Author: Maryam Ayres
Time for reading: ~3
minutes
Last Updated:
February 12, 2026
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prescription opioid painkillers.
“When you spot something just like the opioid dependancy crisis blossoming within so many states around this USA,” said White House Spokesperson Sean Spicer, “the final element we ought to be doing is encouraging people” to smoke hashish.
But if opioid dependancy starts with people taking prescription pain tablets, maybe hashish could reduce the hassle by means of imparting a substitute painkiller. Or you can see it cross the alternative way, wherein cannabis acts like as a “gateway” drug, or “stepping stone,” to more difficult capsules, and will make the opioid epidemic worse.Well, first, does cannabis work?
“Is it a truly powerful drug for pain that [has been] arbitrarily stigmatized and criminalized by way of the federal government? Or is it with none clinical [benefit at all, and] its advocates hiding at the back of a [smoke]display screen”—pun intended—”of misplaced (or deliberately misleading) compassion for the sick?” The legitimate role of the American Medical Association is that marijuana “has no scientifically demonstrated, presently familiar medical use for preventing or treating any disease.” But, what does the technological know-how say?Well, “despite the great use of opioids,” most of the people of “advanced most cancers patients [may] die with unmet ache-relief wishes.” And so, including hashish may assist, as double-blind, placebo-managed medical trials have determined that hashish compounds do offer pain alleviation, “equal to mild doses of codeine,” an opioid used to deal with mild-to-slight ache.
But wait;If You’re Dying From Cancer, Don’t You Want The Good Stuff?
Why now not just crank up the morphine?
Look, if you need, you could positioned someone within a coma, erase all their ache. But the problem with those excessive doses of opiates is that here you're, at the give up of existence, surrounded by cherished ones, and also you’re so gorked out you can’t even say goodbye.So, that’s in which cannabis might also assist, allowing a person to drop the opiate dose down a bit with out compromising pain control.
But amongst New Englanders surveyed who have been on opioids, maximum claim that “they decreased their [opioid] use on account that they began [medical cannabis].” Some additionally decreased their use of antidepressants, alcohol, anti-anxiety medicinal drugs, migraine meds, and napping capsules.
40% said they have been capable of lessen their opioid use “lots.” It may additionally even lessen using crack! It may also seem unusual to offer drugs to drug addicts, however if people even in part switch from more to much less dangerous tablets, prevalent damage may be decreased.So, what befell after medical marijuana legal guidelines have been exceeded?
Did Opioid Overdoses Go Up, Stay The Same, Or Go Down?
They went down.“Medical cannabis laws are related to substantially lower…opioid overdose mortality shares”—about a 25% lower rate of overdose deaths, the putting implication of that's that scientific marijuana legal guidelines “might also constitute a promising method for stemming” the opioid overdose epidemic.
“If authentic, this locating upsets [not only] the applecart of conventional know-how concerning the general public fitness implications of marijuana legalization [but also of its] medicinal usefulness.” Here, the AMA is announcing it doesn’t do some thing helpful medically, but if humans are getting sufficient gain to reduce down on their prescriptions, then manifestly something’s happening.Once scientific marijuana legal guidelines had been exceeded, fewer people were filling prescriptions, for no longer simply painkillers, but anti-tension drugs, antidepressants, anti-nausea drugs, antipsychotics, anti-seizure tablets, and snoozing tablets.
If all states did that, then that would keep round a 1/2-billion greenbacks a 12 months. But the half-billion taxpayers keep is the 1/2-billion drug organizations lose.So, no wonder the drug businesses are freaking out.