expanding access to drug treatment.

States must treat substance abuse like a disease, expand access to treatment and prevent its spread among young people, the nation's drug czar told substance abuse officials in Portland on Monday.

"Playing with drugs when you're young is a disease, not a matter of individual choice," John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said in an address to the annual meeting of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors.

Walters said the federal government will try to extend drug treatment to the roughly 100,000 people nationally who do not have access now.

At the same time, the Bush administration wants to intervene in the cycle of experimentation and casual drug use by which many young people become drug dependent, Walters said. The administration favors random drug testing in schools as a way to help young people steer clear of drugs saying such efforts have worked in private industry, he said.

[Greenbudnote: Drug testing doesn't prevent drug use, dear Walters. It exposes the drug users who are then prosecuted and jailed or "reprogrammed" in rehab.]

Maine officials oppose random drug testing for all students, believing it impinges on the civil rights of students who are required to attend school.

[Greenbudnote: Good for them!!]

No Maine public schools test all students, though some have random drug testing for students involved in extracurricular activities, said Kim Johnson, director of Maine's Office of Substance Abuse, which is hosting this week's national conference.

Maine treatment professionals hope the state will be selected to share in a new federal grant to expand drug treatment options.

Walters said the government is putting up $100 million for a grant program that would allow people with drug dependency in selected states to get vouchers to pay for treatment. The plan, which he hopes can double to $200 million next year, should help expand drug and alcohol treatment options by coaxing clinics and doctors to begin offering substance abuse services.

Maine has applied for $6 million in the first year to help obtain services for the 100 people a month who seek treatment but are turned away. The government will be awarding grants of up to $15 million.

Maine's drug problems are unusual compared to many states. The state was one of the first to experience a surge in the addiction to prescription opiates such as OxyContin. In 2003, 1,623 people were admitted to drug treatment for marijuana dependence, 1,007 for heroin dependence and 1,500 for dependence on other opiates, including prescription drugs.

Walters was sharply critical of efforts to legalize drugs and asked the substance abuse officials to help oppose such efforts.

"Neighborhoods, states and communities are better when we push back on this problem," he said. Treating marijuana like a "soft" drug ignores the fact that most pot is much more powerful today than it was in the 1970s, he said, and that twice as many people seek treatment for marijuana abuse as for cocaine.

[Greenbudnote: Translations: "Better" means more people rotting in jail and forced rehab as wards of the state instead of free Americans living in our neighborhoods, states and communities. People "seeking" treatment: people forced into rehab by employers, educators, law enforcement and the courts. The vast majority of people are "seeking" treatment as an alternative to prison.]

Walters also criticized the medical use of marijuana, which is legal in Maine. Just because terminally ill patients and others feel better does not mean the practice has undergone the rigorous scrutiny necessary to qualify as a medical treatment, he said.

"Feeling better is the standard of snake oil, not medicine," he said.

[Greenbudnote: I though medicine was supposed to make you feel better, Stupid.]

Walters did praise the prescription monitoring program in Maine, one of 21 states that have electronic tracking of prescriptions to make sure patients are not visiting multiple doctors for extra pain medication or forging prescriptions.

Walters said his office plans to launch an ad campaign in the coming months to encourage peers and others to intervene if someone they know is using drugs. He also expects success in the near future in cracking down on Internet sales of drugs.

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FitShaced

The stupidity/ignorance of this man simply astounds me.I absolutely LOVE how he refers to drug use when young as a disease,not individual choice.Also,gotta love how medicine isn't supposed to make you feel better part,thats PRIMO info right there.This man needs to crawl back under the rock he came from and wither away..

xxdr_zombiexx

Walters is just one more pathetic liar in an incredible parade of professional liars in the Bush Adminstration. He works for Bush and people who work for Bush are all showing themselves to be notorius liars.

Walters job is solely to lie about mary-ju-wanna. It's his "specialty, despite being really bad at it.This is the way the federal Govenment suppresses the use of the cannabis plant, and it is sparkling evidence that this plant suppression is of Primary Importance.

(I often call it Job 1, though lately it seems that lying - specifically lying about all the outrageous lying that has gone on for over 3 years- is Job 1...Reefer Madness has been demoted to Job 2. More lying is now devoted to trying to stay afloat in power right now, as things crumble around them)

Billions and billions of dollars are allocated to continue the lying and resource suppression of Reefer Madness as states slide towards bankruptcy, whole cities' police departments work without contracts (My brother is a cop in Indiana - I know this to be a fact), as benefits are slashed for our "heros" in the military.

