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.
“Your original contention with me was that I misquoted the article.”
Yes. That is my contention and it is fact.
“Regardless, the DEA said in 2016 that pot is not a gateway drug.”
The above quote was not in “the article” or implied or suggested in “the article”, “the article” being the DEA letter ou linked two.
The metastudy:
Legalizing marijuana might contribute to a modest reduction in opioid prescriptions. Evidence about the effect of marijuana legalization on opioid overdose mortality is inconsistent and inconclusive. If any, the effectiveness of state marijuana laws in reducing opioid overdose mortality appears to be rather small and limited to states with operational marijuana dispensaries. It remains unclear whether the presumed benefit of legalizing marijuana in reducing opioid-related harms outweighs the policy’s externalities, such as its impact on mental health and traffic safety.
Clearly, the recent data from the CDC sheds additional data to the “inconsistent, inconclusive” present data.
Grandma KC always said. "Stay. Away. From Pills."
Negative. My original post to you (#43) contained a link to the USA Today article, not the DEA Report.
Maybe you shouldn't post when you're drunk.
Here's my post #43: (I've removed quotes from DouglasKC and A Navy Vet)
Do you see that 'linky' thing in the body of the post below? If you hover your mouse over it, then click the link, it'll take you to the USA Today article.
ifinnegan: 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.
Regardless of your anecdotes, the DEA said in 2016 that pot is not a gateway drug.
From: Marijuana to remain illegal under federal law, DEA says:
On other points, the DEA report noted marijuana has a "high potential" for abuse and can result in psychological dependence. It said around 19 million individuals in the U.S. used marijuana monthly in 2012 and that contemporaneous studies showed around 4.3 million individuals met diagnostic criteria for marijuana dependence.
It did not find, however, that marijuana is a "gateway drug."
"Little evidence supports the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances," the report said.
Thanks. Can you link to my reply?
No, but you can.
I posted the body of the report dealing with the gateway drug hypothesis in post #66.
Please point out where in that report that the DEA is saying what you claim.
From the relevant passage of the report that I posted in #66.
Perhaps you can post links to studies whose results support what you're claiming.
Little evidence supports the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances. For example, one longitudinal study of 708 adolescents demonstrated that early onset marijuana use did not lead to problematic drug use (Kandel & Chen, 2000). Similarly, Nace et al. (1975) examined Vietnam-era soldiers who extensively abused marijuana and heroin while they were in the military, and found a lack of correlation of a causal relationship demonstrating marijuana use leading to heroin addiction. Additionally, in another longitudinal study of 2,446 adolescents, marijuana dependence was uncommon but when it did occur, the common predictors of marijuana dependence were the following: parental death, deprived socio-economic status, and baseline illicit drug use other than marijuana (von Sydow et al., 2002).
“Thanks. Can you link to my reply?
No, but you can.”
View responses shows no response by me.
Of those with a dependence on cocaine, 59% to 89% use marijuana regularly.
It looks like you forgot the link.
That’s not the end of the issue, since that could show that cocaine use causes marijuana use, not the other way around. But in my younger days, I met a LOT of cocaine users and heard their testimonies about how they got hooked into drugs, and I can’t imagine ONE of them started with cocaine BEFORE trying marijuana.
How many started out smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol?
The above makes absolutely no sense.
“View responses shows no response by me.
The above makes absolutely no sense.”
Surely you know every post has a view reply link.
There is no reply by me to your 43.
That study by Nace et al had nothing to do with the notion that people who used marijuana were more likely or less likely to use heroin; it found that OF THOSE WHO USED BOTH, those who became addicted to heroin experimented more with other drugs. Not at all relevant to “gateway,” only to the straw man.
Likewise, Kandel & Chen didn’t find that marijuana use didn’t make people more likely to use heroin; it found that of those who did use heroin, they weren’t more likely to become addicted. Not only does this not refute the gateway hypothesis, Kandel coined the term in 1975!
METH is the fastest growing street DOPE..
Don’t forget the CANNABINOID VOMITING IS UNDER REPORTED along with the deaths.
What is the evidence that cannabis deaths are underreported?
they’re too stoned to remember how many pills they took?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.