There is a good video on the hyperlink below.  The questions has to be asked, if ~40 states can make Marijuana legal – when it is illegal at the federal level designated as a Category C-1 and the DOJ/DEA have pretty much left those states alone. 

• First state to legalize medical marijuana: California, 1996

• First states to legalize recreational marijuana: Colorado and Washington, 2012

  Sec Kennedy’s agenda is MAHA ( Make America Health Again) how can 20% to 30% of our society is dealing with chronic pain have a DOH/DEA from interfering with the practice of medicine and the adequate treatment of pain.

• Is the agenda of the DOJ/DEA in direct conflict with Sec Kennedy’s MAHA ? Should Sec Kennedy and AG Bondi come to some sort of compromise that more people can get in line with the MAHA agenda. Have all the vast majority of people who are dying/OD/poisoning from illegal fentanyl from the Mexican cartels and not or commercial pharma companies.
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  As of August 2025, seven states have made kratom illegal. These states are:

  • Alabama

  • Arkansas

  • Florida: illegal only in  Sarasota County since 2014. 
  • Indiana
  • Louisiana

  • Rhode Island

  • Vermont

  • Wisconsin

  • Indiana allows the Pharmacy board the authority to make ANY SUBSTANCE ILLEGAL they deemed appropriate. So that the state would not have to wait for the annual legislature convened to take actions. So the 150 members of the state senate passed their authority to the Indiana Board of pharmacy which has

    The Indiana Board of Pharmacy has a total of eight. These members are appointed by the Governor and serve four-year terms. The composition is as follows:

    • Six licensed pharmacists (from a variety of pharmacy practice settings, with at least one working as a hospital pharmacist)

    • One member representing the general public, who has never been associated with pharmacy except as a consumer

    • Additionally, recent statutes clarify that one board member is a pharmacy technician in good standing, actively practicing and certified in Indiana

    This structure ensures diverse representation from across the pharmacy profession and includes the public’s perspective on pharmacy regulation.

Indiana was the last the last state to mandate generic substitution and some suspect that a large building in down town Indianapolis – with the LILLY name on top of it that can be seen from the Indiana state capital had some influence in mandatory generic substitution being stalled until they were the last standout and the legislature had little justification to not enact mandatory generic substitution.

Colorado lawmaker introduces bill to provide easier access to opioids for chronic pain sufferers

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/lawmaker-introduces-bill-provide-easier-access-opioids-chronic-pain-sufferers/

Seven years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines aimed at stopping the over-prescription of opioid painkillers, patients who need those medications to ease chronic pain have been left suffering, some to the point of suicide.

Now, state Sen. Joanne Ginal is stepping in with a bill to help.

“We’ve done a great job at reducing opioid addiction but we need to pay attention to those people who need opioids in order to just live a normal life,” she said.

According to the CDC, chronic pain impacts 20% to 30% of the population and 60% to 70% of people over age 65.

The new guidelines were catastrophic for many of them as some insurers denied reimbursement, pharmacies set strict limits on prescriptions, and many doctors began turning those with chronic pain away or rapidly tapering them off the only drug that gave them relief.

Christina Johnson with the Colorado Center for Aging is among those who were impacted.

“Responsible use allows me to continue to be here and participate in life,” she said.

Diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis, and scoliosis, she has lived with chronic pain for nearly 50 years.

“It feels as if somebody puts a knife into my lower back,” she said.

Morphine, she says, is the only drug that eased the unrelenting pain, but when the new CDC guidelines came out, her doctor abruptly tapered her medication.

“I was much more functional than I can do right now,” she said.

Julie Reiskin, with the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, says many doctors are refusing to treat patients on opioids altogether leading some to turn to the black market.

“We’ve seen a lot of our members who were stable, who were working, who were contributing, who were part of society — they’re now lying in bed. We’ve lost people to suicide because they couldn’t get their pain treated, including a 17-year-old volunteer with us,” Reiskin said.

For more than a year, Ginal has worked with doctors, pharmacists, and patient advocates to draft a bill that protects providers who prescribe high-dose opioids from disciplinary action, prevents them from denying treatment based on a prescription, and prohibits them from forcibly tapering a prescription.

But it does not mandate providers prescribe high-dose opioids. Reiskin says it will be life-saving.

“We have people that have been at home for years and years on end because they can’t get treated and it just has to stop,” Reiskin said.

The CDC recently issued new guidelines that still recommend non-opioid pain management when possible, but also acknowledge that physicians should decide what’s best for their patients.

Ginal’s bill passed the Health and Human Services Committee unanimously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: General Problems