New Study Makes A Serious Public Health Case For Medical Marijuana

States that legalized marijuana as a medical alternative saw a drop in prescription drug use, according to a new study published in July in Health Affairs — suggesting that medical marijuana may be one way to combat the United States’ deadly opioid epidemic.

The researchers, a father-daughter team at the University of Georgia, combed through three years of prescription data filled under Medicare Part D between 2010 to 2013. Then they looked specifically at nine conditions for which marijuana can be used as an alternative treatment: anxiety, depression, glaucoma, nausea, pain, psychosis, seizures, sleep disorders, and spasticity.

Is [medical legalization] just a backdoor recreational approval? We believe no.

In the 17 states plus Washington, D.C. that had legalized medical marijuana as of 2013, prescriptions for eight of the nine conditions went down — for example, prescriptions written for pain dropped by 1,826 daily doses.

For glaucoma, however, written prescriptions...

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