Not all of the 1200% increase of Oxycontin production went to Rush Limbaugh.

This latest post on Alternet comes as a follow-up to my post on the increase of workplace drug test positives for oxycodone.  Remember, when your government tells you we need a Drug-Free America and we must protect the public from dangerous drugs abuse, they only mean the drugs whose dealers and manufacturers don’t make huge campaign contributions.

(Alternet) The pharmaceutical companies that make Oxycodone and its two dozen generic equivalents — such as Endocodone, Oxyfast and Percocet — are required by law to present an annual application to the Office of Diversion Control seeking approval for a quota of the drug’s annual production. Should a company desire to manufacture more than the previous year, it must request an increase — and the DEA must approve.

In 1997, a year after prescription drugmaker Purdue Pharma first brought Oxycontin (the first branded version of Oxycodone) to market, the total production quota approved by the Office of Diversion Control was 8.3 tons. By 2011, it had risen to 105 tons, an officially sanctioned 1,200 percent increase over the same period that saw Oxycodone emerge as what Haislip calls “the Cadillac of America’s prescription drug abuse crisis.”

When I was in Orlando, the college kids of University of Central Florida told me about the “pill mill” epidemic referred to in this report.  The way they described it, it sounded like the image our opponents paint of medical marijuana in California.  ”Yeah, you can go to a shady little fake clinic,” one young man told me, “complain about pain, get a script from a shady doc, and get yourself 500 OxyContin pills, no problem.”  Another told me of a friend of his who gets the OxyContin to sell so he can buy the ridiculously overpriced marijuana in Florida.

What’s incredibly disturbing to me is the reporter asking the DEA about the skyrocketing abuse rates of oxycodone and whether dialing down the quota, as was done with amphetamines in the 1970s and quaaludes in the 1980s, might help reduce the abuse of these powerful synthetic opioids.  The answer from DEA supervisory special agent Gary Boggs, was basically that we have to pump out enough oxy for all the recreational users so the medical users can have enough access!

“What you have to understand,” Boggs replied, “is that you do have legitimate patients and they’re fishing from the same pond that the illegitimate patients are fishing from, so you have to be cautious not to restrict the quota to the point that when the legitimate parties go to the pool, all the fish haven’t been taken out by the illegitimate parties.”

Can you imagine the reaction we’d get in the medical marijuana states if we said, “Gee, we have to plant 96 trees per medical garden that harvest over a pound each so that the legal medical marijuana patients will have enough left over after illegal pot smokers get theirs!”

And this is partially why the Obama Administration is initiating a crackdown on medical marijuana businesses – their ability to shape policy in Washington if they are well-funded and organized:

The Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) employs more lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress.  Since 2007, the group has spent more than $20 million annually on lobbying in Washington to see that its interests are protected.

That influence is felt in the offices of the DEA, says [Gene Haislip, retired DEA agent from the office of diversion control].

“For a DEA official to put his or her neck on the line to block a company’s requested quota increase takes an awful lot of guts and a lot of hard work, particularly if that company is supporting members of Congress who have the power to block the agency’s funding,” he said.

All the big-name pharmaceutical companies that make Oxycodone products — including, but not limited to, Pfizer, Purdue Pharma and Endo Pharmaceuticals — are members of PhRMA. They also spend additional millions lobbying annually for their own specific interests. And they are the biggest donors to a national a nonprofit organization known as the American Pain Foundation. According to the organization’s most recent annual report, the American Pain Foundation had a budget of roughly $5 million for 2010. Endo Pharmaceuticals, the maker of a variety of Oxycodone-based painkillers including Percocet, gave more than $1 million. Pfizer and Purdue donated between $100,000 and a half-million last year.

And PhRMA can’t have us pesky medical marijuana meddlers exposing hard science about cannabis’s superior pain killing properties and people using medical marijuana to wean themselves off the products they’ve spent $20,000,000 to protect and promote.  They can’t have the $5,000,000 they’ve spent on creating the need and marketing the solution to pain turning more people to cannabis instead of opioids.  So they’re going to have their servants – on both sides of the aisle – see to it that doesn’t happen.

