Argumentative Essay: The Legalization Of Marijuana

The legalization of marijuana is only just a recent implementation, but its effects as being an alternative to opioids for pain medicine have already been documented in the state of Colorado. In a study published by The American Journal of Public Health, several doctors took data starting from 2000-2015, and graphed the monthly opioid related deaths. They took these numbers, and compared them from before and after Colorado stores began to sell recreational marijuana. According to the data shown in the study, deaths due to opioids every month decreased by an average of 0.7 deaths. Looking further at the data, in those two years after recreational cannabis was legalized, opioid related deaths decreased more than 6 percent. Contrary to what such a low number may mean per month, this statistic provides strong early evidence that having the option to consume cannabis legally can prevent further opioid deaths in the future. …show more content…
In the article, he quotes the findings of Marcus Bachhuber, an assistant professor of medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center, where “the study revealed an intriguing trend: between 1999 and 2010, states that permitted medical marijuana had an average of almost 25 percent fewer opioid overdose deaths each year than states where cannabis remained illegal.” While he also explicitly states that although Bachhuber could not prove a direct link between cannabis and opioid deaths, the findings “opened the eyes of many researchers to a possible relation between marijuana and painkiller use.” In a dark time where opioid deaths are skyrocketing out of control, alternatives like these provide a shining beam of