Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Tuesday 10 april 2018

Studies link legal marijuana with fewer opioid prescriptions

By MALCOLM RITTER to other findings that sug-
NEW YORK (AP) — Can le- gest to experts that mari-
galizing marijuana fight the juana is a viable alternative
problem of opioid addic- to opioids. The weight of
tion and fatal overdoses? that evidence is "now hard
Two new studies in the de- to ignore," said Bradford,
bate suggest it may. who said he thinks fed-
Pot can relieve chronic eral regulations should be
pain in adults, so advo- changed to allow doctors
cates for liberalizing mari- to prescribe marijuana for
juana laws have proposed pain treatment.
it as a lower-risk alternative The two studies have some
to opioids. But some re- limitations, Dr. Kevin Hill of
search suggests marijuana Harvard Medical School
may encourage opioid and Dr. Andrew Saxon of
use, and so might make the the University of Washing-
epidemic worse. ton in Seattle wrote in an
The new studies don't di- accompanying editorial.
rectly assess the effect of For one thing, they don't
legalizing marijuana on reveal whether individual
opioid addiction and over- patients actually reduced
dose deaths. Instead, they or avoided using opioids
find evidence that legaliza- In this Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018 file photo, a woman holds the prescribed medical marijuana prod- because of the increased
tion may reduce the pre- uct used to treat her daughter's epilepsy after making a purchase at a medical marijuana dis- access to marijuana. The
scribing of opioids. Over- pensary in Butler, Pa. findings in Medicaid and
prescribing is considered Associated Press Medicare patients may not
a key factor in the opioid apply to other people. And
epidemic. gest the medical marijua- them to grow pot at home economist at the University the results may have been
Both studies were released na laws didn't reach some showed about 7 percent of Georgia in Athens who's skewed by some charac-
Monday by the journal people who could benefit fewer doses. an author of the second teristics of the state popula-
JAMA Internal Medicine. from using marijuana in- W. David Bradford, an study, said the results add tions studied, they wrote.q
One looked at trends in stead of opioids, said He-
opioid prescribing under fei Wen of the University of
Medicaid, which cov- Kentucky in Lexington, one Fossil finger points to early
ers low-income adults, of the study authors.
between 2011 and 2016. The other study looked at
It compared the states opioid prescribing nation- humans entering Saudi Arabia
where marijuana laws took wide for people using Medi-
effect versus states without care, which covers people
such laws. The comparison 65 years or older and those By MALCOLM RITTER
was done each quarter, so with disabilities. Every year NEW YORK (AP) — An an-
a given state without a law from 2010 through 2015, re- cient human finger bone
at one point could join the searchers compared states found in Saudi Arabia pro-
other category once a law with a medical marijuana vides a new clue about
kicked in. Results showed law in effect to those with- when and how our species
that laws that let people out one. Fourteen states migrated out of Africa.
use marijuana to treat spe- plus the District of Colum- Researchers say it shows
cific medical conditions bia had such a law from hunter-gatherers had
were associated with about the beginning of that time; reached that area by
a 6 percent lower rate of nine other states joined 85,000 years ago. Previous-
opioid prescribing for pain. them during the years the ly discovered human fos-
That's about 39 fewer pre- study covered. sils show an earlier human
scriptions per 1,000 people Researchers found that presence in Israel and pos-
using Medicaid. Medicare patients in states sibly China.
And when states with such with marijuana dispensaries Scientists believe early
a law went on to also al- filled prescriptions for about people left Africa more
low recreational marijuana 14 percent fewer daily dos- than once after evolving
use by adults, there was an es of opioids than those This photo provided by Michael Petraglia shows six different there at least 300,000 years
additional drop averaging in other states. Patients in views of a Homo sapiens fossil finger bone from the Al Wusta ago.
about 6 percent. That sug- states that only allowed archaeological site in Saudi Arabia. The bone, from an adult
Associated Press and most likely a middle
finger, was found in 2016
about 340 miles (550 kilo-
meters) southeast of the
Sinai Peninsula. Michael
Petraglia (peh-TRAH-lee-
uh) of the Max Planck In-
stitute for the Science of
Human History in Jena,
Germany, says the ancient
people probably left Africa
through the peninsula.q