Study shows legalization of medical marijuana in Utah helped reduce opioid use among pain patients

A new study of prescription opioid use in Utah following the state’s legalization of medical marijuana suggests that the availability of legal cannabis has both reduced opioid use among patients with chronic pain and helped increase prescription overdose deaths nationwide reduce.

“Since the legalization of medical cannabis in 2018, the number of deaths involving prescription opioids in the state has declined significantly,” the report said. “This shift suggests that the introduction of cannabis as a therapeutic alternative may have contributed to a decline in opioid use among patients seeking pain relief.”

Members of Utah’s Medical Cannabis Policy Advisory Board heard a presentation last week on research prepared by analytics firm Management Science Associates (MSA). Overall, the study results suggest that “cannabis plays an essential role in pain management and reducing opioid use,” it said.

“As the medical community continues to seek safer options for pain management,” the report concludes, “cannabis may become a key component of treatment strategies, particularly for patients with chronic pain.”

“These results support the hypothesis that cannabis can significantly reduce opioid consumption in patients with chronic pain,” it continued. “This is critically important as it offers a potential way to combat opioid addiction and offers a less addictive alternative to treating chronic pain with fewer side effects.”

The results confirm the results of a similar study the company conducted in Minnesota, the authors said, and are also “consistent with previous literature suggesting that medical cannabis can serve as an effective adjunctive therapy for chronic pain, resulting in significant reductions of opioid consumption.”

The new MSA study, presented at the advisory board meeting, examined 186 pain patients, examined transactions at medical marijuana dispensaries and matched that data to medical records “using an MSA-patented, HIPAA-compliant anonymization system.”

Patients were approximately equally divided between female (54%) and male (45%) and predominantly white (87%). The ages ranged from 23 to 89 years, the average age was 49 years. Virtually all (98.9 percent) were from Utah, with a few from Oregon and New Mexico.

More than half (57 percent) suffered from chronic musculoskeletal pain, while 19 percent had chronic visceral pain, 13 percent had chronic headache and orofacial pain, 4 percent had chronic primary pain, 3 percent had chronic neuropathic pain, and 2 percent had chronic musculoskeletal pain, according to the study Percent suffered had chronic post-traumatic and postoperative pain.

More than 8 in 10 patients (84.4 percent) reduced their opioid consumption, measured in morphine milligram equivalents (MME).

“Specifically, there was a decrease of 53.1%,” the MSA report states. “The average MME/month in the period before cannabis use was 3832 MMD/month, and after initiation of cannabis use we observed a mean of 1798 MME/month.”

While many patients reported more than one type of pain, the results showed that most who reduced their opioid prescriptions while using cannabis experienced chronic musculoskeletal pain. Meanwhile, the biggest decline in opioid use was among people with chronic neuropathic pain.

A separate study published earlier this year found that more than half (57 percent) of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain said cannabis was more effective than other painkillers, while 40 percent reported use of other painkillers to have reduced since starting marijuana use.

Only one category of conditions in the new Utah study — chronic headaches and orofacial pain — was associated with an increase in opioid use. These conditions were associated with a 20.6 percent increase in opioid use, compared to a 10.9 to 73.5 percent decrease for all other conditions in the study.

People who smoked tobacco before starting marijuana use also saw an increase in opioid use after starting cannabis use, the report said.

Despite new evidence pointing to declines in opioid use and overdose deaths in Utah following medical marijuana legalization, the new study says more research is needed.

“Our results suggest that while there is evidence for the effectiveness of cannabis in reducing opioid use, larger studies are needed to confirm these results and refine cannabis treatment protocols,” the authors write. They recommended that future studies should also focus on larger and more diverse populations as well as specific doses of cannabinoids.

The new study adds to a body of research showing that cannabis reforms and access to medical marijuana can help reduce opioid use and prescription.

Last month, for example, a year-long study of prescribed medical marijuana for patients with chronic pain and mental health issues found a link between cannabis use and symptom improvement, with most side effects limited to dry mouth and sleepiness.

“We found that medical cannabis use in the first six months was associated with pain relief and improved psychological well-being over 12 months,” wrote authors from the University of Melbourne in Australia. “Patients not only reported less pain, but also experienced less interference from pain on their daily functions. “In addition, they reported reduced use of pain medication and a large proportion of respondents felt that their pain symptoms had improved significantly, which was reflected in their reported changes in pain severity.”

The results of this study showed that at least some of the observed benefits appeared to diminish over the 12-month study period, but suggests that the relief from cannabis may not be long-lasting.

A separate review of research on marijuana and chronic nerve pain recently concluded that cannabinoid treatment provides “significant relief from chronic pain” with “minimal to no side effects,” potentially offering patients a “life-changing alternative” to traditional medications.

The authors of this work considered thousands of research papers and ultimately included in their analysis five placebo-controlled, randomized control trials published between 2000 and 2024. They found that treatment with cannabinoids provided significantly more pain relief than placebo.

A research letter released earlier this year by the American Medical Association found that 71 percent of chronic pain patients and 59 percent of doctors support nationwide legalization of medical cannabis. The study included interviews with 1,661 chronic pain patients and 1,000 physicians. It was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) also recently published an extensive series of scientific reports on marijuana and cancer to better understand the “core issues” surrounding patients’ relationship with cannabis – including procurement, costs, behavioral patterns, and patient communications Reasons for use by the provider.

One of the studies looked specifically at patients using medical marijuana as an alternative to opioids to treat their cancer-related pain.

Another study published this fall found that patients who used medical marijuana for three months improved in a range of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), including physical functioning, physical pain, social functioning, fatigue and general health.

Meanwhile, patients who used a CBD vaginal suppository in a separate study also reported a significant reduction in their menstrual cramps and associated symptoms. Participants who used the CBD suppository generally reported less period pain, improved mood, and reduced use of painkillers compared to subjects who received traditional treatment.

Another study published last year by the American Medical Association found that medical marijuana use was associated with “significant improvements” in the quality of life of people with chronic conditions such as pain and insomnia – and these effects were “largely sustained.” . Time.

Another recent study of 23,500 people in New Zealand found that for many, cannabis could be a less dangerous substitute for other drugs, allowing people to reduce their use of substances such as alcohol, methamphetamine and opioids such as morphine.

A separate study also recently found that marijuana is likely an effective tool for reducing harm from opioid use disorder.

“From a review of the literature, one can reasonably conclude that cannabis has some effectiveness in opioid maintenance as well as other therapeutic uses,” the paper says. Given public concern about opioid overdoses and the possibility of a shift away from marijuana, she added, “There is clearly a possibility that cannabis use will increase in harm reduction models.”

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