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STEVE ELLIOTT is the editor behind tokesignals.com, an independent blog of Cannabis news and opinion.
Sessions’ Marijuana Advisor Wants to Drug Test Everyone A top-level advisor to Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants doctors to drug test all their patients, and to force users they suspect of addiction into rehabilitation against their will. If Dr. Robert DuPont gets his way, drug testing could become a required part of your visit to the doctor. DuPont, 81, is one of a small group of drug policy “experts” Sessions invited to a closed meeting last month to discuss federal response to marijuana legalization. He is one of the most hardline and influential architects of the War on Drugs, having started out in the 1970s as a liberal on the drug control issue. But by the 1980s DuPont had taken a hard right turn, popularizing the long-debunked “DOCTORS ALREADY claim that CHECK FOR THINGS LIKE CHOLESTEROL Cannabis is a AND BLOOD SUGAR, “gateway drug.” WHY NOT TEST FOR In an interview ILLICIT DRUGS?” last year, DuPont pushed for expanding drug testing. His idea includes having physicians force patients whom they believe to have substance abuse problems to submit to drug tests, or lengthy stays in treatment facilities, according to Newsweek. DuPont wants to force people into treatment for up to five years. “We want [drug screens] to be routine in all medicine,” DuPont said. “Doctors already check for things like cholesterol and blood sugar, why not test for illicit drugs? Right now the public thinks that if we provide treatment the addicts will come and get well … that’s not true. So let’s use the leverage of the criminal justice system.”
16/FEB. 2018 FACEBOOK.COM/NWLEAF