The opioid crisis, which killed more than 42,000 Americans in 2016, continues to devastate the country. Doctors prescribe opioids for chronic pain, an ailment that is especially prevalent among military veterans. Of all the veterans returning from the Middle East, about 60 percent experience chronic pain.
Recent work finds that medical marijuana laws reduce the daily doses filled for opioid analgesics among Medicare Part-D and Medicaid enrollees, as well as population-wide opioid overdose deaths. We replicate the result for opioid overdose deaths and explore the potential mechanism. These findings suggest that broader access to medical marijuana facilitates substitution of marijuana for powerful and addictive opioids.
“Far from being a gateway drug, marijuana is potentially an exit drug for people using opioids,” said Melissa Moore, deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports the bill.
Opioid-related deaths have fell by more than 6 percent in Colorado in the two years after the state started selling recreational marijuana, The researchers who conducted the study found the 6.5-percent reduction represented “a reversal of” a 14-year increasing trend in opioid-related deaths in Colorado since 2000. But they stressed in the report that further…