Opioid and healthcare service use in medical cannabis patients with chronic pain: a prospective study

United States marijuana legalization and opioid mortality trends before and during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

To determine if marijuana legalization was associated with reduced opioid mortality.

STUDY DESIGN

The United States (US) opioid mortality trend during the 2010-2019 decade was compared in states and District of Columbia (jurisdictions) that had implemented marijuana legalization with states that had not. Acceleration of opioid mortality during 2020, the first year of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, was also compared in recreational and medicinal-only legalizing jurisdictions.

METHODS

Joinpoint methodology was applied to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER data. Trends in legalizing jurisdictions were cumulative aggregates.

RESULTS

The overall opioid and fentanyl death rates and the percentage of opioid deaths due to fentanyl increased more during 2010-2019 in jurisdictions that legalized marijuana than in those that did not (pairwise comparison p = 0.007, 0.05, and 0.006, respectively). By 2019, the all-opioid and fentanyl death rates were 44 and 50 percent greater in the legalizing than in the nonlegalizing jurisdictions, respectively. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, jurisdictions that implemented recreational marijuana legalization before 2019 had significantly greater increases in both overall opioid and fentanyl death rates than jurisdictions with medicinal-only legalization. For all-opioids, the mean (95 percent confidence interval) 2019-to-2020 increases were 46.5 percent (36.6, 56.3 percent) and 29.1 percent (20.2, 37.9 percent), respectively (p = 0.02). For fentanyl, they were 115.6 percent (80.2, 151.6 percent) and 55.4 percent (31.6, 79.2 percent), respectively (p = 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS

During the past decade, marijuana legalization in the US was associated at the jurisdiction level with a greater acceleration in opioid death rate. An even greater increase in opioid mortality occurred in recreational-legalizing jurisdictions with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Marijuana legalization is correlated with worsening of the US opioid epidemic.

Making a joint decision: Cannabis as a potential substitute for opioids in obstetrics and gynecology

There is a growing body of evidence that cannabis may be effective as an analgesic with potential to reduce opioid usage in chronic pain. This review synthesizes the available literature to elucidate the possible role that cannabis might play in reducing opioid use in gynecological disorders that may potentially lead to a recommendation of substituting opioids with cannabis. With reports of a decrease in opioid use after cannabis initiation, an opioid-sparing effect has been seen in gynecologic malignancies such as ovarian, uterine, endometrial, and cervical cancers, in addition to chronic pelvic pain (CPP). Though many studies have found an association between cannabis and various adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes, there is a lack of randomized controlled trials making it difficult to claim a directly causal relationship between cannabis and these adverse outcomes. Additionally, with increased use of cannabis during pregnancy, the evidence of possible benefits and risks to mothers and fetuses is examined.