“Increased medical and recreational storefront dispensary counts are associated with reduced opioid related mortality rates during the study period. These associations appear particularly strong for deaths related to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.”
In testimony before Congress last week, by DEA acting administrator Robert Patterson opined that the medicalization of cannabis is exacerbating opioid abuse. But when prompted to provide evidence in support of the agency’s position, he acknowledged that he could not.
Trauma patients who test positive for marijuana upon their admission to the intensive care unit are less likely to die during hospitalization than are age-matched controls, according to data published online ahead of print in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Researchers concluded: “Patients with a positive marijuana screen had a lower mortality rate (5.3 percent versus 8.9 percent) compared to patients with a negative marijuana screen.”
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients with a history of cannabis use possess increased survival rates compared to non-users, according data published this month in the journal The American Surgeon.
[Editor’s note: This post is excerpted from this week’s forthcoming NORML weekly media advisory. To…
Given the multitude of ways that our culture celebrates booze while simultaneously stigmatizing cannabis, these survey results are rather remarkable. Despite more than seven decades of federally sponsored pot propaganda, a slight majority of adults recognize that alcohol poses far greater harms to the consumer and to society than does weed.