States that legalize medical marijuana 'have fewer deaths from opioid painkillers'

Date: Aug-26-2014 According to new research published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the annual number of deaths from prescription drug overdose is 25% lower in states where medical marijuana is legal compared with states where it remains illegal.

The senior author of the new study, Colleen L. Barry, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD, says:

"Prescription drug abuse and deaths due to overdose have emerged as national public health crises.

As our awareness of the addiction and overdose risks associated with use of opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin grows, individuals with chronic pain and their medical providers may be opting to treat pain entirely or in part with medical marijuana, in states where this is legal."

Barry's team analyzed data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and found that deaths from overdose of prescription painkillers increased across all states during 1999-2010.

The authors warn that the mechanism behind their results is unclear.

However, deaths from overdose of opioid painkillers were, on average, about 25% lower in states where medical marijuana was legal.

"In absolute terms, states with a medical marijuana law had about 1,700 fewer opioid painkiller overdose deaths in 2010 than would be expected based on trends before the laws were passed," says the study's lead author, Dr. Marcus Bachhuber, of the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania.

However, the authors warn that the mechanism behind these results is unclear. Do medical marijuana laws have an effect on how people abuse prescription pain medicines, do people with chronic pain in these states choose alternative treatments, or is it something else entirely?

The study cannot answer this question and can only demonstrate a link between reduced death from opioid painkiller overdose and legalization of medical marijuana.

'More research is critical'

"Given the fast pace of policy change, more research is critical to understand how medical marijuana laws might be influencing both overdose deaths and the health trajectories of individuals suffering from chronic pain," says co-author Brendan Saloner, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School.

Prior to the study start period, just three states - California, Oregon and Washington - had legalized medical marijuana, with 10 more states joining by the end of the study period in 2010. Since then, another 10 states and Washington, DC, have also legalized the use of medical marijuana.

Medical marijuana is used to relieve nausea, reduce pain and improve appetite in patients who have serious conditions such as cancer and multiple sclerosis.

Medical News Today recently published a feature investigating where the debate over the legalization of medical marijuana currently stands.

In that feature, we traced the history of the debate from Richard Nixon's "war on drugs" in the early 1970s, to the discovery of the cannabinoid system in the 1980s, to current controversies over the available evidence supporting marijuana as a medical treatment.

Written by David McNamee

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Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.