Can Legal Marijuana Solve The Opioid Crisis?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently said he was «amazed» by claims that legal cannabis might resolve the opioid crisis ravaging the nation. However, a brand-new research study firmly connected legalized weed to decreased opioid abuse and overdoses.

After examining hospitalization records from 1997 to 2014 in 27 states, 9 of which legislated Medical Marijuana Stickers cannabis within that timeframe, scientists from the University of California San Diego found hospitalization rates of individuals experiencing pain reliever abuse and dependency dropped usually 23 percent in states that offered medical cannabis. Opioid overdose cases at medical facilities in states with legal weed also came by approximately 13 percent, the research study stated.

The research study, which was launched in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence report, said the findings prove that worries of legal cannabis driving hospitalizations up were dubious.

«Medical cannabis laws may have decreased hospitalizations related to opioid pain relievers,» Yuyan Shi, the study’s author and University of California San Diego public health teacher, informed Reuters Monday. «This study and a few others provided some proof relating to the prospective favorable benefits of legislating cannabis to minimize opioid use and abuse, but they are still preliminary.»

There have been other studies that have actually analyzed the connection in between medical cannabis and lowered opioid prescriptions, including one released in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014 that discovered a 25 percent decrease in opioid overdose deaths in states with legal medical cannabis.

The findings appear to go hand-in-hand with another more recent study, launched in the July 2016 concern of Health Affairs journal, which discovered physicians in medical cannabis states recommended 1,800 less pain reliever prescriptions for clients a year.

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