Arizona’s anti-marijuana forces have been railing against one of the biggest examples of the plant’s medical efficacy: decreasing opioid addiction.
The Twitter feed of Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, the organization at least partially responsible for Arizona’s last attempt to legalize marijuana in 2016, is rife with claims that opioid use has increased in Colorado and that a study demonstrated a 25 percent decrease in opioid deaths.
The study, released by the RAND Corporation in February, received heavy criticism from Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a close ally of ARDP. SAM’s criticism mostly relied on the difference between correlation and causation, claiming the correlation disappeared after 2009 with looser dispensary regulations.
SAM reached out to one of the study’s authors (though it’s not clear which) for clarification. The author stated that the study’s results were more nuanced than initially reported.
“Only legally protected and open dispensaries are correlated with opioid mortality,” the author told SAM, and that stricter regulation may negatively impact the correlation.
A press release from RAND following the report suggests the implication here is that fewer opioid deaths correlate with medical programs and dispensaries with fewer regulations. Basically, if prescription opioid users have access to marijuana, they’ll use fewer opioids.
This point is corroborated by several state medical marijuana studies. The first, conducted by the Minnesota Department of Health, found that 63 percent of 2,245 Minnesotans in the medical marijuana program decreased or eliminated opioid use within six months.
Similar results were found in Michigan (64 percent, N=244) and Pennsylvania (77 percent, N=1,500), as well as New Mexico and Illinois with far smaller sample sizes.
An Israeli study found 96 percent of 2,970 cancer patients reported “improved conditions” after marijuana use, including 36 percent that eliminated opioid use and 10 percent that decreased opioid use.
How’s that for causation? If prescription opioid users have access to medical marijuana, they’ll choose the later. This is a crucial key to the country’s opioid epidemic despite ARDP’s smoke screen that marijuana does little to decrease opioid dependence.
Users affected by this epidemic, mostly white males, start off addicted to prescription opioids and switch to heroin only after the prescription, or their funds, run out. Roughly 80 percent of heroin users first misused prescription opioids, according to a 2013 study cited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Medical marijuana is an important solution to stemming the sources of this crisis.
This is an important notion to get across as Arizona’s legislature just poo-pooed a bill that would have added opioid use disorder to the state’s list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana.
The state pretends to pull out all the stops to addressing this crisis, in which 942 Arizonans have died since June 2017, but ignores marijuana’s role based on allegiances to the pharmaceutical industry. (ARDP accepted a $500,000 check from a Chandler-based fentanyl producer in 2016 and was “proud” of it.)
Last week, the Arizona Opioid Assistance and Referral Line opened to help Arizonans address opioid addiction, but the line’s operators, Banner Poison and Drug Information Centers, refuse to recommend medical marijuana because “people are on too many drugs,” according to medical director Dr. Dan Brooks.
While we look for options in addressing societal issues such as addiction to drugs that actually kill people, we cannot allow counter interests like the ARDP to continue to false concerns about marijuana.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2018.
This idea that marijuana self administered (taxed) can replace self administered opioid/heroin addiction (non taxed).
Sorry; I am not onboard with that either.
It is just stupid for a responsible governmental agency to say replace one addiction with another.
It seems the author misses the whole point the reason for the addiction might be contemplated as well as genetics. Alcoholism
Marijuana has innumerable qualities for diabetes for nerve impulses far and beyond not yet pondered.
However addiction, therapeutic forms to be developed and existing market providers are in constant battle of righteous indignation of the other.
There can only final determination o this is to REPEAL SCHEDULE ONE! Only then can real quantitative study be done.
Marijuana consumers deserve and demand equal rights and protections under our laws that are currently afforded to the drinkers of far more dangerous and deadly, yet perfectly legal, widely accepted, endlessly advertised and even glorified as an All American pastime, alcohol.
Plain and simple!
Legalize Marijuana Nationwide!
“Marijuana is 114 times safer than drinking alcohol”
http://rt.com/usa/234903-marijuana-safer-a…
“Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say”
“Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say New study: We should stop fighting marijuana legalization and focus on alcohol and tobacco instead By Christopher Ingraham February 23
Compared with other recreational drugs including alcohol marijuana may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use.
Those are the top-line findings of recent research published in the journal Scientific Reports, a subsidiary of Nature. Researchers sought to quantify the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of commonly used substances. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance, followed by heroin and cocaine.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkbl…
“The report discovered that marijuana is 114 times less deadly than alcohol. Researchers were able to determine this by comparing the lethal doses with the amount of typical use. Through this approach, marijuana had the lowest mortality risk to users out of all the drugs they studied. In factbecause the numbers were crossed with typical daily usemarijuana is the only drug that tested as “low risk.”
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/02…
:::”SAM’s criticism mostly relied on the difference between correlation and causation”
Yet they do not mention the correlation vs causation argument for their own talking points, which often rely on studies and reports that show simple correlations without claiming causation. However SAM routinely implies that these associations demonstrate causation.
The smartest approach to marijuana begins with honest, accurate, balanced information.
Nearly every claim by SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) is disputed or refuted by the scientific community. This makes every monetary claim in their anti-legalization reports groundless for the most part. In their “cost of legalization” reports they do not even attempt to include any data regarding positives of legalization other than predicted tax income. For example, money will be saved from far fewer arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations for sales/possession, yet this data is not factored into their reports.
SAM founders/leaders have strong ties to the addiction treatment industry which will greatly benefit from forced court-related treatment referrals that inevitably occur under prohibition. This is likely part of the reason why they fight legalization.
Devon Walker, & Brian Kelly
I have a simple question how can any positives be gained when kept in a box, box called SCHEDULE ONE.
We can allude to all of the positives, we can say alcohol and opioids are terrible and marijuana is much better safer.
For this to happen legalization is the ticket. As we see the California legalization efforts rolling out. We can look at Colorado and Washington 5 years now in the legalization.
Just what is the focus of these states and the legalization efforts and results?
It is and always will be the the triad called control. the three corners of this are “enforcement, education,director”
So the results of these efforts to legalization is not for public medical concerns as both are talking about but MONEY.
The only education that a governing agency can recommend is a FEDERAL LEGAL ONE. All of the studies and results are completely superfluous to state governments that rely on FEDERAL MEDICAL ASSISTANCE by agreement cant recommend anything on schedule one.
Yea all of these bloggers that are moaning about the inequities of marijuana laws then want to build a house of straw against the wolf. I have an idea starve him out repeal SCHEDULE ONE.
In response to the person who said: “It is just stupid for a responsible governmental agency to say replace one addiction with another.”
Methadone (an opioid) has been used for 30 years to treat opium addiction. So unless you have a cure or another treatment for opioid addiction, I suggest you rethink your opinion. Certainly it is preferable to take a prescribed, doctor monitored, inexpensive drug as opposed to being addicted to an opioid which is bought on the street with all the behavior that goes with it ie prostitution, breaking and entering, etc. People behave better on the alternative drugs, which are also safer. If you really are interested in why you would use one drug to replace another see online “Hartford Dispensary.”