That indicates that some people may be shifting away from prescription drugs to cannabis, though the studies canât say whether this substitution is actually happening or if patients or doctors are the driving force. âIn this time when we are so concerned â rightly so â about opiate misuse and abuse and the mortality thatâs occurring, we need to be clear-eyed and use evidence to drive our policies,â said W. David Bradford, an economist at the University of Georgia and an author of one of the studies. âIf youâre interested in giving people options for pain management that donât bring the particular risks that opiates do, states should contemplate turning on dispensary-based cannabis policies.â Previous research has pointed to a similar correlation. A 2014 paper found that states with medical marijuana laws had nearly 25 percent fewer deaths from opioid overdoses.
But the new research is the first to connect marijuana legalization to prescription painkillers with such large data sets. One of the two new studies found that people on Medicare filled 14 percent fewer prescriptions for opioids after medical marijuana laws were passed in their states. The second study found that Medicaid enrollees filled nearly 40 fewer opioid prescriptions per 1,000 people each year after their state passed any law making cannabis accessible â with greater drops seen in states that legalized both medical and recreational marijuana.
A woman holds marijuana for sale at the MedMen store in West Hollywood, California
Those findings are somewhat positive from a public health angle. Opioids, in addition to an addictive potential much greater than that of marijuana, have other unappealing side effects. âThe effect of opioids chronically â they wreak havoc on your GI tract,â said Marie Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Maine. Of course, medical cannabis is a drug with side effects, too. Obviously people can get high, though that does depend on the concentration of the psychoactive compound, tetrahydrocannabinol, in the strain or formulation that someone is using.
Marijuanaâs safety profile isnât really at issue. âPeople are convinced of its safety,â Hayes said. But thereâs just not a lot of evidence supporting marijuana as a chronic pain treatment in its own right. âI would say the evidence has been very modest up until about 10 years ago, because nobody would fund the research,â she said. Still, opioids as a chronic pain treatment have a checkered reputation as well: One recent study found opioids didnât provide any more relief for chronic arthritis pain than over-the-counter painkillers.
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