New study says legalizing marijuana has not decreased opioid deaths
A new study released in June says opioid deaths have increased in states that have legalized marijuana, despite the argument that cannabis use could decrease the nationwide opioid epidemic.
The study, which was published by the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, says, that the “association between state medical cannabis laws and opioid overdose mortality reversed direction from −21% to +23% and remained positive after accounting for recreational cannabis laws.”
This information contradicts a 2014 study that found the opposite result. Now, KRDO is asking what’s the correlation between the two?
CU Boulder Professor, Kent Hutchinson says two studies may not tell the whole story.
“One study found one thing, right? Then another — as you said it — turned the first one on its head,” Hutchinson said. “That’s kind of where we’re at right now. We don’t fully understand the relationship between cannabis and reductions of opioid use.”
In El Paso County, opioid deaths saw a 67% increase between 2012 to 2016, the few years right after recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado.
But in 2017 and 2018, opioid deaths began to decrease — there were 92 in 2017 and 78 in 2018.
Dr. Leon Kelly, the El Paso County coroner, explained that the manner of overdoses are evolving.
When his office first started tracking opioid deaths, many were due to prescription overdoses.
In 2016, the year with the highest deaths, 68 were from prescription overdoses and 47 were from heroin overdoses. In 2018 those numbers flipped — of the 78 deaths, 47 were from heroin overdoses and 31 were from prescription.
It’s still unclear if there’s a direct correlation between the legalization of cannabis and opioid overdose deaths. Although some people are trying to replace their opioid addiction with marijuana use, and there are some reports of success, there aren’t any comprehensive studies dedicated to understanding if the substitution is truly effective, Hutchinson explains.
KRDO sat down with Medical Director Margaret Gedde of Vibrant Health Clinic, a medical cannabis facility, who says she’s seen success in getting her patients off of opiates with medical marijuana.
“The results that we see are that a lot of people do end up discontinuing opiates completely,” she says.
Although, she explains the process is successful with a doctor aiding a patient along the way. Patients are “almost always able to reduce the opioids” or get off them completely, she says, but it’s unlikely without professional guidance.
It’s still unclear what caused the spike in opioid deaths in 2016, but some experts suggested the booming population in Colorado. That conclusion raised the next question: do the deaths reflect people coming to the state for marijuana access who then fell into an opioid addiction? Or, is the increase is purely coincidental?
