Is marijuana the exit drug out of the opioid crisis?

Each day in America opioid overdoses send more than 1,000 people to the emergency room, and prescription opioid pain relievers accounted for 20,101 deaths from overdose in 2015.

In 2017, it appears opioid overdoses account for more deaths (over 100 a day) than auto accidents.

How did we get here? The medical profession recognized that it needed to do more to help people deal with pain, but went too far. That coincided with the 1996 debut of the opioid pain reliever OxyContin (oxycodone). Marketed by Purdue Pharma, sales reps touted the drug as having an addiction rate of “less than 1 percent.”
The claim landed Purdue in hot water.

In 2007, the company and three executives pleaded guilty in federal court to criminal charges that they misled regulators, doctors and patients about the drug’s risk of addiction and its potential to be abused. The executives were sentenced to probation and 400 hours of community service in a drug treatment facility, and the company was fined $634 million. But the damage was done. By 2004, OxyContin had become the leading drug of abuse in the United States.

Today, overprescription of such opioid pain relievers remains a problem, and half of people taking them get those meds from a friend or family member who has “extras” lying around.

So what can we, as doctors and concerned citizens, do to solve the epidemic of abuse and overdose? Promote research to identify effective alternatives for pain relief.pills

We believe medical cannabis could be that alternative in certain situations, and we’re calling on the federal government to fund the research, because we need to find out which situations specifically it fits! As Dr. Oz has stated before, the National Institutes of Health “allots … $111 million to cannabis research. This number represents a mere 0.3 percent of NIH’s total spending on research and is only 0.1 percent of the opioid epidemic’s cost.”

All We Want Are Facts: Outdated beliefs and policies have prevented our country from funding medical cannabis research. The Drug Enforcement Administration, which is part of the Department of Justice, classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug — behind heroin and LSD. Schedule I drugs are defined as drugs “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

However, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have reviewed scientific research from around the world (not here) and found evidence that some patients treated with cannabis or cannabinoids were likely to experience a significant reduction in pain symptoms.

Here at home, researchers from DePaul and Rush universities have shown that those who take part in Illinois’ medical marijuana programs are less likely to rely on prescription painkillers. Other studies have shown that pro-medical-marijuana states have reported fewer opiate deaths, and there are no deaths on record related to an overdose of medical marijuana.

Take action: Dr. Oz has stated on his television show that while marijuana used to be seen as a gateway drug to narcotics, “Medical marijuana may be the exit drug to get us out of this narcotic epidemic.” So why not study it?

Clearly, it’s time to research the pain-relieving benefits and risks of medical marijuana. So join us in calling on NIH to quadruple its spending on this important research (it would be only 0.4 percent of opiate epidemic costs), and sign the petition that Dr. Oz has initiated at www.change.org. Search for “Fund More Research for Medical Marijuana.”

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Mehmet Oz, M.D. is host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” and Mike Roizen, M.D. is Chief Wellness Officer and Chair of Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic. To live your healthiest, tune into “The Dr. Oz Show” or visit www.sharecare.com.

(c) 2017 Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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