(San Francisco Chronicle) A judge who wanted a gun-toting youth to clean up his act was acting within his power by forbidding him to use the medical marijuana he took for migraine headaches as part of a probation sentence that kept him out of prison, a state appeals court in San Francisco has ruled.

The First District Court of Appeal said the Solano County judge reasonably decided that becoming drug-free would help the youth turn his life around. But a dissenting justice said the 2-1 ruling undermines the medical marijuana law that California voters approved in 1996.

The initiative, Proposition 215, allows marijuana use with a doctor’s approval. In a lengthy dissent, Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said a judge’s order to forgo pot or face prison, for a crime unrelated to drugs, violated Prop. 215′s ban on criminal punishment for medical marijuana users.

Kline, in dissent, said an ID card is all the proof a patient needs under state law, and the sentencing judge could have held a hearing if he doubted the card’s legitimacy. A defendant’s coerced acceptance does not legalize probation restrictions that are unrelated to the crime or future rehabilitation and prohibit otherwise-legal conduct, Kline said.

Moret’s trial lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Stephanie Grogan, said Tuesday she has no information on how the ban on medical marijuana has affected Moret for the last year. But she said he should not have been required to “choose between his liberty and his medication.”

Once again, the medical use of marijuana for migraine is not taken seriously.  The original judge in this case thinks the kid is faking a headache to get a legal high.  The prejudice against marijuana users makes this judge think it’s reasonable to deny a person pain-relieving medicine as a way to “clean up his act”.

This infuriates me especially as my wife uses medical marijuana for exactly that purpose.  Have you ever held your wife’s hair as she dry heaves over a toilet during hour three of a mind-shattering migraine headache, judge?  Have you ever sat helpless in a darkened quiet room listening to the love of your life sobbing in misery, unable to touch her because every nerve in her body is a direct path to searing pain in the brain, judge?  Have you ever taken your shaking, dehydrated wife to the emergency room for a shot of the only legal drug that alleviates the agony, Demerol, only to babysit her for the next two days as that heavy opioid renders her unresponsive and drugged, judge?

My mother and brother also both suffer from migraine.  My mom’s attacks are very infrequent now and my brother’s were brought on by playing middle linebacker in high school.  He had to give up playing the sport he loves because of migraine.

Can you imagine any judge sentencing someone to choose between prison and insulin, statins, NSAIDs, or painkillers?  This is nothing but a cruel and unusual punishment to force this young man to suffer migraine pain just to stay out of prison.  The appeals court and the original judge should be ashamed.

CSAC POSITION ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The California State Athletic Commission’s position is that Marijuana is a banned substance pursuant to Rule 303 and that any positive drug test may result in discipline.

The California Supreme Court has weighed in on “Medical Marijuana” in the employment context and has found that an employer may discipline an employee for off-duty medical marijuana use. The court found that the Compassionate Use Act did not legalize marijuana use per se, but merely provided a defense to criminal charges under particular circumstances. The Court acknowledged that marijuana still had a potential for abuse and that employers continued to have a legitimate interest in whether an employee uses the drug. The Court declined to extend the protections of the Compassionate Use Act any further than the plain language of the Act and into the employer-employee relationship.

Although the question springs from professional licensing rather than employment, much of the Court’s rationale applies. Because the Compassionate Use Act only provides a defense to criminal charges, any argument that the Act would allow an athlete to use the drug without consequences to his or her license must fail. If the Court were to take up a similar challenge to discipline of a licensee, it would likely find that the Commission has a legitimate interest in whether or not an athlete uses the drug because marijuana could slow a fighter’s reflexes and endanger his or her health and safety in the ring or the cage.

Therefore, given the limited reach of the Compassionate Use Act and the rationale of the Supreme Court in Ross v. RagingWire Telcomm, the Commission may safely discipline an athlete without running afoul of any law or court decision.

