Hospitals in states with medical marijuana programs in place treated significantly fewer patients for opioid abuse after doctors became legally able to prescribe pot, a new study suggests.
Medical marijuana legalization may be responsible for a nearly a quarter fewer hospitalizations related to opioid dependence or abuse, according to the authors of a study published in the latest edition of the Drug and Alcohol Dependence medical journal.
Led by Yuyan Shi, a public health professor at the University of California, San Diego, the study is the fifth in recent years to demonstrate a decline in either opioid abuse or death in states with legal marijuana, according to Reuters.
In conducting the newest study, researchers said they reviewed 17 years’ worth of hospitalization records from 27 states, including nine of the more than two-dozen with medical marijuana laws now in place.
Hospitalizations related to opioid abuse dropped by 23 percent among states with medical marijuana programs in place after implementation, the report said, while hospitalizations related to overdoses dipped by 13 percent.
“This study and a few others provided some evidence regarding the potential positive benefits of legalizing marijuana to reduce opioid use and abuse, but they are still preliminary,” Ms. Shi told Reuters.
Voters in California approved the nation’s first medical marijuana program in 1996, and doctors can currently prescribe pot in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Marijuana remains federally categorized as a Schedule 1 narcotic, but prescription painkillers are attributed with causing an estimated 91 fatal opioid overdoses each day in America, Reuters reported.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently described the benefits of medical marijuana as “hyped,” raising questions about the future of the plant’s legal status under the Trump administration.
“I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana — so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful,” Mr. Sessions said recently.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.