People who support marijuana prohibition are either wholly-brainwshed - ie: actually believe the sh*t that Walters spouts, or are invested in the pay-off of the propaganda, as "alcohol and drug" treatment centers and their administrators are.

Then there is the elimination of all the non-recreational aspects of the cannabis plant - Oil is the main theme in the Bush Adminsitration and athe cannabis plant is simply comepetion for oil.

If we WERE making stuff out of canabis, oil would be that much less in demand and the prices woul not be stable or as profitiable. Furthermore, MORE people, not fewer, would be reaping the rewards of energy and materisals production. With oil, thats all hoarded among an amazingly small group of terriby powerful people.....like DICK Cheney. Robber Barons of classic description. He's a huge liar and American Traitor. And a war criminal whose lies have left thousands of innocent people dead.

Those who still support Bush support the oppression of this plant and the oppression of the people of this world, pure and simple. ONE CANNOT SUPPORT BUSH AND EXPECT LEGALIZATION OF CANNABIS: IT'S FUNDAMENTALLY INSANE.

Bush Lovers can whine and b*tch all they want about how great El Doofus is, but at the end of the day they support injustice, torture, killing and outright tyrrany, not freedom or liberty or anything recognizably American. Get a freakin' clue.

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Torture Good, Healthcare Bad, Marijuana Evil.

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

palmspringsbum

now we've got government officials confidently spouting such doublespeak as "the purpose of modern medicine is not to make you feel good"

http://webx.desertsunonline.com/cgi-....4@.ee6cc97/75

JTP

Then again, those who support Kerry and expect him to make ANY fundamental changes in the WOD are just fooling themselves. Kerry's position on the WOD is the same as Bush's. There is no difference between the two candidates on this issue. So... follow your own advice and "get a freakin' clue".

Also, is it possible for you to be MORE rabid?

I am not quite clear here; amongst those people who "support injustice, torture, killing and outright tyrrany, not freedom or liberty or anything recognizably American" do you include actual terrorist groups like Al-Qaida, Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), HAMAS, Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) , etc. and countries like N. Korea, China, Iran, Syria and various other groups of people in that broad stereotype you persist in slinging around – or do you just save that virulent hatred for Republicans?

I find it humorous to read how in almost every post you manage to condem half the population of the US. Getting the support of some of those people might just do our common cause some good, IMO.

High4TwentyDays

Man what the **** is this guy's deal? Another $100 Million wasted on this senseless ****. Ah it makes me sick.

stormchaste

__________________
"Does it help you smile more to wake up
Make you happy just to be alive?
Well, I don't know if it makes you happy...
But it must be healthy cause it's certified."
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CheebaMonkey

"Feeling better is the standard of snake oil, not medicine," he said.

Said the snake.

People with chronic pain taking pain meds doesn't cure anything. All it does is reduce the pain, making them feel better. Perhaps we should call that snake oil?

How about Viagra? The purpose of it is to give old men boners so they can have sex. Recreational reasons. It makes them feel better. Yet this is considered a medicine.

But don't smoke pot!

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StewScum

That point alone makes Walters seem like an idiot, but there are oh, so many more reasons. Walter's continues to use old data, now apealing to the parents and adults who were alive in the 70s and tried marijuana, by saying that weed now is magically stronger. Anyone who understands the basics on how weed works that it is the THC that will get you more high, and that it is irrelivant if weed has more these days because you would need more than one 100%THC bud to smoke to actually overdose. So it doesn't matter whether or not it is stronger, that is a dead horse that has been shot and buried. This guy critizes medicinal marijuana because a medicin can't make you feel better? Even if it wasn't a medicin, alcohol has no use at all and is still legal, while marijuana has been proven to have more indications than to just feel better. Marijuana has shrunk tumors, relieved pressure in the eyes of of glacoma (Which i believe is a medical use), can be used as a phychotheraputic medicin (No, but we decide to use prozac and anti-depressants that input non-naturally occuring chemicals in the brain that scientist don't even understand yet0 but its snake oil i guess.

I'd like to know who gave this jerk a job and on what grounds because he has the intelligence of a pine cone.

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iGame3D

By this madmans rationale we should illegalize all drugs that make people "feel better", like anti-hystimines and cold relief medecine, and anesthia during surgery. Hell lets make surgery illegal because feeling better after that malignant tumor is removed is just snake oil.

When we are done with that we should outlaw classical music because it might make some people feel better. Religion as well, that sense of well being from faith in deity is pure "snake oil".

Note if you add up Maine's narcotic and prescription drug rehab patients, they outnumber the pot rehab patients, blowing a hole in his claims, in Maine at least.