We’ve been following the cases of Nick Diaz and especially Toby “TigerHeart” Grear as they’ve battled the CSAC for the right to be able to use their medicine and continue to fight.  The irony is that these MMA fighters could use all sorts of painkillers and anti-inflammatories to deal with the rigors of training and face no sanction, but those drugs are more harmful to their health.  Marijuana continues to suffer because its metabolites are stored in the body and released over a long period of time.  Isn’t that something?  Our bodies will expel the toxic residues of alcohol and most drugs within two days, process and eliminate the liquids we drink and solids we eat within hours, and exhale the air we breathe every minute, but our bodies will hold on to cannabinoids for weeks.

I find it hilarious that the CSAC even attempts to rationalize its decision.  The fact is that the law allows them to discriminate, so they will.  But to say that “marijuana could slow a fighter’s reflexes and endanger his or her health and safety in the ring or the cage” is an insult to the fighters.  Do you really think Nick or Toby or Diego are stepping into a fight having just hit a gravity bong?  This rationale assumes these well-trained athletes are going to purposefully take a substance that diminished their performance, which in this sport means “having your face turned to hamburger by some dude’s elbows before he flips you on the back and chokes you unconscious or breaks your elbow backwards.”

I could give them a tad more respect (as in a raise from 0 to 0.1 on a scale of 1-10) if they had made the performance-enhancing arguments put forth on the ESPN blog coverage of the story:

(The hypotheticals: that marijuana’s soothing effect on chronic pain could help mitigate any nagging injuries suffered in training; that its calming effect could make someone less irritated or concerned by their physical fatigue; that it could make an athlete capable of tolerating more trauma in a bout; and inversely, that their reflexes or reaction time could result in serious injury during a bout.)

Jazz musicians often talk about how marijuana changes their perception of time, how it makes them be able to feel syncopation and grace notes that just don’t compute when straight.  I know many a computer coder who tells of solving intricate logic problems through a flash of insight seen only when high.  I imagine there must be some similar experience in professional fighting.

This is a combat sport, right?  Let’s settle it in the cage!  Next season of Ultimate Fighter, have one team that’s all medical marijuana patients and one team that is not, and let’s see who wins.

The overuse and abuse of narcotic pain medication in professional sports, especially contact sports, is enormous. The use of performance enhancing drugs is minuscule and almost meaningless in comparison.

It is a well-known mantra in the NFL that a player can’t make the team from the training room (nursing an injury instead of producing on the field). Players quickly learn that a cortisone shot will make it feel better in a few days. A percocet or vicodin will make if feel better right now. It is also commonly said that the letters NFL stands for ‘not-for-long’ if a player cannot consistently suit up and produce on the field for whatever reason.

After an average 3-year NFL career, daily pain medication is a way of life for many, if not most players. Players with average length careers (about 3 years) are often the marginal players whom are routinely relegated to the most dangerous duties, special teams. Veteran players with significantly longer tours of duty amass injuries due to length of service on the field of play.

Their career will one day end but the pain commonly does not. Year after year of daily physical abuse leads to substance overuse which in turn can often lead to abuse and dependence. The narcotic habit that developed during a player’s active career often continues far into retirement.

via Dr. Johnny C. Benjamin: Steroids are Just the Tip of the Iceberg in Professional Sports.

But at least they’re not smoking weed, right?  A player like Brett Favre opens up and admits his addiction to powerful narcotic painkillers and the league and the press welcome him with open arms and praise him for his “courageous battle”.  A player like Ricky Williams opens up and admits his medical use of marijuana for pain, inflammation, nausea, and social anxiety and the league boots him and the press taunts him as a “pothead”.

There is a reason the average lifespan of an NFL player is 55 years.  A lot of it has to do with the physical pounding they take week in week out, and especially for the lineman, the extra weight they carry.  But I believe a large reason for the shortened lifespan is the toxic toll all the painkillers, anti-inflammatories, and muscle relaxers dished out by team doctors take on these men’s organs.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Many more Americans have been using prescription drugs to treat mental illness since 1996, in part because of expanded insurance coverage and greater familiarity with the drugs among primary care doctors, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Really?  It wouldn’t have anything to do with the ubiquitous “ask your prescriber about new prescription Dammitol” advertisements on TV?

