Tag: the war on (some) drugs

Lockdowns Didn’t Stop COVID-19 But it Did Cause Record Number of Overdose Deaths

With each day that passes, the number of lives lost in COVID-19-related deaths continues to tragically grow. However, in a less noticed but equally important trend, we continue to gain insight into the countless deaths caused by lockdown measures intended to stop the virus’s spread.

The latest entry into this tragic account is a new data set showing drug overdose deaths skyrocketed in 2020 amid the height of pandemic lockdowns.

“New data shows that more Americans died of drug overdoses in the year leading to September 2020 than any 12-month period since the opioid epidemic began,” Axios reports. “The stubborn increase of such ‘deaths of despair’ shows that the opioid epidemic still has room to grow and that some of the social distancing steps we took to rein in the pandemic may have brought deadly side effects.”

Released this week by the Centers for Disease Control, the figures show that at least 87,000 people died from overdoses from October 2019 to September 2020. This amounts to a 29 percent increase from the same period in the previous year.

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Study Finds Magic Mushrooms As Good or Better than Antidepressants for Fighting Depression

A study carried out by researchers at the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London has led to breakthrough discoveries about the impact psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, has on depression. The study found that treating depression with psilocybin may be at least as effective, if not more effective as antidepressants.

According to researchers, in the most rigorous trial to date assessing the therapeutic potential of a ‘psychedelic’ compound, researchers compared two sessions of psilocybin therapy with a six-week course of a leading antidepressant (a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor called escitalopram) in 59 people with moderate-to-severe depression.

The results of the study were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. According to the study, both groups had reduced symptoms of depression, however, the reductions occurred more quickly in the psilocybin group and were greater in magnitude.

After six weeks, the self-reported results from the patients suggested the psilocybin was just as effective as the pharmaceutical, and in many cases showed a slightly bigger – but ultimately statistically insignificant – improvement in symptoms.

“We strongly believe that the … psychotherapy component is as important as the drug action,” Imperial College London neuroscientist Robin Carhart‑Harris said.

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D.A.R.E. Cop Arrested on 122 Charges for Raping Boys While Telling Them Not to Do Drugs

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program should better be called an hilarious exercise in how not to convince kids to keep away from substances the state deems illegal. As cops hopped on their high horses and had children pledge not to do drugs, the rate of drug use skyrocketed — thrusting the country into one of the worst drug epidemics in human history. The hypocrisy by the cops who pushed the D.A.R.E. program has been well-documented over the years, explaining, at least in part, as to why the program was such a failure from the start. Now, another cop who pushed kids to ‘just say no’ has been arrested and accused of disturbing criminal activity. 

Warminster Township Police Officer James Carey swore an oath to protect the children of Doylestown and instead of protecting them, according to a recent indictment, this cop preyed on them. Adding to the insidious nature of Carey’s alleged crimes against children is the fact that he committed them while pretending to be a role model as the school district’s D.A.R.E. officer.

Carey, 52, is facing over 100 charges, announced by Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub on Wednesday. A grand jury presented a whopping 80-page indictment against Carey detailing 122 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault and other related charges.

Carey is accused of raping multiple boys while working as the D.A.R.E. officer at elementary, middle and high schools in the Centennial School District. The incidents allegedly spanned the course of decades taking place between 1987 and 2009 and involved at least four boys.

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