Posted on 01/30/2020 8:14:28 AM PST by dangus
Does legalized marijuana prevent people from turning towards more dangerous drugs, like opioids, to manage pain and withdrawal? Or does marijuana continue to act as a "gateway" drug, even after obtaining it no longer requires someone to enter into a shady underworld?
The CDC just released its summation of 2018 deaths due to drug overdoses. (THIS IS FOR ALL OVERDOSES, NOT MARIJUANA OVERDOSES; I'm looking at how marijuana relates to overdoses from other drugs!) When I saw that death rates from drug overdoses (largely due to opioids, but with cocaine and other drugs playing an increasing role) had declined for the first time in decades last year, I decided to see whether legalized marijuana correlated to declining overdose rates.
California seemed the most relevant, since that states allowed recreational use of marijuana for the first time in 2018. (The voter initiative doing so passed in 2016.) Contrary to the national trend, the number of overdose deaths in California spiked 9.4%. Given the large, culturally and geographically diverse nature of California, this a huge increase.
Also in 2018, Missouri became legalized "medical" marijuana, but defined that concept so broadly and allowed in-home cultivation, essentially making any law enforcement or control of the market by criminal gangs impossible. Drug overdoses spiked 17.52%. Vermont is such a small state that you can't make too much out of wild swings in the overdose death rate, but it saw a seeming large but technically insignificant increase in deaths (up 14.66%). The death rate also rose in Massachusetts (4.4%), which had legalized recreational marijuana starting in 2017, and which has one of the highest overdose rates in the nation (more than 50% above average).
[Laws liberalizing marijuana in North Carolina, New York and Oklahoma had not yet taken effect; both of these saw declines consistent with the national average (-7.05%, -5.15%, -4.2% and -8.4% respectively). Michigan saw a similar modest decrease; it's liberalizing law took effect in the second half of 2018.]
It's difficult to learn as much from states which had slightly less recently legalized marijuana. Legal marijuana first became available in Maine and Ohio in 2017. Both states saw sharp increases in the overdose death rate that year, but so did nearly the entire nation. Both declined this year. All of the states with the highest overdose death rates had legalized at least some marijuana, but not all of the states with legalized marijuana were among those with the highest death rates. California, for instance, despite its sharp increases after legalizing recreational marijuana, still has a fairly low overdose death rate.
To conclude: The assertion that legalized marijuana worsens overdose death rates for other drugs may be difficult to assert merely looking at changes in death rates after recent legalizations. There are too many other factors which may be at play in the various states. But the claim that legalized marijuana has near-term positive effects on such death rates seems contradicted by the such evidence, to the extent that any such evidence is meaningful.
SOURCES
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db356.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._jurisdiction including links to the policies of individual states.
Average increase of Fentanyl smuggling, then check again.
If Fentanyl smuggling increases 100% you can adjust your overall figure for Fentanyl then check.
California’s homeless percentage increase needs to be factored in too.
I gotta be honest.
I don’t know ONE pothead that does any other drugs that pot.
I mean what are you going for if you’re smoking pot?
Certainly not a coke or meth or heroin high.
You don’t NEED xanax or klonopin or valium
You’ll just ruin the buzz of THC by popping oxys, roxys, percs, tramadol and fent.
Only thing I can think is that kids who would have Never tried pot when it was illegal or using it now and then going on to something else.
Cause they ain’t potheads yet. Just experimenting
And if they’re told one of these drugs is legal now, well then why not try others?
It’s not the folks that were already ingesting loads of pot before it was legal. They’re just potheads.
The kids that came along after it was legal...i would bet it’s them moving on to other drugs.
To flip what you said, I’ve never known any druggies who didn’t start out on pot. I think the notion was that they quickly graduated to other drugs. Of course, most of my exposure to druggies pre-dated the current heroin epidemic, and was from when pot was both widely available and very illegal.