They said 73 percent more adults and 50 percent more children are using drugs to treat mental illness than in 1996.

Among adults over 65, use of so-called psychotropic drugs — which include antidepressants, antipsychotics and Alzheimer’s medicines — doubled between 1996 and 2006.

Here are some other interesting stats from that time period:

• In 1989, drug companies spent $12 million on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.  By 2007 the figure reached $3.7 billion.
• DTC advertising began in 1983, but advertising was restricted only to the drug’s brand name and an “ask your doctor” pitch.  They could not describe what the drug would treat or how it would help a patient.
• In 1997, the FDA relaxed rules on prescription drug advertising to allow the ads we see now, where shiny happy people use prescription Dammitol, pretty music plays and birds chirp, and in the last ten seconds a muted monotone sped-up voice-over tells you all the side effects Dammitol can cause.
• 70% of all DTC advertising is television advertising, and 29% of all network news advertising revenue comes from pharmaceutical ads.
• The average number of prescriptions per person in the United States increased from 7.3 in 1992 to 14.3 in 2006.

“What we generally find is there has been an increase in access to care for all populations,” said Sherry Glied of Columbia University in New York, whose study appears in the journal Health Affairs.

Glied said expanded drug coverage under Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program for poor children, helped make such drugs more affordable.

The study found the number of children diagnosed and treated for mental health conditions by their primary care doctor doubled between 1996 and 2006.

Sure, that could be a part of the increase, but you don’t double the prescriptions-per-person and see 50%, 75%, and 100% rise in psychtropic drug use among children, adults, and seniors, respectively, in just over a decade because government programs made those drugs more affordable for children and the elderly.

In his book, Death by Prescription, Ray D. Strand describes our “self-medicated society” and how these pharmaceutical ads turn the patient into a drug seeker and the doctor into a dealer:

“Surveys reported in our medical literature reveal that when a patient comes into a doctor’s office and requests a specific drug that he has seen advertised in the media, the doctor writes the exact prescription the patient requested more than 70 percent of the time!”

So, let’s say that a consumer who has been feeling a little sad lately sees a commercial for the antidepressant drug Zoloft. The commercial demonstrates the symptoms for depression and the consumer identifies with them. Suddenly, he or she thinks, “I’m not just sad. I’m depressed, which is a ‘medical condition that can be treated by the prescription drug Zoloft.’” With this in mind, the consumer goes to a medical doctor and says, “I’ve been really depressed a lot lately. I’ve been [the consumer recites the depression symptoms listed in the Zoloft commercial]. I think I need Zoloft.” So, according to Strand, there’s a 70 percent chance the doctor will prescribe Zoloft, the exact prescription the consumer requested. That’s how pharmaceutical commercials really work. They directly influence consumer behavior, yet drug companies claim they only “educate” patients, but don’t persuade them to do anything.

It’s not just the patients that Big Pharma is seducing, either.  15 to 20 percent of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) income comes from pharmaceutical advertisements in its journals.  Pfizer alone has 4500 people in its sales force, which directly market these drugs to doctors through special promotions and free samples.  And while Big Pharma spends $3.7 billion to influence you, they spend almost twice that ($6.7 billion) advertising to doctors through these sales forces and in professional journals.

And it works.  $10.4 billion in total advertising is a small price to pay to reap the $227.5 billion spent on prescription drugs in 2007.  Comparing the cost of the raw ingredients vs. the retail cost to consumers, the markups on Paxil, Zoloft, Celebrex, Prozac, and Xanax are 2,898%, 11,821%, 21,712%, 224,973%, 569,958%, respectively.  The pharmaceutical industry is the third most profitable industry in America, according to Fortune Magazine (trailing only communications and internet industries for return-on-investment), with 2008 profits of 19.3% of revenues.  The profits of the three largest pharmaceutical companies were $12.9, $8.1, and $4.8 billion in 2008, respectively.

