Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Dad Arrested Over Address Error Found Dead in Jail Cell — His Heart Missing

 Lee Michael Creely, 34, was a good man, a father of two sons, and excited to have saved enough to move into his new home with his partner, Jessica Hodges, and their children. However, because Creely forgot to immediately tell his probation officer that he upgraded from a trailer into a new home, Creely would spend his last days alive dying in Chatham County lockup.

In August, Creely and his family finally saved up enough money to move out of their mobile home and into a new home so their sons, aged 12 and 7, could have their own rooms. Likely due to the fact that they were so excited to have upgraded their home, Creely forgot to tell his probation officer that he moved, setting off a chain of events that would lead to his untimely death.

To be clear, Creely shouldn’t have even been on probation. He was convicted of having a substance deemed illegal by the state, otherwise known as drug possession. There were no victims for the “crime” to which Creely found himself pleading guilty. Nevertheless, after his probation officer noticed Creely moved and didn’t notify him, Creely was arrested on Sept. 3.

Three days after his arrest, Creely — a young father of two — would be found dead in his jail cell. The cause of death was unknown.

Creely’s family is now going after the jail and demanding answers. One massive answer they are demanding to know is the location of his heart. Literally, his heart. According to the family’s attorney, an independent autopsy revealed that Creely’s heart was missing from his body after he died in jail. What’s more, the coroner refuses to explain what happened to it, according to the family.

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Governor Noem issues executive order against legalizing marijuana

Governor Kristi Noem issued an executive order Friday, January 8, against Amendment A, which would legalize recreational marijuana in the state of South Dakota. This move officially backs South Dakota Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. Rick Miller and Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom, who originally filed the lawsuit.

Noem says she will be directing the suit challenging the amendment and has the authority to do so. She claims the process used to put it on the ballot violates the state constitution. A motions hearing is scheduled for January 27th.

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Novel cannabis plant extracts could protect against COVID-19

Researchers in Canada have conducted a study suggesting that novel Cannabis sativa extracts may decrease levels of the host cell receptor that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) uses to gain viral entry to target tissues.

SARS-CoV-2 is the agent responsible for the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that continues to sweep the globe threatening public health and the worldwide economy.

The team – from the University of Lethbridge and Pathway Rx Inc., Lethbridge – developed hundreds of new C. sativa cultivars and tested 23 extracts in artificial 3D human models of the oral, airway and intestinal tissues.

As recently reported in the journal Aging, 13 of the extracts downregulated expression of the SARS-CoV-2 host cell receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).

“The observed down-regulation of ACE2 gene expression by several tested extracts of new C. sativa cultivars is a novel and crucial finding,” say the researchers.

“While our most effective extracts require further large-scale validation, our study is important for future analyses of the effects of medical cannabis on COVID-19,” write Olga Kovalchuk and colleagues.

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Increases in Opioid-Related Deaths Show That Drug Warriors (Including Biden) Have No Idea What They’re Doing

Last year President Donald Trump bragged that “we are making progress” in reducing opioid-related deaths, noting that they fell in 2018 “for the first time since 1990.” That 1.7 percent drop was thin evidence of success at the time, and it looks even less impressive in light of the the 6.5 percent increase recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2019. When you add preliminary CDC data indicating that opioid-related deaths rose dramatically this year, you have even more reason to wonder whether the government is actually winning the war on drugs.

The 49,860 deaths involving opioids that the CDC counted in 2019 set a new record that is likely to be broken when the data for 2020 are finalized. “Synthetic opioids other than methadone,” the category that includes fentanyl and its analogs, were involved in 73 percent of opioid-related deaths last year. According to the CDC’s preliminary data, “the 12-month count of synthetic opioid deaths increased 38.4% from the 12 months ending in June 2019 compared with the 12 months ending in May 2020.”

During the same period, total drug-related deaths rose by 18 percent. Although that includes increases in deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine, the CDC says, “synthetic opioids are the primary driver,” and “the increases in drug overdose deaths appear to have accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.” As Zachary Siegel notes in a New York magazine piece, the pandemic and the lockdowns it inspired probably have driven drug-related deaths in two main ways: by contributing to the economic woes and social isolation that make drug use more appealing and by increasing the likelihood that people will use drugs without anyone else around, which magnifies the risk of fatal outcomes.

Although the pandemic and the restrictions associated with it have made matters worse, opioid-related deaths were already on the rise, which suggests once again that reducing access to prescription pain pills, the main thrust of the Trump administration’s strategy, has not had the intended effect. To the contrary, it has driven nonmedical users toward black-market substitutes that are more dangerous because their potency is inconsistent and unpredictable, while depriving bona fide patients of the medication they need to make their lives bearable.

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AMERICA WANTS MARIJUANA REFORM. CONGRESS SHOULDN’T STAND IN THE WAY.

Marijuana legalization was a clear winner in the November election, as one in three Americans will now live in a state with legal marijuana. In red states like Montana and South Dakota; swing states like Arizona; and blue states like New Jersey, marijuana legalization ballot measures were extremely successful, in many cases at levels approaching supermajorities. In every single one of these states–from red to blue, east to west, urban to rural–marijuana legalization far outperformed the states’ Democratic tickets. 

In my state of California, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 64 in 2016, which legalized marijuana use. Following its passage, marijuana arrests decreased by 56%, demonstrating the power decriminalization has to curb mass incarceration.

None of this should come as a surprise. We knew the popularity of marijuana legalization and the MORE Act long before November 3rd. Support for these policies has been steadily rising since the 1970s. This summer, polling from Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative Institute found that when asked about its specific provisions, 59 percent of voters, including a majority of Republicans, support the MORE Act.

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