Pubdate: Mon, 23 May 2016 Source: Daily Local, The (PA) Copyright: 2016 Daily Local News - a Journal Register Property Contact: http://www.dailylocal.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4704 Author: Lucas Rodgers Weeding Through the Issues NEW LAW MAY HELP IN FIGHT AGAINST OPIOID CRISIS Can the legalization of one drug help decrease abuse of another drug? It's possible that medical marijuana could be used to fight the epidemic of opioid addiction that has resulted in numerous deaths from overdoses in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States. According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2014, 46 people die every day in the United States from an overdose of prescription opioid or narcotic painkillers, such as Vicodin (hydrocodone-acetaminophen), OxyContin (oxycodone), Opana (oxymorphone), and methadone. The CDC found that in 2012, health care providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers, which is enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills. And there's proof that medical marijuana can help decrease opioid abuse. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine in 2014 found that the annual rate of deaths from opioid overdoses decreased by 25 percent in states that legalized medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010. However, the study concluded that although there is evidence of an association between medical marijuana laws and reductions in deaths from opioid overdoses, further research and evaluation are needed before wide adoption of medical marijuana can be recommended as a way to reduce the risks of opioid use. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the RAND Corporation in 2015 concluded that "states permitting medical marijuana dispensaries experience a relative decrease in both opioid addictions and opioid overdose deaths compared to states that do not. ... Our findings suggest that providing broader access to medical marijuana may have the potential benefit of reducing abuse of highly addictive painkillers." The researchers found that this "mitigating effect" of medical marijuana laws is specific only to states that permit marijuana dispensaries, but it does not hold true in states that have legalized medical marijuana but don't have or don't allow dispensaries. Pennsylvania's Medical Marijuana Act states that severe, chronic or intractable pain of neuropathic origin is one of the serious medical conditions that is eligible for treatment with medical marijuana. The law also says medical marijuana can be used to treat severe, chronic or intractable pain in which conventional therapeutic intervention and opiate therapy is contraindicated or ineffective. However, it's not entirely clear if patients with severe, chronic pain will be able to opt out of treatment with opioids from the start, and instead choose treatment with medical marijuana, or if they must attempt treatment with opioids before using medical marijuana. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom