Painkiller Overdose Rates After Cannabis Legalization (STUDY 2019)
- In today's article, we'll look at the complexity of statistics concerning the increase and decrease in opioid overdose deaths after cannabis legalization
- A newly published survey examines changes in opioid-related deaths - pain medications - following the authorization of medical and recreational cannabis in the USA
- Now, a modern threat is entering the entire problem - a drug called fentanyl
Opioid Epidemic
If you have read some of our previous articles on the Semena-Marihuany.cz blog, then you may already know that the USA has been dealing with a very unpleasant problem - the self-proclaimed opioid epidemic.
The opioid crisis in the USA continues to this day, and in some states, the situation may even be getting worse.
The number of opioid-related deaths increased from eight thousand deaths in 1999 to nineteen thousand in 2007 and further to a shocking forty-eight thousand deaths in 2017 (NIDA, 2019).
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It is worth mentioning that during the counting of deaths in individual states, there may be certain deviations and inaccuracies in interpretation resulting from different regulations and methods by which causes of death are determined and documented.
A illustrative example can be the deviation in death certificates and specifications of causes of death.
For example, in Washington state, causes of death were specified in 100% of cases. In contrast, in Pennsylvania, death was not specified in 51% of death certificates (Buchanich et al. 2018).
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