And now we’re living through the deadliest drug epidemic in history — so many bodies in Ohio a morgue rented a storage freezer in its parking lot to handle the overflow of its dead.

Marijuana the Gateway Drug? It’s Big Pharma’s opiate scripts that truly opened the floodgates. Annual overdose deaths have now decupled — 10 fold — since 2000 when doctors first prolifically scribbled Oxy scripts like Kerouac on a Benny roll scroll.

The hypocrisy of the whole ordeal practically smacks you in the forehead like a Born Again preacher casting out his own gay lover. “WTF” says every politician who votes against cannabis legalization high on bribes from Big Pharma M.D.

 

World War DystOpioid

The bodies are piling sky high: 700,000 dead and counting, according to the CDC. That’s almost twice as many Americans than died in World War II — and it’s only going to get worse before it gets any better.

Stare into the eyes of a toddler in a car seat watching his parents overdose in the front seat, and consider this: Studies show cannabis may actually help those with chronic pain reduce their consumption of opiates.

One 2008 study from the Harvard Medical School found patients who took THC experience “significant relief of pain, reduced pain bothersomeness, and increased satisfaction.”

Could legal or medicinal weed help lessen overdoses? Depends on who you ask — and what day of the week. The studies scale all over the porch — like Lightning Hopkins jamming late into the night with Erykah Badu.

These 2 studies are their own evil twin, Skeksis and Mystic dancing cheek to cheek:

• A 2014 study found that states that legalized or medically allowed marijuana saw a 25% drop in opiate deaths. Researchers analyzed hospitalization records from 1999 to 2010 in 27 states, nine of which legalized medical marijuana within that time frame.
• Yet a study released in June of this year seems to contradict those findings. The new study used the same data as the one in 2014 but extended the numbers into 2017 to include several recently legalized states. While the same trend held up until 2014, the data then seemed to subsequently reverse itself in the years that followed — instead of dropping, opioid deaths actually increased 23%.

Any assumptions you try to make are coughed up all over a bloody rag — messy but obvious: This shit’s pretty fucked up.

As Brendan Saloner, co-author of the 2014 study, points out: “Specifically, Heroin and Fentanyl have been involved in a lot more overdose deaths — including deaths that also involve prescription opioids — and that could reduce the protective effect of medical cannabis.”

What’s flatlined as an EKG is people are dying at an unprecented rate in this World War DystOpioid — outpacing the casualty numbers of the Greatest Generation’s Nazi evisceration in shockingy numb statistical synthesis.

And it doesn’t take the latest ScienceDaily Harvard Churnalism to appreciate — there’s already a natural pain alternative growing out of the ground like a weed. It’s laid out in the Bible, the Tomb of King Tut, in the bong blown resin of 4,000 year old Buddhavista mummies smiling through the glad teeth of Eternity.

Seriously. The Chinese surgeon Hua T’o actually used cannabis as an anesthetic to organ draft and resection intestines on awake patients in 200 A.D.

Call us crazy bong blown hippie loons, but it seems weed and CBD just might be a viable joint pain alternative to the smack spoon rubber hose you currently find in the First Aide aisle at Walgreens, next to the Vapor Rub and SpongeBob Band-Aids.

Calling the Noses of All Millennials

So if you smell bullshit — call it. But don’t just call your Senator on that same recorded line like the goddamned Jerky Boys on some TDK mixtape. Call out the system for what it is.

For the first time, Millennials outnumber Baby Boomers. Show up!

Because while there’s always Naloxone for overdoses — there’s also Voter Registration to vote out all the politicians overdosed on bribes from corporations and Big Pharma MD.

Put both in the hands of the people, especially the young — we just might have a fighting chance of winning this one.

Henry Rollins is counting on you — don’t piss him off. See ya at the polls.