A new study has investigated changes in opioid use in US states which have passed medical and recreational cannabis laws.
The study, led by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, found no changes in opioid outcomes among the general population following the states’ passage of medical and recreational cannabis laws.
However, the findings, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, also show decreases in opioid outcomes after medical cannabis was introduced among people reporting cannabis use. There were no changes in opioid outcomes when laws for both medical and recreational use were enacted.
By the end of 2019, 32 states had introduced access to medical cannabis. All states that went on to adopt recreational cannabis laws had previously adopted regulations around medical use.
Using National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data from 2015-2019, the researchers estimated cannabis law associations with opioid (prescription opioid misuse and/or heroin use) misuse and use disorder.
Approximately 282,768 respondents participated in the NSDUH study during this time period. The prevalence of past year and past month opioid misuse was reported by 4% and 1.3% of participants, respectively.
Approximately 3% of the participants met criteria for past-year DSM-IV opioid use disorder (OUD) — abuse and dependence. Prevalence of past year and past month opioid misuse, as well as opioid use disorder, were all higher among respondents reporting past year cannabis use (15%) compared to those reporting no use.
Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, commented: “Our study is the first to investigate the effects of cannabis laws on opioid outcomes among people that used cannabis in the past year and that initiated cannabis use prior to cannabis law adoption in their state.
“Comparing individuals in states with medical cannabis laws alone to those in states without such laws, we found an inconsistent pattern of decreased odds of opioid outcomes, which were more pronounced among people reporting cannabis use.
“The pattern did not hold for individuals in states with recreational cannabis laws, suggesting that MCLs [medical marijuana laws] may be associated with reductions in opioid use among people using cannabis but additional work to replicate and expand on these findings is needed.”
Overall, medical and recreational cannabis adoption were not associated with changes in the odds of any opioid outcome.
After restricting to respondents reporting past-year cannabis use, decreased odds of past year opioid misuse were observed among individuals in states with medical cannabis compared to those in states without cannabis laws. Recreational laws were not associated with changes in the odds of any opioid outcome beyond medical adoption.
Reductions in some measures of opioid misuse and opioid use disorder were reported in states with medical cannabis alone, but only among individuals reporting past-year cannabis use who had initiated cannabis use prior to cannabis law adoption in their state.
“Our findings generally support the premise that state adoption of RCLs [recreational marijuana laws] and MCLs has few benefits in terms of reducing substance misuse and indicates that continued monitoring of RCL+MCL-related trends is warranted,” Martins added.
“One important issue to consider is that compared to MCLs, relatively fewer states have adopted RCLs+MCLs, and most laws have been adopted within the past decade. Therefore, the impact of RCLs+MCLs may become clearer as more states adopt these laws and as post-law observation time accumulates.
“More studies are needed to examine opioid use among individuals who receive cannabis from medical and recreational dispensaries.”
The post Study Highlights Changes in Opioid Use Following Medical Cannabis Laws appeared first on Cannabis Health News.
Go to Source
Author: News Editor
