Opioid Deaths vs. Marijuana Life

Opioid-based pain medications are the most dangerous drugs in America,
with the most common being hydrocodone-combination drugs like Vicodin and
Percocet. Of the 1.4 million emergency room visits related to the non-medical
use of prescription drugs, 420,040 were due to opioid narcotics. In 2011, of
the total 22,810 death due to prescription pharmaceuticals, 16,917 were due to
opioid based narcotics—almost 75 percent of all pharmaceutical related deaths
in the U.S.

Opioid based narcotics are America’s favorite drug with almost 207 million
prescriptions written in 2013. The number of pills taken is in the multiple billions
which is not surprising considering that sales of opioid based painkillers
totaled $1l billion in 2010.

That’s a lot of deaths and a lot of pills. Shouldn’t we be looking for
something that can provide the same relief without all the negative
consequences of death?

Eureka!
It’s been found and in no less a prestigious place than the August 2014 issue
of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine. A team of medical and scientific
investigators from a collaboration of prestigious east coast universities found
that “States with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8 percent lower mean
annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical
cannabis laws.”

Almost 25 percent! That’s incredible. A 25 percent reduction
in deaths, whether it be overdoses, drunk driving, strokes, cancer or any other
category would be heralded in the media as a major breakthrough and a cause for
celebration. Except if its cannabis—then any link between medical marijuana and
a lower death rate from opioid medications is ignored. As far as government
regulators like the DEA are concerned, it’s okay for people to die rather than
admit cannabis has any medical use.

Recognizing the disconnect, the study’s lead author, Dr.
Marcus Bachhuber, wrote in Reuter’s
Health, “Most of the discussion on medical marijuana has been about
its effect on individuals in terms of reducing pain or other symptoms. The
unique contribution of our study is the finding that medical marijuana laws and
policies may have a broader impact on public health.”

That’s got to be the understatement of the decade. Cannabis prohibition
laws, medical or otherwise, have had a major impact on public health and it has
been almost totally negative. Bad enough that prohibition causes crime, violence
and racism, but the loss of the therapeutic use of cannabis for pain, cancer, depression,
sleep, movement disorders is the greatest harm.

Cannabis works and has been working especially well for pain
relief for millennia. Pain relief from cannabis is twofold. First, it reduces
the inflammation associated with pain thereby actually reducing the pain and
not just masking it like the far more dangerous opioid analgesics. By getting
you high, cannabis also reduces the perception of pain like the opioids but
unlike all the negative effects that can occur from using opioids, the only
significant side effect of the cannabis effect is that it makes you feel good
and feeling good is a lot safer than death.

A separate study published in the Harm Reduction Journal in 2012 found
similar results concluding, “Prescribing cannabis in place of opioids for
neuropathic pain may reduce the morbidity and mortality rates associated with
prescription pain medications and may be an effective harm reduction
strategy.”

Co-author
of the JAMA study, Colleen L. Barry, understands the importance of this and why
many people have chosen to use cannabis to treat their pain on their own and without
any guidance from any doctor. In USA
Today she stated “[The study’s findings] suggest the potential for
many lives to be saved . . . people are completely switching or perhaps
supplementing, which allows them to lower the dosage of their prescription
opioid.”

Doctors are not telling patients to use cannabis for pain
instead of Vicodin. On their own volition, patients are making the switch to
cannabis to control their pain and in the process are saving their own lives.

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Get
the inside scoop on cannabis every week on Lanny’s Internet podcast Marijuana
Compassion and Common Sense at www.blogtalkradio.com/marijuananews