It is yet another victory for those who are in support of legalizing marijuana in the U.S. In a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers witnessed U.S. states with medical marijuana shops, the number of people trying to get into a rehabilitation center for pain medication and opioid overdoses has gone down by 15% and 16% respectively.
Various research that has been conducted have viewed the relationship between legal marijuana use and opioid overdose, however, this is the first research conducted to track addiction to opioids as well.
Studies have displayed a number of people admitted to treatment centers in the U.S. for painkiller addiction from 1992 to 2013; fatalities linked to painkillers abuse from 1999 to 2013; and a number of prescription opioids legally distributed to every U.S. state from 200 to 2011. They discovered that states that upkeep medical marijuana shops, opioids painkillers are being prescribed at an almost identical rate to those states without marijuana shops.
That implies that the majority of the decrease in addiction and deaths due to overdoses in states with marijuana shops come from individuals looking for medical cannabis to help take away their pain, as opposed to getting painkillers illegally. In addition, they discovered that legalizing medicinal cannabis alone did not connect with the decrease in addiction to and overdoses of opioid painkillers. Only locations wit laws defending marijuana shops saw the decrease.
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