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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.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Friday March 17 2017, @08:34PM
I would like to see studies done to see which natural but effective substance is more helpful with opiate-family problems, cannabis or mitragyna [wikipedia.org]. I know that cannabis gives me a headache (as of 20-some years ago when I last tried), but mitragyna seems to provide pain relief + slight euphoria (which contributes to the pain relief) that as a chronic pain sufferer I might otherwise look for opiate-family medications to treat.
The (U.S.) federal government has made some noise about adding mitragyna to the list of scheduled controlled substances, but I'd rather see focus on using whatever works to help people who need it.