Tag: veterans

Helping veterans, battling opioid addiction driving magic mushroom legislation progress

Forty lawmakers, 36 Democrats and 4 Republicans, have co-sponsored a bill aiming to allow for the medical use of psilocybin and a psilocybin therapy grant program, which is currently sitting at the committee level of the Assembly, with its Senate version also in committee. The Assembly bill, A03581, was introduced by Democrat Pat Burke in February. There has been other legislation introduced regarding the hallucinogen as well, with Linda Rosenthal’s version legalizing the adult possession and use of hallucinogens like it.

Research has shown that psilocybin, an organic psychedelic compound, can benefit people with cluster headaches, depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome, ADHD and obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s getting the most universal traction because of its impact on those suffering from PTSD.

“Psilocybin doesn’t have the huge appeal that marijuana had,” Democrat Assemblyman Phil Steck, who is the Assembly’s Chairman of the Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Committee, says. “But, there are definitely people who make a strong case for the proposition that it helps with PTSD. Certainly we want to do everything that we can to help people that are coming back from war, and if psilocybin has proven to do that, then it should be legal for that purpose.”

Johns Hopkins University has conducted several studies on psilocybin, saying it has substantial antidepressant effects, but needs to be administered under carefully controlled conditions through trained clinicians and therapists.

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Abrupt closure of ketamine clinic chain blindsides veterans and others with severe depression and chronic pain

Military veterans across the country are scrambling after more than a dozen clinics that had been providing them with free ketamine treatments for severe depression, chronic pain or post-traumatic stress disorder suddenly closed.

Patients and employees of the Ketamine Wellness Centers, or KWC, said they were blindsided when the company, one of the nation’s largest operators of ketamine clinics, announced on its website on March 10 that it had shuttered all 13 of its locations in nine states.

“I cried for days,” said Travis Zubick, a U.S. Navy veteran, who was a patient at the company’s Minnesota location. “They packed up and left town, and that’s over.”

Zubick and about 50 other former service members had been relying on KWC’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for free ketamine treatments.

Now, many are rushing to find another facility that takes their VA insurance before the effects of their last treatment wear off.

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Veterans suicide rate may be double federal estimates, study suggests

The rate of suicide among veterans may be more than double what federal officials report annually because of undercounting related to drug overdose deaths and service record errors, according to a new analysis released Saturday.

Officials from America’s Warrior Partnership, in a joint study with University of Alabama and Duke University, reviewed census death data from 2014 to 2018 for eight states and found thousands of cases of suspected or confirmed suicides not included in federal calculations.

If those figures were to be repeated across the other states, it would push the veterans suicide rate from about 17 individuals a day (the official estimate released by the Department of Veterans Affairs last year) to 44 veterans a day.

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Ohio GOP House candidate has misrepresented military service

Campaigning for a northwestern Ohio congressional seat, Republican J.R. Majewski presents himself as an Air Force combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, once describing “tough” conditions including a lack of running water that forced him to go more than 40 days without a shower.

Military documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request tell a different story.

They indicate Majewski never deployed to Afghanistan but instead completed a six-month stint helping to load planes at an air base in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally that is a safe distance from the fighting.

Majewski’s account of his time in the military is just one aspect of his biography that is suspect. His post-military career has been defined by exaggerations, conspiracy theories, talk of violent action against the U.S. government and occasional financial duress.

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Jon Stewart Goes Full ‘Useful Idiot’ After Dems Sneak $400B Of ‘Mandatory’ Spending Into Veterans’ Health Care Bill

You may have noticed last week that pundit Jon Stewart went on a self-righteous rant about how evil Republicans are because they voted against the PACT Act this week, would have helped veterans affected by burn pits.

Stewart, however, failed to explain why Republicans shot down the bill – which was passed in June with bipartisan support, but was then put up for a re-vote after the House made a change to the tune of $400 billion – shifting it from the ‘discretionary’ spending category to ‘mandatory’ – which Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) said last week was “completely unnecessary to achieve the PACT Act’s stated goal of expanding health care and other benefits for veterans.”

The change would also exempt the $400 billion from annual congressional appropriations – essentially making it a blank check.

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Texas doctor’s new research links onset of Gulf War illness in some veterans to sarin gas exposure

New research from a Texas doctor has linked the onset of Gulf War illness in some veterans to exposure to the deadly nerve gas sarin.

“Our findings prove that Gulf War illness was caused by sarin, which was released when we bombed Iraqi chemical weapons storage and production facilities,” said Dr. Robert Haley, professor of internal medicine and director of the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “There are still more than 100,000 Gulf War veterans who are not getting help for this illness and our hope is that these findings will accelerate the search for better treatment.”

Haley, a medical epidemiologist who studies disease outbreaks in groups of people, has been investigating Gulf War illness for 28 years and used a genetic study that found some people have a stronger natural ability to fight the deadly chemical.

Troops who have genes that help metabolize the gas were less likely to develop the myriad of symptoms associated with the mysterious illness than those without it, according to the new research, which was released Wednesday. The findings were published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

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Biden Administration Considering Pulling Health Care from Veterans to Treat Illegal Aliens

Did you, or a family member, serve your country with the expectation of receiving the health care benefits you were promised?

Sorry, illegal aliens apparently come first in President Joe Biden’s America.

The Biden administration reportedly is considering diverting doctors from the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat the massive inflow of illegal aliens expected at the southern border this spring and summer.

Hillary Vaughn of Fox Business reported on the insulting slight to American veterans on Thursday, citing a source with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

She quoted the source as saying, “We’re going to take medical services away from people that really deserve that. Who went to combat … to give free medical attention to illegal migrants.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs is already notoriously inefficient, with a shortage in personnel likely to cost American veterans the care they need.

The Biden administration would redistribute the health care resources for a surge of as many as half a million illegal immigrants, according to Vaughn.

The administration is gutting immigration enforcement and deportations in favor of a system designed to check-in and ferry illegals to American communities.

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VA mistakenly approved doctors with revoked or suspended medical licenses to treat veterans

The Department of Veterans Affairs failed to thoroughly vet medical providers for its community care program, resulting in doctors with revoked or suspended medical licenses being approved to treat veterans, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO investigated the VA’s community care program, which sends veterans to private-sector doctors in certain situations. When vetting doctors to allow them into the program, the VA was “cutting corners,” the investigation found. The GAO identified 1,600 providers who were ineligible for the program under the VA’s policies but had been accepted into it.

In some cases, the doctors had criminal records or had previously committed health-care fraud.

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Four times as many troops and vets have died by suicide as in combat, study finds

The suicide rate among active-duty troops and veterans has outpaced the also-rising rate in the general population in recent years, but with so many risk factors inherent to military life, it’s difficult to pin down why.

There’s no one reason for it, according to a study released Monday by the Costs of War Project, and the way the Defense Department and VA track suicides might mean even their growing numbers are incomplete.

“The report notes that the increasing rates of suicide for both veterans and active duty personnel are outpacing those of the general population ― an alarming shift, as suicide rates among service members have historically been lower than suicide rates among the general population,” according to a news release.

Per researchers’ estimates, 30,177 Global War on Terror veterans have died by suicide, compared to 7,057 who have died while deployed in support of the Global War on Terror.

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