New Study Finds Legalizing Medical Marijuana Leads to Fewer Prescription Drug Overdose Deaths

BenSwann

A study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, on Monday, found that states that had legalized medical marijuana had seen a 25 percent drop in deaths related to prescription drug overdoses.

According to ABC News, the researchers conducting the study found that because “legalizing medical marijuana makes it more available to chronic pain patients, it provides a potentially less lethal alternative to pain control on a long-term basis.”

The research began in 1999, when only three states legalized medical marijuana, and it lasted up until 2010. Today, it is legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Over the course of the study, the states studied were the ones that allowed access to medical marijuana. The Washington Post reported that those states “had 1,729 fewer overdose deaths in 2010 than would be predicted by trends in states without such laws.”

Dr. Marcus Bachhuber, a physician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, and the lead author of the study, told ABC News that while he did expect to see changes among the states that legalized medical marijuana, he found it “surprising that the difference is so big.”

Bachhuber explained that in his practice, he works with a lot of people with chronic pain, and that sometimes, “people with chronic pain would say only marijuana worked or they tried marijuana as a painkiller and found it worked better than prescription pills.”

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