What occurred in states after medical marijuana legal guidelines have been handed? Did opioid overdoses go up, keep the similar, or go down?
Millions of individuals in the United States have been diagnosed with an opioid use dysfunction, and greater than 80 Americans die every day from opioid overdose. Where is that this coming from? Most “new heroin users started out misusing opioid prescription painkillers.” This is essential as a result of greater than 200 million opioid painkiller prescriptions are nonetheless written yearly. Did you catch that quantity? Two hundred million prescriptions yearly, “a number closely approximating the entire adult population in the United States.” That’s unimaginable.
“‘When you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people’ to smoke cannabis, [White House Spokesperson Sean] Spicer told reporters.” But, if opioid dependancy begins with folks taking prescription ache tablets, perhaps hashish would reduce the drawback by providing a substitute painkiller. Alternatively, perhaps hashish would act like a “gateway” drug or “stepping stone” to tougher medication, doubtlessly making the opioid epidemic worse, as I talk about in my video Marijuana Legalization and the Opioid Epidemic.
Well, first, does hashish work? “Is it a truly effective drug for pain that is arbitrarily stigmatized by many and criminalized by the federal government? Or is it without any medical utility, its advocates hiding behind a screen of misplaced (or deliberately misleading) compassion for the ill?” The official place of the American Medical Association is that marijuana “has no scientifically proven, currently accepted medical use for preventing or treating any disease,” however what does the science say?
“Despite the widespread use of opioids, 50% – 80% of advanced cancer patients die with unmet pain-relief needs.” So, including hashish could assist. Indeed, double-blind, placebo-controlled medical trials have found that hashish compounds do produce ache reduction, “equivalent to moderate doses of codeine,” an opioid used to deal with gentle to reasonable ache, however for those who’re dying from most cancers, don’t you need the great things? Why not simply crank up the morphine?
If you wished, you might put somebody in coma and erase all their ache, however there’s a really actual drawback with such excessive doses of opiates: Here you’re, at the finish of life, surrounded by family members, however you’re so doped up you may’t even say goodbye. This is the place hashish could assist. It could permit sufferers to drop down the opiate dose a bit with out compromising ache management.
That’s what many report, anyway. If you take a look at New England, for instance, which will be regarded as floor zero for the opioid epidemic, in only one yr, “there were enough opioids dispensed from Maine pharmacies in 2014 to supply every person in the state with a 16-day supply.” What are they doing up there?
Among the New Englanders surveyed who have been on opioids, nonetheless, most claimed “they reduced their [opioid] use since they started MC,” medical hashish. Some additionally lowered their use of antidepressants, alcohol, anti-anxiety medicines, migraine meds, and sleeping tablets. Forty % stated they have been in a position to cut back their opioid use “a lot,” as you may see at 3:16 in my video.
Cannabis use could even reduce the use of crack cocaine. It could seem unusual to provide medication to drug addicts, but when folks even make a partial swap from extra to much less dangerous medication, general hurt could also be lowered. So, what happened after medical marijuana legal guidelines have been handed? Did opioid overdoses go up, keep the similar, or go down?
They went down.
“Medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates,” a couple of 25 % decrease charge of overdose deaths. “The striking implication is that medical marijuana laws…may represent a promising approach for stemming” the opioid overdose epidemic. “If true, this finding upsets the applecart of conventional wisdom regarding the public health implications of marijuana legalization and medicinal usefulness.” On the one hand, we’ve got the AMA saying hashish isn’t medically useful, however, on the different hand, if persons are getting sufficient profit utilizing it to allow them to minimize down on their prescriptions, then clearly one thing is happening.
What about different pharmaceuticals? As you may see at 4:37 in my video, as soon as medical marijuana legal guidelines have been passed, fewer folks have been filling prescriptions—and never solely fewer prescriptions for painkillers, however fewer prescriptions for anti-anxiety medication, antidepressants, anti-nausea medication, antipsychotics, anti-seizure medication, and sleeping tablets. If all states adopted medical marijuana legal guidelines, that might save round half a billion {dollars} a yr. But, the half-billion {dollars} taxpayers would save, is the half-billion bucks drug firms would lose, so it’s no surprise Big Pharma is freaking out. Why do you assume pharmaceutical companies, together with the makers of OxyContin and Vicodin, have been main sponsors of the marijuana prohibition foyer, trying to cease legalization? “Other major sponsors of marijuana prohibition were the beer industry, police unions, and the private prison industry.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- More than 200 million opioid painkiller prescriptions are written yearly regardless of the analysis of hundreds of thousands in the United States with an opioid use dysfunction and greater than 80 Americans dying every single day from opioid overdose.
- Might hashish act as a gateway to tougher medication, like opioids, or would possibly it cut back opioid dependancy by providing a substitute painkiller to prescription tablets?
- The American Medical Association’s official place is that marijuana “has no scientifically proven, currently accepted medical use for preventing or treating any disease,” however research have discovered that hashish compounds produce ache reduction “equivalent to moderate doses of codeine,” an opioid used to deal with gentle to reasonable ache.
- At the finish of life, hashish could permit sufferers to scale back opiate doses with out compromising ache reduction such that they might not be in such a drug-induced stupor that they can’t say goodbye.
- Most New Englanders taking opioids claimed they lowered their opioid use after beginning medical hashish, and a few additionally lowered use of alcohol, antidepressants, sleeping tablets, and anti-anxiety and migraine medicines. Cannabis can also cut back use of crack cocaine.
- After medical marijuana legal guidelines have been handed, opioid overdoses went down, a couple of 25 % decrease charge of opioid overdose deaths, and fewer folks have been filling prescriptions—not just for painkillers, but additionally for anti-anxiety medication, antidepressants, anti-nausea medication, antipsychotics, anti-seizure medication, and sleeping tablets.
- About half a billion {dollars} could be saved yearly if medical marijuana legal guidelines have been adopted throughout the United States, however the half-billion taxpayers would save is the half-billion drug firms would lose.
I’ve an entire treasure chest of hashish movies, which you’ll be able to see on-line or in a digital DVD.
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In well being,
Michael Greger, M.D.
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