Apples vs Potatoes
Legalized pot makes it more acceptable to get stoned and thus increases the legitimacy of other drugs that get people stoned. There is a certain percentage who aren’t going to be satisfied with the marijuana buzz and will want more.
Well that’s interesting.
I guess if they’re POTHEADS then they never moved on and that would make sense.
The ones that moved on i’m sure forgot about pot very quickly.
I think if you’ve only smoked pot for 10 or so years you’re probably just a pothead :)
For the new kids...yeah there’s a lot more out there to try now after flirting with pot
And those drugs shoot dopamine levels WAY WAY WAY HIGHER than pot ever could.
Meth is 1st place with a 1200 PERCENT increase in levels.
By comparison, sex boosts dopamine levels by 200 percent.
Anything that feels THAT much better than sex, I’m not touching.
“Druggies”....LOL...Ok Boomer, go have a beer
In my experience over 30 years doing criminal defense, alcohol is a much more common gateway to harder drugs than marijuana is. Alcohol is easily the drug most commonly associated with criminal offenses.
“I don’t know ONE pothead that does any other drugs that pot.”
I’ve never known any that didn’t.
“Legalized pot makes it more acceptable to get stoned and thus increases the legitimacy of other drugs that get people stoned.”
Yes. And getting in the habit of getting high with pot makes it easy to move on to getting high on opiates, which most people would find more comforting than pot.
While Missouri may have legalized medical use. It has not been implemented yet. Your methodology might need a rework.
You always speak for “most people”?
Here is the simple fact on this subject boys and girls
Cannabis is non-toxic even in high high doses
There is no other entheogen on planet earth that can claim this other than lysergic acid diethylamide the 25th Isomer (lsd25)
Alcohol is toxic for every human being in the level 0.5%
Nicotine is extremely toxic - one drop will kill any adult human being on planet earth
It goes without saying that all of the opioids are extremely toxic
Uppers the amphetamines cocaine and all other stimulants are similarly toxic
Cannabis is a very very very special gift from God
The CBD products you see everywhere now are all derived from cannabis
Oh JOY! Yet ANOTHER pro WOsD thread with inconsistent data, stereotyping comments, ipso facto reasoning, fallacious arguments, third person tales of woe and nanny State control freaks posing as conservatives.
Wow, you just don't get it. As a child of the drug culture in the 60's, I can tell you that most want the different highs/lows that come with the various drugs you mentioned.
1. THC is a very very slight hallucinogenic and has many side affects, the least of all being lack of motivation.
2. Cocaine and Meth are stimulants that rot your teeth and other body parts.
3. Heroin is full body depressant and WILL turn you into a zombie if not kill you.
4. Xanax, Klonopin, and Valium are also nerve relaxing chemicals. Not as addictive, but pleasurable for those who need a different feel from just pot.
5. Oxycontin is a pain reliever that gives the same low as the above Benzos.
It's the rare case that someone who starts on Pot doesn't want the highs and lows of the other drugs. Mark my words...the States/Cities that are allowing legal Marijuana WILL experience more drug problems and associated criminal activity.
Yes, alcohol is addictive and screw up someone who can't handle it, so don't go there.
You’re the second person to say that.
But I said POTHEAD Not someone that tried pot or even used it for a while.
I guess by definition, a pothead is someone who has been smoking tons of pot forever and doesn’t do anything else.
I HAVE known people who started with pot and moved on.
But they weren’t potheads yet :)
“You always speak for “most people”?”
An aficionado I see.
My comment was anecdotal in response to another poster’s comment.
My take of the dynamics of getting high is my opinion based on experience and observation.
We live in a depressing culture filled with all kinds of horrible things. People are killing themselves in greater numbers, whether on purpose or not. The establishment is throwing pot to the masses in the hope that it will distract them from what has been done to our nation. It’s not surprising that people turn to weed and pills. We have been transformed into a population of obese drug addicts. Not to worry, we are getting a new population. At least we still have the Constitution.
That reminds me, I need to stock up on JD :)
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