MEDIA ROOTS – On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin highlights Matt Heineman as a hero for removing partisanship from the healthcare debate in America with his documentary Escape Fire. Abby then calls out Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers for attempting to bring back a CISPA-esque cyber-legislation.

RT’s Capital Account, Lauren Lyster, discusses the austerity protests across Europe, and Alexa O-brien, plaintiff and activist against the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision, speaks out about her personal experience fighting the government against unlawful detention.

BTS wraps up the show by taking a look at who Alfred Nobel was and highlights a few of the most controversial Americans to have received the coveted Nobel Peace prize.

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Nobel Mass Murder Club, Congress to Rethink CISPA, US Healthcare Sucks, Riots in Greece, NDAA Plaintiff Speaks Out.

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Tune in from 6-6:30 or 9-9:30 EST M-F on your local cable station

OR watch live @http://www.RT.com/usa

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FOLLOW Abby Martin @http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin

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MEDIA ROOTS — Whether for healing, meditation, or recreation, psychoactive substances have played a significant role in most cultures throughout human history. The United States is of no exception.

In 1895, the Bayer aspirin company used to market Heroin as an over the counter cough syrup. Up until the 1930s, opium tincture, morphine and heroin were available over-the-counter and millions of Americans were becoming addicted. In contrast, many of these same substances are now considered highly dangerous by the Drug Enforcement Agency and in many cases are illegal altogether.

Today, there are new names for nearly equally powerful and addictive substances like Vicodin, Oxycontin, Dilauded and Fentanyl. Fentanyl, a drug far more potent than heroin or Morphine comes in convenient lollypop and patch form for easy consumption which is distributed legally by pharmaceutical companies.

Most pharmaceutical production facilities do not start with pure chemicals when manufacturing these medicines. They instead use opium latex derived from poppies to produce drugs such as Vicodin. India and Nepal, for example, maintain opium latex factories to export this material globally. This practice remains legal while natural opium consumption and distribution can carry a ten-year prison sentence in most states.

With the war in Afghanistan continuing to rage on, heroin production has actually increased because of the continued presence of the United States military. Additionally, President Obama’s recent healthcare legislation has only stimulated opiate production anddistribution by mandating consumers to buy into the health insurance industry. Consequently, profits of large pharmaceutical companies continue to grow while the ubiquity of painkillers for future Americans is ensured.

Robbie Martin for Media Roots

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Abby Martin on RT, ‘Painkiller Nation’

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RT – Approximately 100 million working American are uninsured in the US and lack of health care ranks as the seventh cause of death. President Obama has attempted to reform healthcare, but has only fallen short. Many critics believe Obama forcing people in America to obtain healthcare is a power grab from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Darcy Smith, a licensed clinical social worker, joins us to discuss this growing trend of pill popping.

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MEDIA ROOTS — Anything under the sun can be abused, yet scientific studies increasingly seem to confirm how relatively harmless cannabis smoking is compared with tobacco, alcohol, and other popular substances consumed by humans.

MR

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MSNBC — Periodically smoking marijuana doesn’t appear to hurt lung capacity, the largest study ever conducted on pot smokers has found.

Even though most marijuana smokers tend to inhale deeply and hold the smoke in for as long as they can before exhaling, the lung capacity didn’t deteriorate even among those who smoked a joint a day for seven years or once a week for 20 years, according to the study published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.

In recent years, studies on marijuana smoking and its effects on lung function have been contradictory. While most studies have shown no effects on the lungs from smoking cannabis, others have shown adverse effects, and still others have shown improvement in lung function. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and University of Alabama at Birmingham knew tobacco smoking causes lung damage and leads to respiratory issues such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but they wanted to be clear whether smoking marijuana, had similar effects.

They measured lung function multiple times in more than 5,100 men and women during a 20-year period.  In fact, the research shows, some people who regularly smoke marijuana can have a slight improvement in lung function.

Read more about Smoking pot doesn’t hurt lung capacity.

© 2012 msnbc.com 

LA TIMES– Marijuana has been approved by California, many other states and the nation’s capital to treat a range of illnesses, but in a decision announced Friday the federal government ruled that it has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a dangerous drug like heroin.

The decision comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

Advocates for the medical use of the drug criticized the ruling but were elated that the Obama administration had finally acted, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts, where they believe they can get a fairer hearing. The decision to deny the request was made by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and comes less than two months after advocates asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to force the administration to respond to their petition.

Read full article about US Gov: Marijuana Has No Medical Use.

© 2011 LA Times

Photo by Flickr user Neeta Lind

CNN– This past winter, I found myself following a drug dealer and his crew up the dark stairway of a triple-decker apartment building on the outskirts of Boston. Reaching a unit on the top floor, the young man pulled a gun from his waistband and set it on a coffee table next to a digital scale and a pile of drugs.

Entering a drug den, you might expect to find cocaine or heroin. But side by side with this pile of “hard stuff” were prescription pills, lots of them.

The little green tablets the men were dealing — known as “Perc 30s,” “Percs” or simply “30s” on the streets — were 30-milligram oxycodone. In medicine, oxycodone is known as an opioid analgesic, a powerful painkiller prescribed to patients with acute or chronic pain. On the streets, it’s known as heroin in a pill, and to borrow some Boston slang, it will get you “completely jammed.”

When Gil Kerlikowske, President Barack Obama’s national drug policy director, recently described today’s prescription drug abuse in the U.S. as worse than the crack epidemic of the 1980s, he was simply echoing what these drug dealers have long known.

“Pills are what it is now,” as one of them put it to us that night.

In the U.S., more people are abusing prescription drugs than cocaine, heroin and Ecstasy combined, but the most destructive have been prescription pain drugs such as oxycodone, best known by the brand name OxyContin.

The Centers for Disease Control data show overdose deaths from prescription painkillers more than doubled from 2000 to 2007, and in 17 states, painkiller overdoses are now the number one cause of accidental death.

Read full article on how Painkillers Are a Gateway to Heroin.

© 2011 CNN

Photo by Flickr user EMagineArt