“Our study is the first to investigate the effects of cannabis laws on opioid outcomes among people that used cannabis in the past year and that initiated cannabis use prior to cannabis law adoption in their state,” said study author Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, in a press release.
“Much has been speculated on whether the enactment of medical and recreational cannabis laws can have a role in decreasing prescriptions for opioid pain relievers, opioid use and misuse, opioid use disorder, and overdose in the U.S,” she added.
In the current study, researchers analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) from 2015 to 2019 to investigate whether a link exists between state adoption of cannabis laws and changes in opioid outcomes overall and according to cannabis use.
The data included just under 283, 000 respondents. Prevalence of past year and past month opioid misuse, as well as opioid use disorder, were all higher among participants reporting past-year cannabis use than those reporting no use.
Ultimately, the researchers found that adoption of medical and recreational cannabis laws was generally not linked to any changes in opioid outcomes. When only looking at past-year cannabis use, however, they observed decreased odds of past-year opioid misuse among those in states with medical cannabis compared to those without cannabis laws. Meanwhile, recreational cannabis laws were not linked to any change in opioid outcomes beyond the adoption of medical cannabis laws.
“Our findings generally support the premise that state adoption of recreational dna medical cannabis laws has few benefits in terms of reducing substance misuse and indicates that continued monitoring of recreational cannabis law and medical cannabis law-related trends is warranted,” said Martins.
She noted, however, that as relatively few states have adopted both recreational and medical cannabis laws, the impact of such laws may become clearer as more states adopt them over time.
“More studies are needed to examine opioid use among individuals who receive cannabis from medical and recreational dispensaries,” she concluded.
