Cannabis also an effective weapon against heroin and opioid overdose

Cannabis in the United States is emerging as an exit substance to reduce the epidemic of deaths due to opioid overdoses, which are very easily prescribed. Several scientific studies analyze how it can help calm withdrawal and how medical cannabis counteracts the use of this type of drug.

While in Italy cannabis is demonized, even the "light" kind, heroin is once again claiming victims. And while our politicians distort the public debate by claiming that all drugs are the same, in the USA they are using medical cannabis to try to reverse the opioid epidemic that is affecting the country.

Due to the ease with which these types of drugs are prescribed in the United States, the situation has gotten out of hand over the years and the press is now talking about it as a real national emergency. Cases of overdose, including prescription ones, have more than quadrupled since 1999, killing more than 28,000 people in 2014. Over half of these deaths were cases of patients with a regular medical prescription for opioids. In 2015, the deaths became more than 33,000. In 2016, according to a study, cases of overdose deaths due to heroin or opioids were 42,249, 115 per day, one every 12 minutes. We are talking about drugs such as hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (Oxycontin) or Fentanyl made famous in the collective imagination also by some television series.

A problem so pressing that it has led a famous American NFL player to start a fight to have medical cannabis admitted. “The NFL relies heavily on opioids to get players back on the field as quickly as possible, but scientific studies have shown that medical marijuana can be a much better solution; it is safer, less addictive and can also reduce opioid dependence”. Eugene Monroe, who plays for the Baltimore Ravens and was the first active player to ask the NFL to be able to use cannabis to treat pain caused by blows and injuries, declared some time ago.

The reference is to studies such as the one conducted by researchers at the Farber Institute for Neuroscience at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, in which the authors noted that opioid withdrawal decreased “in methadone patients who used cannabis during stabilization.” In another study of 60 opioid-dependent patients conducted at Columbia University in New York, THC “reduced the severity of opioid withdrawal during acute detoxification.” The most recent scientific work, among those that identify cannabis as a means of effectively reducing addiction, was published recently and reports that CBD, tested on animal models, could be a new weapon to combat heroin addiction: “Acute administration of CBD, in contrast to placebo, significantly reduced both craving and anxiety. CBD also showed significant sustained effects on these measures 7 days after dosing.” Not only that, because CBD reduced levels of cortisol (the stress hormone). These are some of the many examples that are leading America to consider cannabis as an exit substance for various addictions, such as those to alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and precisely opium derivatives, thus overturning the concept that sees cannabis as a gateway substance for the use of hard drugs.

On the other hand, cannabis is significantly contributing to the decline in the use of this type of drug, because it is a valid alternative in the treatment of pain, which is often one of the reasons why opium derivatives are prescribed, and because it can be prescribed together with this type of drug, allowing for a reduction in the quantities and improving the therapeutic effects. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014 showed that American states that authorized the use of medical cannabis, after enacting the laws, had a 24.8% lower rate of annual mortality from opioid analgesic overdose compared to states where medical cannabis is still illegal.

According to another study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine and edited by scientists at Pharmerit International, the legalization of medical cannabis was associated with a 5% lower probability of opioid use, a 7% lower probability of regular opioid use, and a 4% lower probability of high-risk opioid use. While according to another study edited by researchers at the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California at San Diego and published in Drug and Alcohol Dependance, the number of prescriptions and total doses of opioids were reduced in states that legalized the use of cannabis for adults.

Meanwhile, the first legislative measures are also arriving: in Colorado, a law has just been approved that extends the possibility of prescribing medical cannabis for all pathologies for which opioids are used. And the trials are also arriving: the multinational Johnson & Johnson is in the dock for having sold until 2016, the year in which it sold the business, drugs based on codeine and oxymorphone, as well as fentanyl, with marketing policies that have led the phenomenon to grow more and more.

Estimates say that in the United States 2 million citizens, equivalent to 75% of total drug addicts, started with a regular medical prescription. A phenomenon that is also arriving in Europe and Italy, where in the meantime, after a decade of constant decline, deaths from heroin overdose are returning.

According to the latest report from the Central Directorate for Anti-Drug Services (Dcsa): “Overdose deaths are increasing, reversing a ten-year trend that seemed consolidated. In 2017, probably due to the surge in heroin consumption, they returned to show a significant increase (up 9.7%)”. Reading the data collected by geoverdose.it, a project of the Italian Drug Addiction Society, you can discover that in 2017 there were 148 overdose deaths, and another 138 in 2018 counting those up to the beginning of November. Numbers that are destined to increase, especially with ministers who continue to maintain that all drugs are the same, hiding behind the prohibitionism towards light cannabis for a mere electoral gain, and pretending nothing is happening in the face of real emergencies.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, a proposal has just been presented to decriminalize the use of all drugs, the same choice made by Portugal in 2001, in the midst of the heroin emergency, which led to a 70% drop in consumers and a drastic reduction in overdose deaths, thanks to approaches such as harm reduction and widespread information.

Because criminalizing consumers, of any substance, means spending money and resources to prosecute and arrest people who in the worst case scenario should simply be helped, while drug dealers say thank you, consumption grows and billion-dollar markets support mafias and organized crime.