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posted by on Friday March 17 2017, @05:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-solutions dept.

The Free Thought Project reports via AlterNet

There's one thing that appears to be saving more lives during the opioid epidemic than anything else--medical cannabis. While government touts meaningless attempts at addressing the problem--paying lip service to the people while protecting Big Pharma's profits and filling jails--people are saving themselves by turning to an ancient plant.

Yet another scientific study has confirmed that medical cannabis access reduces harm from opioid abuse among the population. A recent study published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependency journal found that states with legal medical cannabis experience fewer hospitalizations related to opioids.

"Medical marijuana legalization was associated with 23% and 13% reductions in hospitalizations related to opioid dependence or abuse and [opioid pain reliever] OPR overdose, respectively; lagged effects were observed after policy implementation."

Researchers from the University of California analyzed hospital administrative records for the period of 1997 to 2014. The author reported:

"This study demonstrated significant reductions on OPR- (opioid pain reliever) related hospitalizations associated with the implementation of medical marijuana policies. ... We found reductions in OPR-related hospitalizations immediately after the year of policy implementation as well as delayed reductions in the third post-policy year."

The data also show that cannabis-related hospitalizations did not increase after legalization, contrary to what prohibitionists would have you believe.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday March 17 2017, @06:40PM (7 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday March 17 2017, @06:40PM (#480552)

    ... or that it's really really hard to die of a Weed overdose.

    It's so hard that nobody has ever managed to do it in the entire documented history of humanity.

    As far as I know you can become addicted by using legal weed to.

    There's no signs that weed has any kind of physically addictive effects. To the degree that it is psychologically addictive, it appears to be no more so than just about any other daily habit, e.g. my near-daily dose of perfectly legal chocolate.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @08:48PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @08:48PM (#480618)

    In order to overdose on weed you'd have to either purposefully do it or you'd have to be caught in the middle of a field as it burns. I'm not personally a supporter of legalization without appropriate studies being conducted about the various pros and cons being done, but saying that it's going to cause overdoses or similar is rather ridiculous.

    Medical marijuana though, I'm completely for that. I don't think there's a viable argument in favor of keeping that illegal. And even the argument in favor of keeping it illegal for recreational use is getting weaker and weaker as time goes by.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Saturday March 18 2017, @01:26AM

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Saturday March 18 2017, @01:26AM (#480729)

      I'm not personally a supporter of legalization without appropriate studies being conducted about the various pros and cons being done, but saying that it's going to cause overdoses or similar is rather ridiculous.

      So you're in favor of preemptively making/keeping things illegal until studies are done that show them to be safe? Because that is the exact opposite of what a free society would do.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:27AM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:27AM (#480981) Journal

      There is reasonable evidence that marijuana is damaging to people before their late adolescent neuron pruning is done at around 23. This isn't convincing evidence, as I don't believe the study has ever been replicated. It's also true that the effect detected was not large. And I don't believe this is reasonable ground for legislation, though I do believe that it's reasonable ground for parents to ensure that the effect was tested by somebody else's children.

      A thing worthy of note is that many of the experimental tests of hemp extracts for medical potency promote them as not resulting in people getting high. This is a useful characteristic in a medicine, but shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not it was legal.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Post-Nihilist on Friday March 17 2017, @09:23PM

    by Post-Nihilist (5672) on Friday March 17 2017, @09:23PM (#480637)

    There's no signs that weed has any kind of physically addictive effects

    If you try hard enough or use a concentrate like shatter or hash oil, there is some physical addiction to be found. Speaking from experience, extremely heavy prolonged cannabis use withdrawal symptoms are alike to a 3 days long mild cold concomitant to about a week of sleeplessness/bad sleep. Those symptoms feel quite different than the psychological cravings and unlike the cravings those symptoms are not suppressed by a small dose of a benzodiazepine like Rivotril (clonazepam) .

    But do not take that as a warning against weed legalization: when you have the need to consume burn in your DNA, you will get addicted to something, anything. Compared to alcoholism, opiate addiction, cocaine addiction, sex addiction and gambling, weed addiction is by far the less damaging option.

    If you want some active substances where addiction is physically impossible, magic mushroom (mostly psylocibin) and LSD are better candidate as they have an anti addiction feedback loop builtin: if you take 120ug of lsd on Monday, 250ug on Tuesday will have a potency similar less then 50ug would have had on monday. Wait until Friday and 120ug will give you a decent trip again. With magic mushroom it is the same but the delay is longer. Note that there is cross tolerance between psylocibin and LSD as they are both serotonergic hallucinogens.

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  • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:44AM (2 children)

    by dry (223) on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:44AM (#481032) Journal

    Chocolate is actually physically addicting, its active chemical is similar to caffeine. Chocolate has been bred for weakness ever since the Catholics got control of the chocolate producing regions and what you call chocolate may have very little actual cocoa in it so it is not very addicting but the potential is as bad as coffee as being an addicting gateway drug. (Every drug user I've asked started with coffee or other caffeine containing beverage).
    Interestingly, back around the end of the 19th century when prohibition became popular, there was a movement to include chocolate in the list of bad substances that need to be prohibited.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday March 20 2017, @03:02PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday March 20 2017, @03:02PM (#481521)

      Not sure if sarcasm, but I have personally never found caffeine to be addictive at all.

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      • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:26AM

        by dry (223) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:26AM (#481955) Journal

        Most people do experience mild withdrawal symptoms when used to drinking 2 or more cups a day. http://www.webmd.com/balance/caffeine-myths-and-facts#1-2 [webmd.com]
        Not trying to be sarcastic, just showing the stupidity of comparing marijuana, which is considered non-lethal and non-physical addicting to (mildly) addicting, potentially lethal drugs such as coffee and chocolate (btw, chocolate does also contain caffeine as well as theobromine). A tablespoon of pure caffeine can kill and a gram to 1.5 grams a day can have negative affects. Chocolate kills a lot of animals as many such as dog and cats can't metabolize theobromine, even known to kill bears. In its pure form, it is not harmless. Be interesting to get hold of the stuff that the Incas etc used, it sure freaked out the Catholics back in the day.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_chocolate [wikipedia.org]
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Overdose [wikipedia.org]