Notwithstanding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 (“Obamacare” or “the ACA”), the 21st Century Cures Act is the largest health care innovation treatment-based American law in over a decade. Signed by President Barack Obama in December 2016 as one of his last major acts as the head of the executive branch, the Cures Act has been hailed as a bipartisan, bicameral success. “We are now one step closer… helping people seeking treatment for opioid addiction finally get the help they need,” Obama said in a statement. The legislation primarily seeks to implement several approaches to improve the health industry, including establishing accelerated discovery, development, and delivery of novel treatments in the biotechnology and medical device industries, as well as cost savings plans. Yet within the primarly pharma/device focused bill, albeit awkwardly placed, comes language that addresses what has steadily become a major public health risk facing the nation’s heartland: supporting state prevention activities and responses to mental health and substance use disorder need vis-à-vis the opioid epidemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug overdose and opioid-involved deaths continue to increase in the United States. The majority of drug overdose deaths involve an opioid. From 2000 to 2015, more than half a million people died from drug overdoses, and 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. The epidemic has hit the Appalachian region particularly hard, where it has wreaked havoc in states like West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania; in some cases Heroin deaths have surpassed gun homicides and car crashes. Likewise, in New England states like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Delaware, drug addicts are collapsing in the streets.
The Cures Act has allocated $1 billion of federal funds over two years for grants to states to supplement opioid abuse prevention and treatment activities, such as improving prescription drug monitoring programs, implementing prevention activities, training for health care providers, and expanding access to opioid treatment programs. Further, money will be appropriated toward treatment, recovery, and transition for the homeless, incarceration diversion programs, as well as grants for suicide prevention.
Outside of the Cures Act, marijuana proponents are rallying around research that seems to suggest a correlation between fewer opioid-caused deaths in states where marijuana has been legalized. Researchers have found that when legal medical marijuana dispensaries begin to operate in a state, deaths from opioid overdoses drop within that state. In what could be deemed a reefer referendum, after the 2016 election cycle in which a record number of states sought to legalize marijuana in some capacity, as of early 2017, a total of 25 states – half of the states in the Union – have legalized marijuana (for either recreational medical use). In 2014, studies suggested that states with medical marijuana laws had an overall 25% lower rate of death from opioid overdoses than other states. There was a 20 percent lower rate of opioid deaths within the laws’ first year, 24% by year three, and 33% by year six. By the end of the study in 2010, there were 1,729 fewer deaths than expected in medical marijuana states. Moreover, another study examined data from 1999 to 2013 and found opioid abuse in states that have legalized medical marijuana was reduced. The research showed an association between a state legalizing medical marijuana and a reduction in testing positive for opioids after dying in a car accident, particularly among drivers ages 21 to 40.
A further study suggests that medical marijuana may simultaneously drive down prescription drug spending, and subsequently likely use. Per the CDC, “we now know that overdoses from prescription opioids are a driving factor in the 15-year increase in opioid overdose deaths. Since 1999, the amount of prescription opioids sold in the U.S. nearly quadrupled, yet there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain that Americans report.” Recent research found that states that legalized medical marijuana — which is sometimes recommended for symptoms like chronic pain, anxiety or depression — saw declines in the number of Medicare prescriptions for drugs used to treat those conditions and a dip in spending by Medicare Part D, which covers the cost on prescription medications.
On February 23, Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted the Department of Justice will likely be further looking into marijuana in a recreational capacity. Unlike his predecessor who chose not to aggressively pursue marijuana prosecutions, the President Donald Trump has already decidedly taken a more hardnose stance. Still, it remains to be seen whether marijuana will be utilized by the public health community to mitigate America’s growing opioid.