“Mainstream” authorities keep saying there’s no strong evidence cannabis can help abate the epidemic of opioid-related cases of dependency and the associated overdoses often leading to unnecessary deaths.
Yet there’s a steady stream of new studies all showing that where cannabis is legally available, opioid use (and deaths) decline – even without specific substitution treatment regimens.
We think we’ve shared somewhere between 5 and 8 such reports in the last year or so (usually enough to get science and medicine excited – except, we guess, when the medicine is, *…sigh…*, “the Devil’s Lettuce”) in our daily space here. And here’s still more with THOUSANDS of patients….
…It’s too bad the truth just isn’t good enough to get national pols and bureaucrats to consider changing their irrationally anti-cannabis tone and giving clinically supported MC a try.
Excerpts:
“Two recent studies have reaffirmed the relationship between legal access and a reduction in opioid use.
In the first, by the Minnesota Dep’t of Health, researchers assessed Rx drug use in 2,245 intractable pain patients in the state’s MC program. Among the patients taking opiates, 63 percent ‘were able to reduce or eliminate opioid usage after six months.’
‘The data indicates cannabis may play a valuable role in mitigating the opioid public health crisis”, says Paul Armentano, Dep.Dir. of NORML. ‘It’s time to set aside canna-bigotry and to stop placing politics ahead of lives.’
In the second, Israeli researchers assessed the safety and efficacy of cannabis in over 1,200 cancer patients over a period of 6 months. 96% ‘reported an improvement in their condition.’ Nearly half reported either decreasing or eliminating their use of opioids.”
Just as interestingly, and importantly…..
“…A third clinical trial provides insight into explaining this relationship. Investigators from the US and Australia assessed the efficacy of inhaled cannabis and sub-therapeutic doses of oxycodone on experimentally-induced pain in a double-blind, placebo-controlled model.
Researchers assessed pt’s pain tolerance after receiving both substances separately or in concert with one another. While neither cannabis nor small doses of oxycodone alone significantly mitigated subjects’ pain, the combined administration of both drugs did…
…They concluded, ‘Smoked cannabis combined with an ineffective [i.e., small] analgesic dose of oxycodone produced analgesia comparable to an effective [i.e., ‘normal’] opioid analgesic dose without significantly increasing cannabis’s abuse liability’.”
The new studies add to the growing body of research finding cannabis access is associated with reduced rates of opioid use and abuse, opioid-related hospitalizations, opioid-related traffic fatalities, opioid-related drug treatment admissions, and opioid-related overdose deaths.”
#MMJ #Research #Opioids #HarmReduction #UTpol #TRUCE
See full article – New Studies Show Legal Access to Marijuana is Consistently Linked With Reduced Opioid Use – TheJointBlog
