Home Business Legalized Cannabis could help solve America’s Opioid crisis, studies suggest…

Legalized Cannabis could help solve America’s Opioid crisis, studies suggest…

darudemagApr 10, 2018BusinessComments Off on Legalized Cannabis could help solve America’s Opioid crisis, studies suggest…

Research into medical marijuana and liberal cannabis laws may offer insights into possible solutions to a crisis that saw 17,087 people die from prescription opioid overdoes in the US in 2016.

Legalized cannabis use may help solve America’s opioid crisis, two scientific studies have suggested.
Two separate peer-reviewed studies in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found significant drops in opioid prescribing in US states that had relaxed their cannabis laws.
Both studies appear to offer insights into possible ways to solve a crisis that saw 17,087 people die from prescription opioid overdoes in the US in 2016.

The crisis has its origins in soaring prescription rates after a new generation of opioids were marketed in the 1980s and 1990s with inaccurate claims that they could alleviate chronic pain with minimal risk of addiction.

The new research was accompanied by an opinion piece in JAMA Internal Medicine which said both studies produced “results suggesting that cannabis legalization may play a beneficial role in the opioid crisis”.
In the first study, researchers at the University of Georgia, Athens, looked at Medicare Part D prescriptions for people over the age of 65 between 2010 and 2015.

It found that prescriptions for all opioids decreased by 2.11 million daily doses per year from an average of 23.08 million daily doses per year when a state instituted any medical cannabis law.
When a state opened marijuana dispensaries, opioid prescriptions dropped by 3.7 million daily doses per year.
Summarizing their results in the article Association Between US State Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Prescribing in the Medicare Part D Population, the researchers said that part of the reason for embarking on their study was that “Medical cannabis policies may be one mechanism that can encourage lower prescription opioid use and serve as a harm abatement tool in the opioid crisis.”

The researchers concluded: “Medical cannabis laws are associated with significant reductions in opioid prescribing in the Medicare Part D population. This finding was particularly strong in states that permit dispensaries, and for reductions in hydrocodone and morphine prescriptions.” (Adam Lusher)