Marijuana legalization linked to temporary decrease in opioid-related emergency visits
2021-07-12
(Press-News.org) PITTSBURGH, July 12, 2021 - States that legalize recreational marijuana experience a short-term decline in opioid-related emergency department visits, particularly among 25- to 44-year-olds and men, according to an analysis led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Published today in the journal Health Economics, the study shows that even after the temporary decline wears off, recreational cannabis laws are not associated with increases in opioid-related emergency department visits.
"This isn't trivial--a decline in opioid-related emergency department visits, even if only for six months, is a welcome public health development," said lead author Coleman Drake, Ph.D., assistant professor in Pitt Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. "But that being said, while cannabis liberalization may offer some help in curbing the opioid epidemic, it's likely not a panacea."
The opioid epidemic in the U.S. has accelerated in recent years, with more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths between June 2019 and May 2020--the highest ever recorded in a one-year period, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, 19 states have legalized recreational cannabis, meaning that nearly half of the U.S. population lives in a state with a recreational cannabis law.
Drake and his colleagues analyzed data on emergency department visits involving opioids from 29 states between 2011 and 2017. The study included four states that legalized recreational marijuana during that time frame: California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada. The remaining 25 states acted as controls.
The four states with recreational cannabis laws experienced a 7.6% reduction in opioid-related emergency department visits for six months after the law went into effect, compared to the states that didn't implement such laws. On closer inspection, the team found that men and adults aged 25 through 44 primarily drove the reduction. Because previous studies have shown that men and young adults account for the majority of people using cannabis, it makes sense that they'd be the ones most affected by the recreational laws, the researchers say.
Although the downturn in emergency department visits for opioids doesn't persist past six months, Drake said that it is encouraging that visits also don't increase above baseline after recreational marijuana laws are adopted. This indicates that recreational marijuana is not serving as a "gateway" to opioids.
"We can't definitively conclude from the data why these laws are associated with a temporary downturn in opioid-related emergency department visits but, based on our findings and previous literature, we suspect that people who use opioids for pain relief are substituting with cannabis, at least temporarily," Drake said. "Cannabis can provide pain relief for persons using opioids, but cannabis ultimately is not a treatment for opioid use disorder. Still, this is good news for state policymakers. States can fight the opioid epidemic by expanding access to opioid use disorder treatment and by decreasing opioid use with recreational cannabis laws. These policies aren't mutually exclusive; rather, they're both a step in the right direction."
INFORMATION:
Additional authors on this research are Jiebing Wen, Ph.D., and Hefei Wen, Ph.D., both of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and Jesse Hinde, Ph.D., of RTI International.
This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse award K01D1051761.
To read this release online or share it, visit https://www.upmc.com/media/news/071221-drake-cannabisrcl [when embargo lifts].
About the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health
The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, founded in 1948 and now one of the top-ranked schools of public health in the United States, conducts research on public health and medical care that improves the lives of millions of people around the world. Pitt Public Health is a leader in devising new methods to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, cancer and other important public health problems. For more information about Pitt Public Health, visit the school's Web site at http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu.
http://www.upmc.com/media
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-07-12
MINNEAPOLIS - The American Academy of Neurology (AAN), the world's largest association of neurologists with more than 36,000 members, is issuing ethical guidance for neurologists and neuroscience professionals who care for people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. The new position statement is published in the July 12, 2021 online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This update to the 1996 AAN position statement was developed by the Ethics, Law, and Humanities Committee, a joint committee of the American Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society.
"Dementia care and scientific understanding have advanced considerably, including greater recognition of non-Alzheimer's dementias and advances ...
2021-07-12
The Black Lives Matter movement has brought increasing attention to disparities in how police officers treat Black and white Americans. Now, research published by the American Psychological Association finds that disparity may exist even in subtle differences in officers' tone of voice when they address Black and white drivers during routine traffic stops.
In the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers gathered short audio excerpts from police body camera footage and found that when officers spoke to Black men at traffic stops, their tone of voice conveyed less warmth, respect and ease than when they spoke to white men. The researchers also found that these subtle negative interactions ...
2021-07-12
INFORMS Journal Management Science Study Key Takeaways:
Lack of direct airline routes limit the flexibility of organ transplantation policies.
