money.cnn.com
NORMAN, Okla. – A new report released this month from the journal Health Affairs confirms
what legalization advocates have been saying for years: legalized
marijuana leads to less prescription drug use and abuse, as well as a
decrease in Medicare spending. The authors of the study, a research team
at the University of Georgia, looked at 17 states with medical
marijuana legalized since 2013 and earlier, and found that painkiller
prescriptions, as well as prescriptions for other medication, dropped
dramatically compared to states where medical marijuana remained
illegal.
The study shows that doctors in states with legal medical marijuana prescribed fewer antidepressants, less seizure medication, and less anti-nausea medication.
In addition to this finding, the researchers found that Medicare saved $165.2 million due to lower prescription drug use. If every state had legalized marijuana, the researchers estimated that the savings for Medicare would reach $468 million.
The research appears to confirm legal marijuana’s status as the only solution to the United States’ painkiller epidemic that has cut a swath of destruction across the country. Opioid abuse has quadrupled since 1999 here in the U.S., which has justifiably spooked the doctors prescribing painkillers.
This has led to doctors prescribing opioids less often, pushing addicts towards illegal, black market heroin. The overdose deaths from heroin have skyrocketed, as the black market entrepreneurs push the narcotic wherever the demand exists, occasionally lacing their product with fentanyl, a deadly opioid with a potency 50 times that of heroin.
Policy makers and politicians have scrambled for a solution, mostly overlooking the only true solution, the solution that legalization advocates have been shouting for decades, the solution that has now been confirmed with solid evidence.
The evidence of the benefits of legal marijuana has piled so high that it has grown to a veritable mountain. It enriches states, it creates thousands of jobs, it cures those who couldn’t be cured otherwise, it alleviates chronic pain effectively and cheaply, it might even reverse/halt the effects of Alzheimer’s. Marijuana doesn’t need a billion-dollar lab with a room-full of PHD’s spending tax dollars to create it.
It can be grown in your backyard for a pittance. Imagine that, people growing their own medicine rather than draining their bank account only to choke down the latest Big Pharma poison peddled by their doctors.
It’s small wonder that pharmaceutical companies are some of the biggest enemies of the movement for marijuana legalization. A study released late last year by the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia found that 80 percent of the 473 adult therapeutic cannabis users gave up their prescription drugs entirely after using marijuana.
Those numbers have surely put the fear of God in those whose outrageous profits depend on the thousands remaining hopelessly dependent on their addictive, deadly pill-mill racket.
It is bizarre to contemplate the reality that marijuana, a plant that has never killed anyone, remains illegal in many states despite the avalanche of evidence of its benefits. The situation is made all the more grotesque in that the U.S. is in the midst of an opioid epidemic of biblical proportions.
The simplest solution, the only solution, appears to be the one that politicians and their toady policy makers are most eager to avoid. They want an end to the senseless deaths at the hands of heroin and other opioids, but they desire the power and money that accumulates from the Drug War.
Legalized marijuana would pull the rug out from under them. In many ways, the political class appears more willing to live with the plague of opioid abuse than with less power and money.
But their loss would be our gain. They are the servants of the people, they should be working for our well-being, not the other way around.
And if the fact that the actions of our political leaders have led to a public policy that has killed thousands, and promises to kill thousands more, that policy should be abolished without regard for the effects it will have on our rulers’ lifestyles or wallets. The answer is plain: legalize marijuana, end the War on Drugs.
That’s all that it takes, not some multi-billion dollar “initiative” that will funnel tax dollars to favored cronies while they study the problem for the next two decades. The evidence is there, plain as day. All that is now required is action.
The study shows that doctors in states with legal medical marijuana prescribed fewer antidepressants, less seizure medication, and less anti-nausea medication.
In addition to this finding, the researchers found that Medicare saved $165.2 million due to lower prescription drug use. If every state had legalized marijuana, the researchers estimated that the savings for Medicare would reach $468 million.
The research appears to confirm legal marijuana’s status as the only solution to the United States’ painkiller epidemic that has cut a swath of destruction across the country. Opioid abuse has quadrupled since 1999 here in the U.S., which has justifiably spooked the doctors prescribing painkillers.
This has led to doctors prescribing opioids less often, pushing addicts towards illegal, black market heroin. The overdose deaths from heroin have skyrocketed, as the black market entrepreneurs push the narcotic wherever the demand exists, occasionally lacing their product with fentanyl, a deadly opioid with a potency 50 times that of heroin.
Policy makers and politicians have scrambled for a solution, mostly overlooking the only true solution, the solution that legalization advocates have been shouting for decades, the solution that has now been confirmed with solid evidence.
The evidence of the benefits of legal marijuana has piled so high that it has grown to a veritable mountain. It enriches states, it creates thousands of jobs, it cures those who couldn’t be cured otherwise, it alleviates chronic pain effectively and cheaply, it might even reverse/halt the effects of Alzheimer’s. Marijuana doesn’t need a billion-dollar lab with a room-full of PHD’s spending tax dollars to create it.
It can be grown in your backyard for a pittance. Imagine that, people growing their own medicine rather than draining their bank account only to choke down the latest Big Pharma poison peddled by their doctors.
It’s small wonder that pharmaceutical companies are some of the biggest enemies of the movement for marijuana legalization. A study released late last year by the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia found that 80 percent of the 473 adult therapeutic cannabis users gave up their prescription drugs entirely after using marijuana.
Those numbers have surely put the fear of God in those whose outrageous profits depend on the thousands remaining hopelessly dependent on their addictive, deadly pill-mill racket.
It is bizarre to contemplate the reality that marijuana, a plant that has never killed anyone, remains illegal in many states despite the avalanche of evidence of its benefits. The situation is made all the more grotesque in that the U.S. is in the midst of an opioid epidemic of biblical proportions.
The simplest solution, the only solution, appears to be the one that politicians and their toady policy makers are most eager to avoid. They want an end to the senseless deaths at the hands of heroin and other opioids, but they desire the power and money that accumulates from the Drug War.
Legalized marijuana would pull the rug out from under them. In many ways, the political class appears more willing to live with the plague of opioid abuse than with less power and money.
But their loss would be our gain. They are the servants of the people, they should be working for our well-being, not the other way around.
And if the fact that the actions of our political leaders have led to a public policy that has killed thousands, and promises to kill thousands more, that policy should be abolished without regard for the effects it will have on our rulers’ lifestyles or wallets. The answer is plain: legalize marijuana, end the War on Drugs.
That’s all that it takes, not some multi-billion dollar “initiative” that will funnel tax dollars to favored cronies while they study the problem for the next two decades. The evidence is there, plain as day. All that is now required is action.
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