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.
This sounds like Seth McFarlane's version of God to me.
Nailed it.
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.
A Navy Vet: 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.
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.
The LD50 of THC is about 1/10 that of alcohol.
While it is difficult to consume an LD50 by smoking marijuana, it is very possible by some of the other forms of consuming THC, like vaping. Vaping of THC, moreover, is linked to the recent spat of vaping deaths.
We also cannot overlook the brain damage caused by THC, especially in younger users (less than 25-30 years old). This is a serious concern, as those who are brain damaged are likely to be burdens on society for a long time.
This harkens back to the wonderful FR War on Drugs threads from 20+ years ago. Give the Reefer Madness Patrol some credit, I guess, for longevity.
Evidence?
Nice find!
“States with Legal Marijuana See 25 Percent Fewer Prescription Painkiller Deaths” - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3197446/posts
I find it odd that nobody ever mentioned cigarettes. It normalizes the very notion of “smoking” something....seems like a small step from smoking plant A to plant B.
Zerohedge is a junk site:
Recreational arijuana is decriminalized, but still illegal in Portugal. Medical marijuana was legalized only in 2018.
The explosion in AIDS cases occurred AFTER a 1987 program to give free, clean needles and condoms away.
Although they declined again, the murder rate in Portugal increased more than 50% after decriminalization, although this included many, more powerful drugs.
Addiction centers, established chiefly in the 1980s and 1990s, have seen a 60% increase rate in addictions since legalization (2001).
HIV infections among drug users declined 17% since decriminalization (2001), but 90% overall.
Drug use has increased more than 55% since 2001.
Portugal doesn’t prove drug decriminalization is a bad idea, but the evidence claimed by ZeroHedge is fake news; the real news is far from unambigious.
>> the DEA said in 2016 that pot is not a gateway drug. <<
Yay, Obama! That DEA administrator who said that was Comey’s chief of staff. He is now a Trump-bashing regular contributor to the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. He came on only towards the end of 2015, so that report was probably started before him.
He was preceeded by Michelle Leonhart (administrator, 2010-Oct., 2016), who ceased enforcement proceedings against drug diversions of opiates. We all know how well that turned out! In March 2015, it was revealed DEA agents were participating in drug cartel-funded sex parties with prostitutes. She resigned 7 months later. She nominally opposed Obama’s claims that marijuana was not a gateway drug, but sharply curtailed enforcement action, allowing the proliferation of decriminalization laws.
>> I find it odd that nobody ever mentioned cigarettes. It normalizes the very notion of “smoking” something....seems like a small step from smoking plant A to plant B. <<
I find it odd that the Swamp is so concerned with attacking tobacco (which is good to attack), but ignore marihuana so completely that they failed for months to connect the dots that nicotine vapers who died were almost all using marijuana in their vapers.
Marijuana lacks nicotine, which makes tobacco so addictive. But nicotine isn’t what kills tobacco users. There are over 700 cancer-causing substances in tobacco, and it seems absurd to suppose that more than a few of them are in tobacco but not marijuana, Importantly, nitrosamines, an important carcinogen, IS in tobacco, but not marijuana. But carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are found in marijuana in levels similar to tobacco, as are almost 60 other carcinogens.
You ARE probably considerably less likely to die of cancer if you stick to marijuana, rather than tobacco. (Most pot users I’ve known smoke both, but I have known several who did stick to marijuana.) But these hippies who act as if they’re being “all-natural” while they suck on marijuana exhaust make me roll my eyes.
>> I find it odd that nobody ever mentioned cigarettes. It normalizes the very notion of “smoking” something....seems like a small step from smoking plant A to plant B. <<
I find it odd that the Swamp is so concerned with attacking tobacco (which is good to attack), but ignore marihuana so completely that they failed for months to connect the dots that nicotine vapers who died were almost all using marijuana in their vapers.
Marijuana lacks nicotine, which makes tobacco so addictive. But nicotine isn’t what kills tobacco users. There are over 700 cancer-causing substances in tobacco, and it seems absurd to suppose that more than a few of them are in tobacco but not marijuana, Importantly, nitrosamines, an important carcinogen, IS in tobacco, but not marijuana. But carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are found in marijuana in levels similar to tobacco, as are almost 60 other carcinogens.
You ARE probably considerably less likely to die of cancer if you stick to marijuana, rather than tobacco. (Most pot users I’ve known smoke both, but I have known several who did stick to marijuana.) But these hippies who act as if they’re being “all-natural” while they suck on marijuana exhaust make me roll my eyes.
the quote you provide does not say what you state above.
How does the quote differ? "Little evidence supports the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances," the report said.
Yay, Obama! That DEA administrator who said that was Comey’s chief of staff. He is now a Trump-bashing regular contributor to the Rachel Maddow show
Irrelevant ad hominem; the report (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/08/12/2016-17960/denial-of-petition-to-initiate-proceedings-to-reschedule-marijuana) cites plenty of scientific evidence for that statement.
“How does the quote differ?”
Exactly. You don’t understand.
“Little evidence supports the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances,” the report said.
Compared to your:
“the DEA said in 2016 that pot is not a gateway drug.”
You’ve turned it in to a confirmed negative, which was not even inferred in the DEA statement.
The DEA would have stated “there is evidence that refutes the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances” if they held that position.
But they did not.
They stated there is evidence but it is little - ie not much.
You turned it around to say they asserted an explicit finding refuting the hypothesis. They did not.
I’m sure there are studies that refute it and studies that support it.
I’m curious, how would you design a study to address and answer the hypothesis that initiation of marijuana use leads to an abuse disorder with other illicit substances?
Fair point - Dan should have said there is little evidence to support the hypothesis of unicorns, rather than saying that unicorns don't exist.
“Fair point - Dan should have said there is little evidence to support the hypothesis of unicorns, rather than saying that unicorns don’t exist.”
So you think there is evidence for unicorns?
Otherwise you’d say no evidence, not little evidence.
I'm sure we could find someone who claims to have seen one - which would be sparse and anecdotal evidence but not none.
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