Can Medical Marijuana Help Reduce the Opioid Epidemic?
- Scientists have concluded that some highly addictive opiates can be replaced by medical marijuana. This substitution, however, is mainly hindered by the law - in many countries, cannabis is still illegal as a medical device
Míra popioid regulations have been reduced in countries where laws allow legal access to marijuana - proven by two studies published on April 2, 2018 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
New findings suggest that access to medical marijuana may reduce the need for opiates, as patients manage to control marijuana pain alone, scientists say.
"There are substanceevidence that marijuana can relieve pain without the risk of addiction - unlike opiates and virtually no risk of overdose, "said study director Hefei Wen, senior health and policy assistant at Kentucky, Public Health in Lexington and Kentucky." Potential laws to legalize marijuana that reduce opiate use deserve attention, especially in states that have been severely affected by the opioid epidemic.
The results of the studies claim that it is possible to replace opiatesné
In a study by Wen and his colleague Jason M. Hockenberry, Associate Professor of Health Policy at Emory University in Atlanta, they analyzed the levels of opioid regulations in 2011 and 2016 for Medicaid enrollees - a population that has a relatively high risk of chronic pain and opioid dependence, Wen said. They found that the rate of prescribingopioids in the states that legalized marijuana treatment fell by an average of 5.9 percent annually.And moreover, states that further expansion of the approach due to the legalization of recreational marijuana use, averaged 6.4% annual decline
In the second study, there was another onem scientists dealt with a number of opiate recipes completed from Medicare in all US states since 2010 by 2015. Studies suggest that marijuana use is increasing most rapidly in older Americans - a group that most likely has different types of pain that respond best to marijuana, researchers say.
Opioid Regulations klesly an average of 2.21 million daily doses per year in countries where legalized medical marijuana - a fall of 8.5% - is compared to a statute where marijuana is not legalized.
Marijuana vs. Opiates
Studies show that cannabinoids - chemical constituents in cannabis plants - can be effective in relieving some kinds of pain, and "a giant bunch of unofficial patient evidence" suggests that some who have started taking medical marijuana against chronic pain need less opioids, said Dr. Kevin Hill, ProfessorPsychiatry at the Harvard School of Medicine, who did not participate in the studies.
"And now, with these two papers and several previous studies, we have enough evidence to prove that we really have to think of cannabis as a potential way to reduce the opioid crisis," Hill said, whose words were published alongside both studies in the same magazine .
How vzopiate addiction
The number of Americansthey are dying of opioid overdose, are still rising; In 2016, 42,000 deaths were recorded in the US, an increase of 33,000 deaths in 2015, according to a March 30 report from the Disease Control and Prevention Center.
Most people, includingopiate users start with prescribed prescription for medications from health care providers to treat pain. Marijuana may be an alternative to some of these patients, experts say. Cannabinoids in the drug bind to cannabinoid body receptors that are part of the internal pain system.
A suitable alternative
However, it may not be possible to replace all kinds of painkillers with marijuana. So far, clinical studies suggest that marijuana iseffective in alleviating chronic pain, neuropathic pain (pain caused by damage to the nervous system) and in uncontrollable and continuous muscle contractions associated with multiple sclerosis. But to find out if marijuana is just as effective for other types of pain, more research is needed, Hill told Live Science. [Could we beat the opiate epidemic by relieving pain with marijuana?]
What's more, studying recep dataStates can only reveal the link between medicine-marijuana laws and opioid use reduction; can't show the cause-and-effect relationship, Hill said.
Future studies wouldshould investigate in more detail the linkage by performing randomized clinical trials to investigate the effects of marijuana use on pain or monitoring patients, whether marijuana helped them to avoid opiate use or just reduce their use.
Maryhuana alone is unable to solve the problem of opiates in the country. "It isjust one aspect of a comprehensive epidemic package, "said Wen for Live Science. Other underlying strategies include providing appropriate painkillers and various non-opioid and non-medical alternatives, as well as improving access to addiction treatment.