HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, April 20, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — When individuals have authorized entry to marijuana, they’re much less more likely to take sure prescription drugs, new analysis suggests.
U.S. states the place leisure marijuana is authorized have seen giant drops in the usage of prescribed drugs for ache, depression, anxiousness, sleep, psychosis and seizures, the researchers discovered.
“These outcomes have vital implications,” mentioned examine co-author Shyam Raman. He’s a doctoral scholar within the College of Public Coverage at Cornell College in Ithaca, N.Y.
“The reductions in drug utilization that we discover may result in important price financial savings for state Medicaid applications. The outcomes additionally point out a possibility to scale back the hurt that may include the damaging unwanted side effects related to some prescribed drugs,” Raman mentioned in a college information launch.
For the examine, the researchers analyzed U.S. Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers knowledge collected from all states from 2011 to 2019, when there was a rise in states that allow private marijuana use.
At present, recreational marijuana use is legal in 18 states plus Washington, D.C. Thirty-seven states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana.
Most earlier analysis has centered on how medical marijuana impacts prescription drug use or how authorized leisure pot use impacts opioid demand. This is likely one of the first papers to look at the affect of authorized leisure marijuana on prescription drug use, the examine authors famous.
Whereas there’s a constructive side to their findings, the investigators warned that marijuana use carries dangers, pointing to plenty of research that join it with attainable triggering of hysteria and psychoses corresponding to schizophrenia.
There’s additionally the prospect that individuals who use marijuana to deal with their well being issues might not see their physician as typically, leading to gaps of their major care, the researchers mentioned.
The examine was printed April 15 within the journal Well being Economics .
Extra info
There’s extra on marijuana on the U.S. Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse.
SOURCE: Cornell College, information launch, April 18, 2022
