The Greater St. Louis NORML (GSTL NORML) chapter is continuing to educate the public about medical marijuana’s role in reducing opioid mortality. “We are placing strategically located billboards throughout the metro to educate St. Louis citizens about the benefits of legal and regulated medical marijuana,” says Karin Spinks Chester, Executive Director of GSTL NORML.
“This is an important time to let people know about the benefits of medical marijuana,” offers Chester, “because New Approach Missouri (NAM) has submitted more than twice the number of signatures required to qualify our medical marijuana petition to be placed on the November ballot.” GSTL NORML, along with local NORML chapters across the state, have participated in fundraising and canvassing activities for NAM and will now help with educational campaigns.
Every day, more than 115 people in the United States die overdosing on opioids, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (source: NIDA ).
The misuse and addiction to opioids, including prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, presents a serious national crisis and affects the St. Louis metro area as well.
Legal medical marijuana in states that have enacted statewide medical marijuana laws is associated with a decrease in opioid mortality rates according to research data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine.
Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) reported the story about the research findings for NORML. He said the researchers found that, “States with medical cannabis laws had a 24.8 percent lower mean annual opioid overdose mortality rate compared with states without medical cannabis laws.”
“Specifically, overdose deaths from opioids decreased by an average of 20 percent one year after the law’s implementation, 25 percent by two years, and up to 33 percent by years five and six.”
Armentano reported, “a team of investigators from the University of Pennsylvania, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore conducted a time-series analysis of medical cannabis laws and state-level death certificate data in the United States from 1999 to 2010 – a period during which 13 states instituted laws allowing for cannabis therapy.”
“Although the exact mechanism is unclear,” Armentano found the, “researchers’ results suggest a link between medical cannabis laws and lower opioid analgesic overdose mortality.”
In a written statement to Reuters Health, the study’s lead author Dr. Marcus Bachhuber said: “Most of the discussion on medical marijuana has been about its effect on individuals in terms of reducing pain or other symptoms. The unique contribution of our study is the finding that medical marijuana laws and policies may have a broader impact on public health.”
The implications for Missouri voters is clear. Enacting a comprehensive medical marijuana patient program in the Show-me state will reduce opioid mortality in Missouri.
The New Approach Missouri campaign to bring medical marijuana to the November 6, 2018 ballot will not only fight opioid addiction, but provide a proven exit therapy to get addicts off of opioids.
Read Paul Armentano’s full article text here: Study: State Medical Marijuana Laws Associated With Lower Rates Of Opiate-Induced Fatalities For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, “Medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality in the United States, 1999-2010,” appears in JAMA Internal Medicine.