Cannabis Legalization Leads to a Decline in Opioid Deaths

Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012. By 2018 a total of ten states joined the party. After almost a decade of legal weed in progressive US states, the country has yet to turn every child into drug addicts and spiral into the abyss, well at least not because of readily available weed.

Since cannabis legalization in Colorado, tax revenue has sky-rocketed, contributing to better infrastructure and education and opioid deaths are on the decline. The critics of legalizing marijuana for consenting adults argued that it would inevitably lead to our children becoming junkies who leached off the government and lived on the streets. Interestingly, this was already happening in the United States and there is data to suggest that cannabis is reducing the fundamental breakdown of society. 

Beginning in the 1990s there was another drug revolution. Instead of fighting for access to marijuana for consenting adults, these individuals were looking to distribute OxyContin to the masses.

The War on pain

Before the legal opioid boom that took place in the early 2000s opioids (pain killers) were rarely prescribed to anyone who wasn’t on their death bed or severely ill. That changed when Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin in 1996. 

In an aggressive marketing campaign targeting government regulations, doctors, and medical literature, Purdue Pharma somehow convinced everyone that opium wasn’t addictive. Then unleashed their new product to the masses. 

Opioid deaths rose from about 3 people to 15 per 100,000 from 1999 to 2018, totaling 450,000 in that period. The rise in overdoses began with the prescription drugs like OxyContin, then the US saw a rise in heroin, now they are seeing a rise in overdoses from synthetic drugs like fentanyl. Profits, aggressive drug marketing, and deregulation all contributed to widescale destruction in urban and rural communities all over the United States.

Is cannabis a viable solution to opioid overdoses? Many studies suggest that areas that have opened up access to recreational marijuana are already seeing a decline in opioid deaths. 

The Numbers 

A study just released in January of 2021 by a Yale Professor, Greta Hsu, and associate professor Balázs Kovács “examined county level association between the prevalence of medical and recreation cannabis dispensaries and opioid related mortality rates.”

Hsu and Kovács looked at 812 counties in the United States in the 23 states that had allowed cannabis dispensaries to operate by the end of 2017. They compared data from the CDC, US census, and Weedmaps.com to analyze if access to marijuana affected opioid deaths. 

The study produced unprecedented results. “According to this estimate, an increase from one to two storefront dispensaries in a county is associated with an estimated 17% reduction in all opioid-related mortality rates. Dispensary count has a particularly strong negative association with deaths caused by synthetic opioids other than methadone, with an estimated 21% reduction in mortality rates associated with an increase from one to two dispensaries.”

As the access to dispensaries increased, opioid deaths, especially related to synthetics (fentanyl) are decreased. The study’s findings are particularly encouraging because fentanyl deaths are relevant to the current state of the opioid epidemic. 

The glaring question is why? How can increasing the number of drugs available to the public decrease fatal drug abuse? It is nice to put the naysayers of cannabis legalization to rest, but we do have dots to connect before moving forward. 

The Yale professors conclude that the study “contributes to understanding the supply side of related drug markets and how it shapes opioid use and misuse.”

Will Cannabis Solve the US Opioid Crisis?

Like all complex problems, the opioid crisis is due to several factors and will need a complex solution. While it is promising to see that access to cannabis appears to slow the death rate related to drug overdoses, there is likely more going on in these counties. Areas that are progressive enough to legalize recreational marijuana are also advocates for drug treatment facilities and social safety nets for people who are most likely to turn to opioids. 

The study done by Yale professors is promising and hopefully is used to give access to cannabis for more Americans. As cannabis is legalized throughout the world, it must be presented as a safe alternative to dangerous drugs. The study suggests that if the overall supply of drugs that don’t kill people is increased, fatal drug overdoses will go down. 

The most interesting aspect of this issue is that prescription drugs, allowed by the government, prescribed by doctors, and aggressively marketed by ‘respectable drug companies’ are the culprits of destroying communities, not cannabis. The United States opioid epidemic existing almost parallel to the legal cannabis revolution is revealing. Many of cannabis’s most critical voices were members of ‘legal’ drug corporations, it’s a bit ironic that their products are currently doing exactly what they said cannabis would do if adults were allowed access. 

SOURCES

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/analysis.html

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.m4957