Can Legal Marijuana Solve The Opioid Crisis?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently said he was «astonished» by claims that legal cannabis could resolve the opioid crisis ravaging the nation. However, a new research study securely connected legalized weed to reduced opioid abuse and overdoses.

After examining hospitalization records from 1997 to 2014 in 27 states, nine of which legalized medical cannabis within that timeframe, scientists from the University of California San Diego discovered hospitalization rates of individuals experiencing pain reliever abuse and dependency dropped typically 23 percent in states that offered medical cannabis. Opioid overdose cases at medical facilities in states with legal weed also stopped by approximately 13 percent, the study said.

The study, which was released in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence report, said the findings show that fears of legal cannabis driving hospitalizations upward were unverified.

«Medical cannabis laws may have reduced hospitalizations related to opioid painkiller,» Yuyan Shi, the study’s author and University of California San Diego public health professor, informed Reuters Monday. «This study and a few others offered some proof regarding the possible favorable advantages of legalizing cannabis to lower opioid usage and abuse, however they are still preliminary.»

There have actually been other research studies that have evaluated the connection between medical cannabis and lowered opioid prescriptions, consisting of one released in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014 that found a 25 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths in states with legal medical cannabis.

The findings appear to go together with another more recent study, released in the July 2016 problem of Health Affairs journal, which discovered doctors in medical cannabis states prescribed 1,800 less painkiller prescriptions for patients a year.

More than 33,000 U.S. homeowners died from an opioid-related overdose in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Cannabis, which the federal government still classifies as a Schedule I compound, has yet to be linked to any fatal overdoses.