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Comment by cantSpellSober | Hacker News Reader

Do people replace opioids with cannabis?

>States with medical marijuana laws had a 24.8 percent lower average annual opioid overdose death rate compared to states without such laws. In 2010, that translated to about 1,729 fewer deaths than expected. The years after implementation of medical marijuana laws also were associated with lower overdose death rates that generally got stronger over time: year 1 (-19.9 percent), year 2 (-25.2 percent), year 3 (-23.6 percent), year 4 (-20.2 percent), year 5 (-33.7 percent) and year 6 (-33.3 percent).

https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/lower-opioid-overdos...

Yes but "the reason why is not clear" and "a direct causal link cannot be established"

Sarcasm, right?

Worthless comment, right? If you'd read the link you'd know I'm quoting directly. It cites studies, like this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4392651/

...which declares other correlations: "cannabis use has been linked with increased use of other drugs, including opioids" again adding "however, a causal relationship has not been established." Should we assume the bad stuff is causal, too? I don't believe we should.

Is that from people switching from opioids to marijuana, or from less new people starting with opioids?

Very much so. Here's just a few resources on this from Vancouver:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne45vd/more-vancouver-opioid...

https://mugglehead.com/vancouver-cannabis-harm-reduction-pro...

Thanks, a replacement for methadone though? I'm skeptical:

"...no consensus among studies that cannabis use is associated with reduced opioid use or longer treatment retention when used during methadone maintenance therapy"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31744904/

It’s mostly used more for chronic pain, I thought. Particularly where pain starts suppressing appetite, weed induced munchies are a great way to keep things down.

Yes. In fact, it seems that when legalization happens - opioid use/overdoses in neighboring states goes down too.[0]

[0] https://thehighestcritic.com/news/recreational-marijuana-leg...

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