When you know these facts, you begin to understand the monumental task of legalizing marijuana in this country.  How far would that $227.5 billion prescription drug spending drop if people had legal access to marijuana?  I’ve already talked to many medical marijuana patients who report being able to kick 50% to 75% of their need for opioid painkillers thanks to cannabis.  Marijuana works better for some people for anxiety and depression than Paxil, Zoloft, Celebrex, Prozac, and Xanax, and you can grow it in your yard.  That little weed can replace a whole lotta pills that have nasty side effects like constipation, nausea, erectile disfunction, and so forth (for which, of course, they’ll write you another prescription).  And it makes you happy, hungry, and sexy, too!

So why would the AMA or APA want to support medical marijuana and anger the Big Pharma that keeps their journals funded?  Why would network television want to report positively on medical marijuana and anger the Big Pharma that keeps their news divisions funded?  Why would some doctors want to support medical marijuana and mess up the freebies they’re getting from Big Pharma?

The real reason marijuana is illegal has nothing to do with how it effects you or society, it’s how it effects business.

WASHINGTON (BP)–The decision by the Obama administration to surrender to bad state policies on so-called medicinal marijuana will have disastrous effects.

Medicinal marijuana is the Trojan horse of the marijuana decriminalization movement. The movement sees it as the means to appeal to people’s compassion in order to change public opinion about marijuana and ease the way toward decriminalization of marijuana. The Obama administration’s decision to cave on enforcement of federal drug laws against marijuana distribution represents the dropping of the first shoe on decriminalization of marijuana and signals the next one is coming.

I love the idea that we “legalizers” are meeting at Dr. Evil’s island lair to figure out how to pull a fast one over on the American people. Like we’re sitting there saying, “How are we ever going to convince the public that this dangerous killer plant is actually OK so we can get high legally?” We don’t have to appeal to anything to change public opinion that marijuana is medicine, we only have to show them the truth. Medical marijuana is not a “Trojan horse”, it is Galileo’s telescope proving the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, not matter how much the religion of the day says it does.

With the federal government out of the way, we can expect to see a rapid rise in marijuana distributors and marijuana demand in states that have fallen victim to the medical marijuana scam. None of this escalation will prove especially helpful to the sick or to society. Those who use medicinal marijuana will pay the price first, and then everyone else will.

Yes, there will be more medical marijuana distributors, and as people realize they have a safe, legal, non-toxic alternative to the side-effect-laden killer pharmaceuticals shoved at them for pain and other conditions, there may be an increase in demand. But I’m still waiting for that medical marijuana patient to complain that we “legalizers” have taken advantage of them. I’m still waiting for those patients to protest the opening of another dispensary.

Marijuana is not a necessary or particularly effective pain-relieving aid. For years, the pain-relieving ingredient in marijuana has been available by prescription. So, one cannot make the argument that medicinal marijuana is a new addition to the pain-relief arsenal. In fact, it isn’t even that useful for pain relief. Most people who use marijuana to help them cope with severe pain take other stronger pain relief drugs in combination with marijuana because the pain relieving properties of marijuana are not that potent.

Sure, I can make that argument. Marijuana has been proven – not conjectured, proven – to be more effective in relieving neuropathic pain than conventional opioids. Also, pain patients who must use conventional opioids are able to reduce their intake when combined with cannabis, because the pain relieving properties of marijuana are synergistic. (If you’ve wondered why marijuana is still illegal, ask yourself if Big Pharma would like to see demand for opioid painkillers reduced by one-third to one-half.)

On the other hand, smoking marijuana threatens to make bad situations worse for many users. Marijuana introduces multiple toxic chemicals into the systems of people whose bodies are already weakened from their ailments. Not only might these toxic chemicals hinder people’s ability to fend off the cause of their pain by weakening their defenses, but users risk developing additional problems related to their use of marijuana, including respiratory ailments and addiction.

Yes, sure, doctors so often recommend marijuana for their HIV/AIDS patients because it will “weaken their defenses”.

The respiratory ailments related to heavy long-term marijuana smoking do not include lung cancer or emphysema, but rather persistent cough and in rare cases, bronchitis, and even these risks can be mitigated by vaporizing or eating cannabis.

