UNM Study: Medical Marijuana an Alternative for Opioids

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — University of New Mexico researchers say the legal availability of medical marijuana has the potential to reduce opioid use among chronic pain patients.

The work of associate psychology professor Jacob Miguel Vigil and assistant economics professor Sarah See Stith was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The results indicate a strong correlation between enrollment in New Mexico’s medical marijuana program and cessation or reduction of opioid use.

Vigil says informal surveys showed a significant proportion of patients substituted their opioid prescriptions with cannabis.

The study tracked 37 habitual opioid using, chronic pain patients who enrolled in the state medical marijuana program between 2010 and 2015, compared to 29 patients with similar health conditions who didn’t enroll.

As of October, more than 44,000 people were enrolled in the state program.

chronic pain medical marijuana opioids research studies

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Mavis

This is very deceptive and amounts to scientific fraud. These UNM Researchers are highly irresponsible and have done a lot of damage, especially to people with pain. They refuse to apply science and overstate their findings. They are biased from the start, before they even started the “Study’ they were already announcing their misleading and damaging results. Universities used to be fairly reliable as far as science was concerned, that is no longer the case, especially with these two researchers at UNM. The News coverage of this topic in New Mexico has been misleading or non existant while they claim there is an Opiate Crisis. It is really disgusting that these researchers would mislead the public and fail to correct the misinformation in local news media. It is really no wonder that New Mexico has high heroin use rates,and suicide rates.