Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescribing rate

Marijuana contains many Cannabinoids including CBD or Cannabidiol and THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol. But contrary to the latter, topical CBD, particularly CBD oil, manages and reduces pain, inflammation, discomfort, and a variety of other health conditions.

As of 2020, medical marijuana is legal in over 20 states in the USA since it was first decriminalized in Nevada in 2001. But in 2017, it was found that chronic pain was the most common qualification condition among patients who are licensed to use marijuana medically, accounting for almost 62% of nearly 1 million medical cannabis patients (representing an average of 33% to 73% each year from 1999 to 2016).

Opioid is a group of chemically similar drugs containing prescription pain relievers and heroin. A good example of these includes  hydrocodone (Vicodin®), oxycodone (OxyContin®), and morphine. This is what makes it one of the main contributing factors to the opioid crisis. According to SAMHSA, approximately over in 2018, 10 million people aged 12 or older in 2018 have misused opioids. About 9.4 million of those have misused pain relievers exclusively while the remaining 506,000 have misused pain relievers and heroin use in the previous year. On a similar note, a little over 300,000 people have also misused heroin exclusively out of the 800,000 people who misused heroin in 2017

From 1999 to 2017, it was found that there were about 400,000 people who died from overdoses of any, prescription, and illicit opioids.

So how exactly is medical marijuana a potential solution to the opioid crisis?

Here’s where things get really interesting…

Our Study

We’ve selected 19 states where medical marijuana is legal then compared the opioid prescribing rate 1 year before and after medical marijuana was legalized in the state. Here is what we found:

Out of the 19 states, 15 have shown a fall of opioid prescribing rate 1 year after legalization of medical marijuana, and only 4 have increased in usage, namely: New Jersey, New Mexico, Michigan, and Arizona.

Interestingly, the state with the highest fall of opioid prescribing rate among the 19 states was Ohio, from an average opioid prescribing rate of 82.7 down to 63.5, totaling 19.2 decreased prescribing rate after marijuana legalization.

The state with the second-highest fall of opioid prescribing rate was Pennsylvania, from an average opioid prescribing rate of 75.5 down to 57.7, a total of 17.8 decreased prescribing rate after marijuana legalization.

New Mexico and New Jersey had the least number of increase in opioid prescribing rate of the 4 mentioned states, with only 2.4 and 1.6 increase in usage after marijuana legalization, respectively.

Here is the full data of our study:

Data source: 

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/maps/rxrate-maps.html

National Drug Use & Health Subtance Abuse; Mental Health Administration

To support our point of view, let’s compare this to similar studies:

Other studies

In an article published on Harvard Health Publishing, M.D Peter Grinspoon has shown “access to medical marijuana can reduce opioid consumption”.​

A study conducted by Hefei Wen, Ph.D and Jason M. Hockenberry, Ph.D as of May 2018 showed that from 2011 to 2016, adult-use marijuana laws and medical marijuana laws were associated with lower opioid prescribing rates for Medicaid enrollees: 6.38% and 5.88% lower, respectively, compared with states without medical cannabis laws.

In October 2014, Marcus A. Bachhuber, Brendan Saloner, Ph.D, Chinazo O. Cunningham, MD, MS, and Colleen L. Barry, Ph.D, MPP also conducted a study to determine the association between the presence of state medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality. The report concluded: Between 1999 to 2010, states with medical cannabis laws (Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont) had a 24.8% lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical cannabis laws. Although they still claim “further investigation is required to determine how medical cannabis laws may interact with policies aimed at preventing opioid analgesic overdose.”

It has to be noted that fewer annual drug doses were also being prescribed per physician in the U.S from 2010-2013:

In the given period, there were 1,826 fewer doses of drugs per year per physician treating pain than in states without medical marijuana laws. Moreover, there were 562 and 541 fewer annual doses of drugs per year per physician to treat anxiety and nausea, respectively.

In summary, 78% of the states (where medical marijuana is legal) have shown an average reduction rate of opioid consumption by 5.21.

But what about licensed medical professionals such as physicians? What’s their take on this matter? This is where things start to make sense…

To conduct this study, we selected 21 states in the U.S. where medical marijuana is legal. Specifically, we compared the data of the average opioid prescribing rate of 1 year before and after the legalization of medical marijuana.

States mentioned in this study and their legalization year:

• District of Columbia (2014)
• Illinois (2013)
• Massachusetts (2008)
• Michigan (2008)
• Arizona (2010)
• Arkansas (2016)
• Connecticut (2012)
• Delaware (2011)
• Florida (2016)
• Hawaii (2000)
• Maryland (2003)
• Minnesota (2014)
• New Hampshire (2013)
• New Jersey (2010)
• New Mexico (2007)
• New York (2014)
• North Dakota (2016)
• Ohio (2016)
• Pennsylvania (2016)

The data collected for this study relied on self-report. Some limitations that come with this include but are not limited to the following: selective memory, telescoping, and exaggeration. We can not be certain as to how close these data match up with reality.

Feel free to share our project with them, so long as it’s for noncommercial purposes. Just make sure that you include a link back to this page so that your readers can take in the full breadth of our research.