Marijuana does have a possibility of clinical dependence. About 9% of its users may develop a problem. Compare that to 15% for alcohol and 32% for tobacco. Compare also that marijuana is not addictive in the sense of the physical withdrawals you’d get from cocaine, heroin, alcohol, or nicotine – most users battling this dependence suffer from irritability, sleep difficulties, and anxiety, much like you’d feel if trying to kick coffee.

In addition, the public’s acceptance of marijuana as a medicinal aid will weaken resistance to its recreational use. As it becomes more entrenched in our society, it will be perceived as less dangerous. This will likely lead to more experimentation with marijuana by our nation’s young people. Since marijuana is undoubtedly a gateway drug, we can expect to see even more of our nation’s youth lose their lives and their futures to drug addiction.

Yes, once people are exposed to people using marijuana medicinally, and those people don’t become raving drug-crazed lunatics desperate for a heroin fix while raping the white women, the public will perceive it as less dangerous and be more accepting of social use.

However, the gateway theory is so debunked now that it’s almost laughable you bring it up.  According to government stats, 100 million people have tried marijuana in their lifetime.  Those same stats tell us there are 2 million monthly cocaine users and 150,000 monthly heroin users.  So, even if we assume every cocaine and heroin user started down the road to ruin by smoking a joint, only 1/50th of the potheads become coke fiends and only 1/666th of the potheads become junkies.  Some gateway – that’s more like sixteen inch hole in a fence that only opens ten minutes a day.

The last shoe to drop will be the legalization of marijuana distribution for recreational purposes. As marijuana use becomes part of the culture, we can expect to see a movement toward decriminalization of all marijuana use and distribution. If marijuana is decriminalized, we will see the rise of every kind of drug related problem, from performance impairment to family disruption to addiction to crime to premature death. This is not the kind of change America needs. What we need is the enforcement of laws that protect the vulnerable and that help all Americans achieve their greatest potential. What we don’t need are more threats to that goal.

Because nobody is smoking any marijuana recreationally now, right?  Marijuana use is a part of the culture!  Have you seen any movies or TV shows lately?  The most harmful thing about marijuana is that a cop might shoot you over it!

VIENNA (AFP) – A UN drugs agency warned Thursday against underestimating the dangers of cannabis.

“The international community may wish to review the issue of cannabis,” the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) wrote in its annual report.

“Over the years, cannabis has become more potent and is associated with an increasing number of emergency room admissions,” the report stated.

Ooh, a swing and a miss!  Cannabis has become more potent, but increasing potency does not mean increase in danger, as marijuana smoking is a self-titrating action.  If you have schwag, you smoke a lot and get high.  If you have kind, you smoke a little and get high.  As for emergency room admissions, this myth is taken from the DAWN statistics where they determine if someone has used cannabis prior to admittance, not whether cannabis caused the admittance.  Since cannabis is the most popular illicit drug, it is naturally going to be mentioned more often in the ER.

Cannabis was often the first illicit drug taken by young people and was frequently called a “gateway drug,” in that it could lead to later use of hard drugs.

Steeerike two!  In 1999, US Institute of Medicine shot down the “gateway theory” and many studies that followed found the same thing.  Nowadays no serious scientist even brings it up anymore… but that doesn’t stop cannabiphobic bureaucrats from saying it anyway.

Indeed, many countries allowed the “recreational” use of cannabis, and public perceptions of the so-called “medical” uses of the drug and its recreational use “are overlapping and confusing,” it said.

Hmm, I think that’s a foul tip.  There’s nothing “so-called” about the medical uses of cannabis and if its medical use is “overlapping and confusing” then why did teen marijuana use rates decline in the states that implemented medical marijuana?

It also urged governments to “stimulate” the controlled use of opiate-based painkillers to help “alleviate unnecessary suffering of millions of patients.”

“Although the access to controlled medicines, including morphine and codeine, is considered by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be a human right, it is virtually non existent in over 150 countries,” the report said.

“The WHO estimates that at least 30 million patients and possibly as many as 86 million annually suffer from untreated moderate to severe pain.”

via The Raw Story | UN agency recommends world stop ‘trivializing’ marijuana dangers.

