Medicinal Marijuana Reduces Patients Need for Opioid Painkillers

Recently in Time magazine, there has been a couple articles published regarding studies on medicinal marijuana. This week, a study performed by Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics backs up a long standing claim that medicinal marijuana can be safely used along with opioid painkillers, such as morphine or Oxycontin, and that the patient could potentially even take less of the addictive pills because of it. The study concluded that patients that took medicinal marijuana along with the pain medication had reduced pain by an average of 27% while their blood pressure remained unaffected. The key component to this data is that if the blood pressure was drastically affected, it could have increased overdose risk. Since this isn't the case, the use of medicinal marijuana as a pain killer seems to be effective and could provide patients with lower doses of opioids with less side effects. After a five day study, no medical problems occurred. However, the side effects of opioid painkillers have been proven to be potentially harmful; recently, "the death toll associated with prescription painkillers has recently surpassed that of traffic accidents" (Szalavitz). The positive data for medicinal marijuana seems to be slowly emerging as less biased sources and study have become more prevalent in the last few decades. However, despite all the positive data that has come about, "the Obama administration is currently engaged in a crackdown on marijuana dispensaries in the 16 states that have legalized medical use" causing researchers difficulties finding funding to conduct studies on medicinal marijuana (Szalavitz). Considering all the risk factors of both drugs, the present legal situation makes hardly any sense. Cracking down on the beneficial medicinal marijuana while trying to prevent drug overdose seems counterproductive. Overall, considering that I have found two articles on medicinal marijuana for this current blog post and my last blog post in just a week or so, I thoroughly look forward to medicinal marijuana getting more publicity and to see how the country handles the new data presented. Clearly, these articles are intended for the American public to become more informed on the issues of medicinal marijuana.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/12/could-medical-marijuana-reduce-patients-need-for-opioid-painkillers/#ixzz1gMTPI8qW