Law Cannabis is not reducing opioid deaths

Contrary to sensationalized news reporting and public opinion, a study out of Stanford published a few days ago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that legalization and broader access to cannabis has not has a positive effect on opioid overdose death rates. Legalized marijuana was actually associated with a 23% increase in overdose deaths.

I suspected the initial hype of the 2014 JAMA study was too good to be true. Many people were drawing causal conclusions based on ecological correlations.


*Mod Courtesy Edit*


That's just complete bullshit. Why would anybody ever expect it to? Cannabis is not a gateway drug, and it also does not substitute opioids in any way. (There might be minor applications regarding pain where it does, but I don't think anybody ever thought legalizing Cannabis would decrease opioid deaths. Quite the contrary - people invoked Reefer Madness and pushed the gateway narrative.)
 
I get that now. I wasn't aware of the previous study, or how much it was cited.
I'm in healthcare, never heard of the study, and my initial reaction to this new study was 'but, why', because the epidemic and its statistics destroy any such argument.
It’s been a pretty popular idea for the last few years. I’m also seeing a lot of push now for CBD being a cure for anxiety (and half a dozen other things)
 
Well yeah, because weed gets you a little high but it can't replace the brain-goosh that happens when you're on heroin.
 
The Opioid crisis is more hysteria largely brought on by the government itself.

Also driving the opioid problem is the promotion of tamper-resistant opioids. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is encouraging pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs that are tamper-resistant — in other words, you can’t use them for anything other than the medicinal use for which they were prescribed.

Mark Twain has been quoted as saying that history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Many people may be aware that back during the days of alcohol prohibition, ethanol was still allowed to be produced for industrial use. But the government required that the manufacturers put in what was called denatured alcohol — they put ingredients in it to make it unpalatable, so that bootleggers couldn’t steal vats of ethanol and sell it on the black market. But bootleggers are pretty resourceful people, and they soon found out how to distill those impurities out and still sell it. So in 1926, the government required industrial ethanol manufacturers to add methyl alcohol, or methanol, also called wood alcohol, which can make you blind when you drink it. (That’s where the expression “drinking himself blind” comes from.)

So they put methyl alcohol and benzene in the ethanol, and that, despite attempts, could not be distilled out. At least 10,000 deaths are documented since 1926 from people who were drinking bootlegged alcohol that contained methanol and benzene.

That was the alcohol prohibition years’ version of tamper-resistant alcohol, and it resulted in unintended consequences. I’m sure nobody wanted to see people die. But the same thing is happening today with tamperresistant drugs.

For example — in 2010, OxyContin was converted to a tamper-resistant package. And when people couldn’t crush it any more to snort it, they figured out how to boil it, turn it into an injectable form, and then inject it. A study published in the Canadian Medical Journal in 2015 found that “In Ontario and the US, overall rates of opioid-related deaths have continued to rise since the long-acting formulation of oxycodone (OxyContin) was replaced with a tamper-resistant formulation… Rather, there is increasing evidence that individuals shift to other opioids, including uncontrolled formulations such as heroin.” In JAMA Psychiatry in 2015, Cicero and Ellis found that nonmedical users of OxyContin switched to other opioids, or to heroin, after the tamper resistant reformulation of OxyContin replaced regular OxyContin in 2010.

https://www.cato.org/policy-report/septemberoctober-2017/myth-opioid-prescription-crisis
 
It’s been a pretty popular idea for the last few years. I’m also seeing a lot of push now for CBD being a cure for anxiety (and half a dozen other things)

weed cures cancer. It is has become a religion. It will heal the sick and feed the poor. lol at people acting ignorant about these claims. Their angry reaction says it all, their god did not perform the miracles it promised.
 
It’s been a pretty popular idea for the last few years. I’m also seeing a lot of push now for CBD being a cure for anxiety (and half a dozen other things)
Yeah, I guess I can understand it based on a study 10 years ago and awareness of the crisis at the time. I wasn't aware of this study so I am not prejudiced by it and could see plainly from the op, before reading the second study, that it was not an accurate telling of the data. The data over the next 10 years really made a follow-up study a moot point.

I do believe CBD will have a significant role to play in a lot of conditions. That isn't to say it will be THE answer for every condition where it has an application, but it will be good to have that in the toolbox. Pain is one of those areas. As opioids are prescribed less and less and CBD is one of the tools used to replace them we should see a reduction in opioid abuse and subsequent deaths. Again, CBD won't be THE reason for reduced addiction and deaths, but it will be one of dozens of tools that will help.
 
If you need help getting off opioids try taking Kratom. Don't abuse it, just use it to help you.
 
I don't care if it is or not. There's no reason for cannabis not to be legal. I'm completely clean and sober BTW. For full disclosure I'm a recovering addict who hasn't used any type of mind altering substance (alc, weed, pills, etc) in years. But the war on drugs is disgusting and I still vouch for legalization.
 
You sound like my Indian doctor who refused to prescribe me antibiotics for a lung infection even though I had 2-3 before that one, refuses to prescribed me codeine/promethazine all because I said I smoked weed. I hit up my moms doctor , same Kaiser company, and she instantly prescribed me both based on just my lung sounds and capacity. This Indian lady figured my Indian ass is hardy enough to survive on albuterol because that's how they do it in India. She also tried to convince me on every single negative hyperbole surrounding cannabis side effects and its use. Show me any articles that even prove grey matter, hypothamlus, amdyala or the limbic system, for that matter, have any discrepancies between those who use and don't use because there aren't any. All the new cross-longitudinal studies contradict all the olds studies that don't even take into account all the outside variables in play like demographics, religion, income, etc. If you already have shitty memory functions or are genetically predisposed to them then cannabis use will exacerbate those symptoms but there is no way cannabis use is the direct result of increased suicides. That's just dumb, it might be comorbid. Sounds like you're just an old fart.
I think you americans are too fond of opioids. Sure, take the antibiotics but why codeine? Just take the pain.


About weed, I think it can be a fun thing but potheads need to stop claiming it cures everything. It is useless for most things. Not saying the scientists are potheads but they just found a correlation and it was promoted by potheads.
 
I never saw a good reason why it would.
People who do opioids generally seek them out, and don't switch from addictive to non addictive drugs.
 
Methadone is THE ONLY substitute for opioids. End of discussion. Pot isn't even euphoric. It doesn't make you feel warm, fuzzy, and on top of the world like an opioid high. Alcohol even provides a more euphoric high than Pot.
 
weed and opioids do go GREAT together though. that is a fact. i wish i had a few oxycodone to go along with my herb.
 
I started smoking high CBD low THC instead of drinking at night. I'm off booze for the first time in 18 years.

So it can be helpful in some ways.
 
What kind of dumb ass, twinkle-toed commie cuck thought it would?
 
Methadone is THE ONLY substitute for opioids. End of discussion. Pot isn't even euphoric. It doesn't make you feel warm, fuzzy, and on top of the world like an opioid high. Alcohol even provides a more euphoric high than Pot.
Methadone is an opioid
 
Docters would have to stop prescribing opiods for deaths to be reduced.
If they keep prescribing them then the weed just becomes an extra on top of the opiods.
 
Look here bruh; I’ve never tried the pots due to legal status; I’d want it to change so I can blaze away


So STFU we need feelings NOT facts /sarcasm
 
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