Yerrrr OUT!  In fact, not only are you out, but your whole team is out, disqualified, and banished from the league!  In the same set of recommendations where you demonize cannabis and its “so-called medical” uses you then remind us access to painkillers is a human right, millions are suffering with under-treated pain, and you recommend we “stimulate” more use of opiates?  Who writes your recommendations, the Opium Poppy Growers Union?

Using tissue from retired NFL athletes culled posthumously, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. The findings are stunning. Far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

CSTE studies reveal brown tangles flecked throughout the brain tissue of former NFL players who died young — some as early as their 30s or 40s.

McKee, who also studies Alzheimer’s disease, says the tangles closely resemble what might be found in the brain of an 80-year-old with dementia.

The damage affects the parts of the brain that control emotion, rage, hypersexuality, even breathing, and recent studies find that CTE is a progressive disease that eventually kills brain cells.

via Dead athletes’ brains show damage from concussions – CNN.com.

If you have the talent and choose to do so, you may play NFL football.  We know that choice will dramatically increase your chances of concussion.  We try to protect you from it with rules about legal hits and a nice hard helmet, but there is no doubt that you will very likely suffer brain damage because of your choice.  Your choice to inflict brain damage upon yourself is not without consequences for others – the effects of rage, hypersexuality, and dementia will no doubt affect your family.  Aside from the brain damage, there is the wear on the body that leaves many ex-pros walking around in their 40s and 50s like arthritic old men in their 90s.

That is a valid lifestyle choice.  But smoke a little weed, which does not harm your brain, reduces your need for painkillers, and may have the effects of giggling, dry mouth, and munchies, and we’ll have to kick you out of the NFL.

Who wants to be picked No. 1? Tough draft to figure out – USATODAY.com

Among the issues that have affected perspective on this draft:

• [LSU defensive tackle Glenn] Dorsey’s right shinbone, injured in 2006 and still a subject of debate even as he continues to be rated among the top three players on most draft boards.

• Major concerns surfaced about Kansas cornerback Aqib Talib and Michigan receiver Mario Manningham, who both tested positive for marijuana yet remain first-day prospects on most lists.

At February’s scouting combine in Indianapolis, Dorsey confirmed his leg injury to NFL team doctors who questioned whether he was fully recovered from a stress fracture in his tibia. He also admitted it still hindered him throughout last season.

Dorsey told NFLDraftScout.com that he took painkillers before each game last year and wore a bone stimulator in the spring of 2007 for as much as 18 hours a day. Although he also insisted he was completely healed, he acknowledged that doctors examined him for nine hours one day at the combine.

“Yes, I took painkillers and, yes, I wore the stim through the summer,” Dorsey said at the combine. “But I played the whole season. I will take whatever tests the doctors ask, but I am telling you, I am ready to go.”

However, in a league recently traumatized by off-field issues, feelings are less clear regarding Talib and Manningham.

Talib admitted his prior marijuana use during team interviews at the combine and told reporters that it was “in the past.”

Manningham denied using marijuana at the combine. But since then, he’s hired a new agent, gotten into better shape and sent a letter to NFL teams recounting past use of the drug. Pro Football Weekly obtained a copy of the letter that said, in part, “I don’t use marijuana anymore — and I have passed tests since. … I am writing this letter because I just want a fair evaluation.”

So the guy who played through an entire season with a fractured leg by gobbling Percocet, whose workouts have shown him to still be not completely recovered, he’s just as much of a draft day question mark as two star players who’ve used marijuana?

C’mon, it’s not like it’s a performance-enhancing drug. I’m pretty sure players don’t do bong rips before hitting the field; pro football plays are complicated and short-term memory problems would hurt performance. Also, you do get time and balance distortions while high, and that can’t be good for catching passes or tackling runners.

But if a pro athlete abuses his body for three hours of football violence on Sunday, how can we question his Monday use of marijuana to recover from the pain and stiffness? Instead, we pump them full of narcotics that they end up getting addicted to like Brett Favre (anyone want to bet he wouldn’t hold the all-time consecutive starts streak for a QB without that stretch of Vicodin addiction?)