
Prescription painkiller deaths fall in medical marijuana states - anigbrowl
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/25/us-medical-marijuana-deaths-idUSKBN0GP1UJ20140825
======
GordonS
A lot of people on prescription opioids don't _want_ to be on them, but they
may be the only _legal_ thing that helps with the pain. And then addiction and
physical dependence become an issue.

Neuropathy is a case in point. Many people don't respond to SSRIs or SNRIs, or
the side effects simply can't be tolerated. The next step is opioids.

I for one would much rather use a plant, rather than opioids that cause
addiction, physical dependence, and potentially a life-ruining downward spiral
of misery.

~~~
lagadu
I agree for this particular scenario but saying you'd rather use a plant than
an opioid when some plants (like opium!) produce the same effects is
disingenuous.

Something being a plant doesn't make it automatically better or worse than
something artificial, otherwise we'd all be taking some nice nightshade tea
instead of aspirin.

~~~
GordonS
_sigh_ , I knew someone would nitpick :)

Perhaps I should have been clearer; My point about it being simply 'a plant'
is more that it can be grown at home by users - no need for heavy refinement,
solvents, chemical processes or pharmaceutical companies.

~~~
milkytron
As time goes on though, as we can already see, specific components that make
up the plant will be taken out and used on their own. This is already
happening with THC and CBD with the plant being made into oils and
concentrates. If cannabis becomes legal, I'm sure pharmaceutical companies
will continue this trend in an aim to find the purest and most effective way
to administer the drug, just like opioids today.

~~~
GordonS
Yes, it's probably inevitable.

I can't find the link now, but I recently read a paper from Israel about how
the effects of CBD acted in a bell curve when administered alone, but were
much more linear when taken as part of a whole plant.

There are many cannabinoids, and they do often seem to work best when taken
together.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I'd still rather take an aspirin than eat willow bark though. Acetylsalicylic
acid has less side effects than salicylic acid and made it safer!

Isolating salicylic acid from willow bark and then a century later
synthesizing acetylsalicylic from salicylic acid were all major achievements
in medicine. It wasn't some sort of evil scheme.

I'm also guessing synthesizing acetylsalicylic in a lab is better than growing
willow trees in almost every way. Less resource intensive, more
environmentally friendly, cheaper, easier to scale, and faster production.

The "natural is always better" (for varying definitions or "natural", of
course!) argument is silly.

"heavy refinement, solvents, chemical processes" are all just scare words.
They don't mean anything useful. I can use those words to accurately describe
cooking my dinner.

~~~
ihsw
The usage of "heavy refinement, solvents, and chemical processes" wasn't meant
to scare, it was meant to inform -- those have costs associated to them, high
costs.

The process of taking willow bark and turning it into a consumable product is
not minimal, whereas taking cannabis and turning it into a consumable product
is very minimal.

From a practicality standpoint, it is simply logical that medicine derived
from cannabis is superior to willow bark.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> The process of taking willow bark and turning it into a consumable product
> is not minimal

How did you get this idea? Scrape some bark off a tree and steep it in hot
water. You now have a consumable product.

------
rwmj
This bizarre argument always seems to turn up: _" There may be a risk that
legal medical marijuana will make the drug more accessible for kids and
smoking may impair driving or carry other risks, she said."_

Completely ignoring the fact that millions of kids are using marijuana
illegally right now, and that driving under the influence of drugs is illegal
and wrong now, and will still be illegal and wrong when marijuana becomes
legal.

~~~
intopieces
I don't see what is bizarre about the argument at all. It doesn't discount
that it's illegal and wrong now, it only speculates that the increase in
availability will increase the incidence of these actions. Could you expand on
how this is not so?

~~~
filoeleven
Legalization with regulation tends to make it harder to obtain the product
illegally. It's easier for kids in most of the US to get cannabis than it is
for them to get alcohol, for example, because the legal, regulated market for
alcohol makes selling it illegally largely unprofitable and therefore a much
less attractive practice to engage in. This despite the far greater general
availability of alcohol.

~~~
intopieces
Do you have any citations for this? My personal experience was totally the
opposite. I could always get an over 21 friend to run to the liquor store and
get me whatever I wanted. Scoring weed was texting a friend of a friend and
hoping for the best.

~~~
forloop
I would argue it's _better_ if children had more access—under the condition
they're using it as a substitute for alcohol.

Alcohol is a more damaging drug.

Making less harmful drugs illegal, and the more harmful drugs legal is
backwards.

Ideally, no children would have access to _recreational_ drugs under any
circumstances. However, we don't live in that world. We live in the real
world.

------
winkle
One point that hasn't been addressed so far is how misleading this study is.
It's looking at death rates related to prescription painkiller deaths doing a
time-series analysis 1999-2010 and then correlating results to states that
made medical marijuana legal over that time period. It doesn't say how they
eliminated any other number of causes during that period. This is merely
showing correlation not causation.

As an example people who have more sex make the most money. While we would all
like that to be true there's no science proving causation
[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/sex-
makes...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/sex-makes-you-
rich-why-we-keep-saying-e2809ccorrelation-is-not-causatione2809d-even-though-
ite28099s-annoying/)

Most of the examples given in the comments here are anecdotal. Not that I
disagree with the overall tone, but this is not the study to hold up and say
"This is why we should legalize"

~~~
heynk
No one implied causation. The study found that states who legalized medical
marijuana found a decrease in opium mortality but roughly 20% after 2 years.
Around the country, opium mortality rates are increasing. Thus it is quite
reasonable to say 'the opium mortality rate is statistically significantly
less in medical marijuana states than in others.' No one has claimed anything
more than that, and it is in fact science.

