A jar of medical marijuana is displayed at the California Heritage Market in Los Angeles. (photo: David McNew/Reuters)
In States With Medical Marijuana, Painkiller Deaths Down 25 Percent
26 August 14
merica
has a major problem with prescription pain medications like Vicodin and
OxyContin. Overdose deaths from these pharmaceutical opioids have
approximately tripled since 1991, and every day 46 people die of such overdoses in the United States.
However, in the 13 states that passed laws allowing
for the use of medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010, 25 percent fewer
people die from opioid overdoses annually.
“The difference is quite striking,” said study co-author Colleen Barry,
a health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health in Baltimore. The shift showed up quite quickly and become
visible the year after medical marijuana was accepted in each state, she
told Newsweek.
In the study, published today August 25 in JAMA Internal Medicine,
the researchers hypothesize that in states where medical marijuana can
be prescribed, patients may use pot to treat pain, either instead of
prescription opiates, or to supplement them—and may thus require a lower
dosage that is less likely to lead to a fatal problem.
As with most findings involving marijuana and public
policy, however, not everyone agrees on a single interpretation of the
results.
It certainly can be said that marijuana is much less toxic than opiates
like Percocet or morphine, and that it is “basically impossible” to die
from an overdose of weed, Barry said. Based on those agreed-upon facts,
it would seem that an increased use in marijuana instead of opiates for
chronic pain is the most obvious explanation of the reduction in
overdose deaths.
Not so fast, said Dr. Andrew Kolodny,
chief medical officer at Phoenix House, a national nonprofit addiction
treatment agency. He said that the immediate reduction in overdose
deaths is extremely unlikely to be due to the substitute use of the
herb, for one simple reason: Marijuana isn’t widely prescribed for
chronic pain.
“You don’t have primary care doctors in these states
[prescribing] marijuana instead of Vicodin,” he said. Even in states
where medical marijuana is legal, it is only prescribed by a small
subset of doctors, and, therefore, probably couldn’t explain the huge
decrease in opiate-related overdose deaths.
Kolodny says the study results are more likely due to a
host of factors. One example is differences in state policies to cut
down on over-prescribing of opiate medications.
Also, many people who overdose on painkillers are already addicted, and
these individuals are naturally among the most likely to take too much,
Kolodny told Newsweek. States that pass progressive laws to
treat addiction may be more likely to lower their rates of overdose
deaths; for political reasons these states may also be more likely to
legalize medical marijuana.
“This is a good example of where policy change has
gotten ahead of the science,” Barry said. She and Kolodny would probably
agree on that point.
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