Medical Marijuana Linked to Reducing Opioid Prescriptions

Chronic pain and other illnesses (like epilepsy, cancer, and more) can be treated with cannabis. Cannabis could have been helping people for decades in a legal manner, but it was outlawed early in the 20th century for various flawed reasons. Laws have been changing now where people can be prescribed medical marijuana products or freely purchase cannabis as adults to treat themselves.

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Health professionals have recognized that there is an opioid epidemic of sorts caused by the over prescription of opioids like morphine and oxycodone related substances. People have overdosed and died from opioid use. Cannabis use is showing to be a safer alternative to the risks of opioid use.

Research from two new studies has shown that the legalization of marijuana tends to reduce the prescriptions of opioids. As such, less of the addictive opioids are being prescribed by doctors. This is better for patients since opioids have more negative side effects on our health compared to cannabis use. But that doesn't mean patients will stop using opioids due to existing addictions.

Graph by @krnel from publication data

In one study, prescriptions for opioids covered under Medicaid for low-income adults between 2011 and 2016 showed a 6% drop on average in areas where laws were changed to allow the use of cannabis for medical reasons. Also, states that passed laws to allow recreational marijuana use showed an additional 6% average drop of opioid prescriptions for pain. This translated into 39 less prescriptions per 1000 people using Medicaid.

In the other study, data between 2010 and 2015 of people over 65 years old or with disabilities using Medicare was look at. States that had medical marijuana laws were compared to states that didn't. Initially in 2010, 14 states had medical marijuana laws, and an additional 9 other states adopted medical marijuana laws during the period of the study. Medicare patients in states with legal access to cannabis provided by prescription use, had 14% less daily doses of opioids. States that allowed home growing but lacked marijuana dispensaries showed 7% fewer doses of use.

People have been using cannabis to relieve pain even before medical marijuana laws were adopted. The so-called illegal use of cannabis for self treatment is why there is even prescription marijuana these days. The evidence of the benefits for cannabis use in relieving pain was in the real world, outside of the legal framework and legal scientific research. These studies, along with others, now provide a lot of scientific weight for the evidence that cannabis is an alternative to opioid use for pain relief.

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The government that alleges to help and protect people has removed this treatment potential for decades, and they are responsible for preventing people from seeking pain relief in safer ways. Individual states have been listening to people and allowing them the freedom to relieve their pain through cannabis, and now it's up to federal regulations to change so that the use of cannabis to treat pain can be promoted across the nation.

Contrary to opioid use where you can die from an overdose, no one can overdose and die from cannabis use. Just that alone makes it much safer to be prescribed by medical professionals. More research can be done to prove the drop in opioid use relative to the accessibility of cannabis. The recent studies only showed evidence for Medicaid and Medicare patients, so they don't want to conclude how this applies to other people. The studies also don't prove that the patients avoided using any opioids at all when they increased their use of cannabis.

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References:

• Studies link legal marijuana with fewer opioid prescriptions
• Studies link legal marijuana with fewer opioid prescriptions
• Association of Medical and Adult-Use Marijuana Laws With Opioid Prescribing for Medicaid Enrollees, JAMA Intern Med. Published online April 2, 2018. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.1007
• Association Between US State Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Prescribing in the Medicare Part D Population, JAMA Intern Med. Published online April 2, 2018. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.0266

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