Study: More Legal Pot = Less Opioid Problem

No shit, Sherlock.  Every Kentuckian with chronic pain who has been self-medicating with illegal marijuana has known this for years.  Big Pharma, which makes billions of dollars every year from getting people addicted to its opioids, and the cops getting billions of dollars every year in war materiel from the War on (some classes of people who use some classes of) Drugs are the ones standing in the way of legal pot.  They, and the legislators they have bought, are condemning law-abiding Kentuckians to excruciating pain or lethal addiction in order to feed their own greed.

From WKYT

NEW YORK (AP) — Can legalizing marijuana fight the problem of opioid addiction and fatal overdoses? Two new studies in the debate suggest it may.

Pot can relieve chronic pain in adults, so it's been proposed as a lower-risk alternative to opioids by advocates for liberalizing marijuana laws. But some research suggests marijuana may encourage opioid use, and so might make the epidemic worse.

The new studies don't directly assess the effect of legalizing marijuana on opioid addiction and overdose deaths. Instead, they find evidence that legalization may reduce the prescribing of opioids. Over-prescribing is considered a key factor in the opioid epidemic.

Both studies were released Monday by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. They examined state laws and statewide levels of opioid prescribing.