Two studies published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine add to an increasing body of research hinting at an association between cannabis legalization and a reduction in opiate use.
The researchers involved in both studies utilized records of opiate prescriptions reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, and analyzed how the prescription trends changed as a result of state-level changes in marijuana policy. Both studies, which utilize a larger data set than previous studies designed to address the same question, broadly reached the same conclusion: there are fewer prescriptions for opiates filled after a state legalizes medical or recreational marijuana.
In one study, a researchers analyzed the total number of daily doses for any opioid medication prescribed in Medicare Part D — an optional prescription drug plan for Medicare recipients — in each state in each year. They found a significant reduction of opiate prescriptions in states that adopted some form […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
In the last two years, I have attended a local conference on medical marijuana aimed at health care professionals, and including highly technical talks on plant chemistry and neurobiology. One of the speakers, an MD from a Northeastern state, has told how he noticed when doing his residency how some patients using opioids for legitimate pain control would not need the expected increase in dosages to maintain efficacy as is the usual trajectory for long-term use. He finally started asking these patients how they were able to maintain pain control without increases. The answer was they were also using marijuana for pain control. This doctor hadn’t intended to become a “marijuana doctor”, but his experiences with these patients and with eventually treating patients with seizure disorders that were non-responsive to other pharmaceutical drugs led him to become a specialist in this area.