31 August 2014

JAMA Internal Medicine Publishes Study Concluding With Researchers' Suspicion That Availability Of Legalized Medical Marijuana In 13 States From 1999-2010 May Be Reason For Reduced Annual Opioid Overdose Deaths By 24.8%

       Sunday, 31 August 2014, PHILADELPHIA - U.S. News & World Report in the first article with link below this post cites a recent study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine concluding that the availability of legalized medical marijuana in 13 states from 1999-2010 is suspected of being responsible for a most significant drop in the the average annual rate of opioid overdose deaths by about 24.8% during that period in just those same states. That is a dramatic reduction in deaths of almost exactly one quarter.
       Researchers reporting the study's findings in JAMA Internal Medicine suspected that this steep reduction was based on the circumstance that in the states in which medical marijuana is legal opioid overdose deaths dropped greatly because patients' use of opioids as painkillers was believed to have been curtailed with some patients able to manage pain successfully by substituting marijuana which is not believed ever to have caused an overdose death.
       The link to the article is provided below for interested readers and is followed by links to two more U.S. News & World Report articles from last year with the first chronicling one man's struggle to recovery from addiction to prescription painkillers, cocaine, heroin and drinking and the second focused on his mother's perspective on his addiction.

Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to above linked articles)

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