A new airline route can increase the number of kidneys shared between different regions by more than 7% while also decreasing the organ discard rate.
An increase in the quantity of kidneys does not come with a decrease in kidney quality.
CATONSVILLE, MD, July 12, 2021 - It's a supply and demand problem, it's a transportation problem, it's a donor problem - and that just scratches the surface. According ...
2021-07-12
[Points]
319 Tb/s long-haul transmission of wideband (>120 nm) S, C and L-bands signal using 552 PDM-16QAM, wavelength-division multiplexed channels in a 4-core optical fiber
Long-distance transmission over 3,001 km enabled by adoption of both erbium and thulium doped-fiber amplifiers and distributed Raman amplification
Demonstration shows potential of SDM fibers with standard-cladding diameter and compatibility with existing cabling technologies for near-term adoption of high-throughput SDM fiber systems
[Abstract]
Researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA ...
2021-07-12
When we think about singularities, we tend to think of massive black holes in faraway galaxies or a distant future with runaway AI, but singularities are all around us. Singularities are simply a place where certain parameters are undefined. The North and South Pole, for example, are what's known as coordinate singularities because they don't have a defined longitude.
Optical singularities typically occur when the phase of light with a specific wavelength, or color, is undefined. These regions appear completely dark. Today, some optical singularities, including ...
2021-07-12
Los Alamos, N.M., July 12, 2021--For the first time, the long-theorized neutron-clustering effect in nuclear reactors has been demonstrated, which could improve reactor safety and create more accurate simulations, according to a new study recently published in the journal Nature Communications Physics.
"The neutron-clustering phenomenon had been theorized for years, but it had never been analyzed in a working reactor," said Nicholas Thompson, an engineer with the Los Alamos Advanced Nuclear Technology Group. "The findings indicate that, as neutrons fission and create more neutrons, some go on to form large lineages of clusters while others quickly die off, resulting in so-called 'power tilts,' ...
2021-07-12
(Boston)--Despite the availability of numerous effective birth control methods, more than 40 percent of pregnancies worldwide are unintended. In addition to contributing significantly to population growth, unintended pregnancies can have pronounced adverse effects on maternal physical, mental and economic wellbeing.
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and ZabBio (San Diego, CA) have developed an anti-sperm monoclonal antibody, the Human Contraception Antibody (HCA), which they found to be safe and possess potent sperm agglutination (clumping) and immobilization activity in laboratory tests.
"HCA appears to be suitable for contraceptive use and could be administered vaginally in a dissolvable film for a ...
2021-07-12
A research team from the University of Göttingen and the University of British Columbia (Canada) has investigated how people in five different countries react to various usages of genome editing in agriculture. The researchers looked at which uses are accepted and how the risks and benefits of the new breeding technologies are rated by people. The results show only minor differences between the countries studied - Germany, Italy, Canada, Austria and the USA. In all countries, making changes to the genome is more likely to be deemed acceptable when used in crops rather than in livestock. The study was published in Agriculture and Human Values.
Relatively new breeding technologies, such as CRISPR gene editing, have enabled a range of new opportunities for plant and animal breeding. ...
2021-07-12
The sensory cells in the inner ear and the touch receptors in the skin actually have a lot in common, according to a new study from the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Neil Segil published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS).
"There are striking similarities in the development of two types of specialized sensory cells: the so-called 'hair cells' that receive sound vibrations in the inner ear, and the Merkel cells that sense light touch at the surface of the skin," said Segil, who is a Professor in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology ...
2021-07-12
The Lucinidae family, lucinids for short, comprises approximately 500 living species of bivalves. They are at least 400 million years old, according to fossil records, and have managed to colonize a wide variety of habitats, from beautiful beaches to the abyssal depths untouched by the sun over a kilometer below the sea surface. Their ability to thrive in a wide variety of habitats is made possible by their 'partner in crime', a sulfur-oxidizing bacterial symbiont that utilizes hydrogen sulfide, better known as 'rotten egg gas', as an energy source to power primary production. This process is not unlike photosynthesis used by plants, yet not dependent on sunlight, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Marijuana legalization linked to temporary decrease in opioid-related emergency visits
