Attorney General Jeff Sessions just recently said he was "astonished" by claims that legal cannabis might solve the opioid crisis devastating the nation. However, a new study strongly linked legalized weed to decreased opioid abuse and overdoses.



After evaluating hospitalization records from 1997 to 2014 in 27 states, 9 of which legalized medical cannabis within that timeframe, researchers from the University of California San Diego found hospitalization rates of individuals experiencing pain reliever abuse and addiction dropped usually 23 percent in states that used medical cannabis. Opioid overdose cases at hospitals in states with legal weed also dropped by approximately 13 percent, the research study stated.



The research study, which was launched in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence report, stated the findings show that worries of legal cannabis driving hospitalizations up were unverified.



"Medical cannabis laws might have minimized hospitalizations associated to opioid pain relievers," Yuyan Shi, the study's author and University of California San Diego public health professor, informed Reuters Monday. "This research study and a few others offered some evidence regarding the potential favorable advantages of legalizing cannabis to lower opioid use and abuse, but they are still initial."



There have actually been other research studies that have examined the connection between medical cannabis and decreased opioid prescriptions, including one published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014 that discovered a 25 percent decrease in opioid overdose deaths in states with legal Medical Cannabis Educational Center cannabis.



The findings appear to go hand-in-hand with another more recent research study, launched in the July 2016 issue of Health Affairs journal, which found doctors in medical cannabis states prescribed 1,800 fewer painkiller prescriptions for patients a year.



More than 33,000 U.S. homeowners died from an opioid-related overdose in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Cannabis, which the federal government still categorizes as a Schedule I substance, has yet to be connected to any fatal overdoses.
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