25% Less Opioid Overdoses with Medical Marijuana Use

While medical marijuana laws have facilitated concerns of promoting drug use among children, researchers determined that medical marijuana prescriptions could decrease the overdose mortality rate associated with prescribed pain medication.

“Prescription drug abuse and deaths due to overdose have emerged as national public health crises,” said Colleen L. Barry, PhD, senior author of the study and an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School.
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“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,” she said.

For the study, researchers examined death certificate data taken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, researchers found that the annual opioid painkiller overdose death rate increased (across all states) from 1999 to 2010, but in states allowing medical marijuana use, they observed a 25% decrease in overdose deaths.

Investigators noted 1700 less overdose deaths in 2010 due to opioid painkiller overdose which could be a result of chronic pain patients switching to alternative treatments or a change in the way people view marijuana once it is legalized.

The complete study is published in the August issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

-Michelle Canales

References:

Bachhuber MA, Saloner B, Cunningham CO, et al. Medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality in the United States, 1999-2010. JAMA Intern Med. 2014 August [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.2716.

Hayes MJ, Brown MS. Legalization of medical marijuana and incidence of opioid mortality. JAMA Intern Med. 2014 August [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.4005.

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. State medical marijuana laws linked to lower prescription overdose deaths. August 25, 2014. http://hub.jhu.edu/2014/08/26/medical-marijuana-prescription-drugs#. Accessed August 26, 2014.