Beery points to 50 deaths in 2016, most linked to drugs<\/p>\n
Dr. Jeff Beery doesn\u2019t agree with those who think marijuana is a relatively harmless drug that carries medicinal qualities and should even be winked at for recreational purposes.<\/p>\n
But Beery doesn\u2019t just think marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a gateway to hell,\u201d he says flatly.<\/p>\n
Beery\u2019s perspective is based on four years serving as Highland County coroner, with more than a decade before that as a deputy coroner. He provided statistics this week from 2016 on 50 fatalities he investigated last year that he deemed suspicious, or at least unusually odd or interesting.<\/p>\n
Beery said there has been a steady increase in deaths related one way or another to drugs, raising fatalities connected to illicit drugs to alarming proportions. He said the word \u201cepidemic\u201d is not sufficient to describe the toll being taken on Highland County.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a craze, not an epidemic,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cepidemic\u201d implies something beyond people\u2019s control.<\/p>\n
The 50 cases provided by Beery from 2016 range from deaths by car crashes, burns, gun shots, heart attacks, hyperthermia and suicides to asphyxia and embolisms. But most of them have a common denominator, he said \u2013 the presence of drug use, or a history of drug use.<\/p>\n
At least eight cases out of the 50 cited by Beery include marijuana as a factor contributing to the fatalities, in his opinion. Six fatalities were connected to heroin, three to cocaine, eight to amphetamines, including methamphetamine, and several to drugs like Xanax, Valium, Clonazepam and, especially, Fentanyl, which has been increasingly found mixed with heroin.<\/p>\n
Beery blames a lax attitude by society and particularly by elected officials, including at the state and federal level, for contributing to the rise in drug-related deaths. He said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder\u2019s decision not to pursue marijuana charges at the federal level \u201copened the door to the wild progression of illicit drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holder consistently expressed views on marijuana that were opposed to treating the drug as seriously as other narcotics. In a 2016 PBS interview, after he was no longer attorney general, Holder said, \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to imagine ever decriminalizing crack cocaine, drugs like that. But the whole question of should marijuana be decriminalized, I mean, that\u2019s a conversation I think that we should engage in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beery is aware of the fierce pushback among many people and organizations to his stand on marijuana. Groups like the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) \u2013 whose mission is \u201cto move public opinion sufficiently to legalize the responsible use of marijuana by adults, and to serve as an advocate for consumers to assure they have access to high quality marijuana that is safe, convenient and affordable,\u201d according to its website \u2013 have won referendums and convinced legislatures to at least legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes.<\/p>\n
Many patients suffering from certain serious illnesses or chronic pain insist that marijuana is the only effective relief they have found. Beery disagrees, saying marijuana has no medicinal qualities. He blames Ohio\u2019s Republican-led \u201cso-called conservative\u201d legislature for caving in on the medical marijuana issue, even though the consequences of marijuana use and cultivation are obvious, especially in southern Ohio, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust look at Pike County,\u201d said Beery, referring to the murders last year of the Rhoden family, where a large marijuana growing operation worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the street was found.\u00a0 Beery said a lax attitude about border security and drugs also contributes to the problem.<\/p>\n
Beery said that while investigating deaths in recent years, \u201cI would see other things,\u201d ranging from marijuana to heroin to cocaine that, to him, were obvious contributors not just to overdoses but to car wrecks, gun shots, homicides, burns and suicides.<\/p>\n
Source: http:\/\/timesgazette.com\/news\/13879\/highland-county-coroner-marijuana-is-gateway-to-hell<\/em><\/p>\n March 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beery points to 50 deaths in 2016, most linked to drugs Dr. Jeff Beery doesn\u2019t agree with those who think marijuana is a relatively harmless drug that carries medicinal qualities and should even be winked at for recreational purposes. But Beery doesn\u2019t just think marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs. \u201cIt\u2019s a gateway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,68,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-drug-use-various-effects","category-drugs-and-accidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}