Study Finds Drop In Prescription Drugs In Medical Marijuana States

States looking for a way to reduce Medicare spending and prescription drug use may want to turn to legalizing medical marijuana, a new study suggests. The District of Columbia and the 17 states that had medical marijuana as an alternative to prescription drugs in 2013 saved an estimated total of $165.2 million in Medicare program and enrollee spending that year, researchers at the University of Georgia reported in the journal Health Affairs this month. “The results suggest that if all states had implemented medical marijuana the overall savings to Medicare would have been around $468 million,” a press release on the findings stated. The researchers looked at prescriptions filled by Medicare Prescription Drug Plan (or Part D) enrollees from 2010 to 2013. They then narrowed the prescriptions down to ones that could be substituted with medical marijuana. Those prescriptions were for ailments that included anxiety, depression, glaucoma, nausea, pain, psychosis, seizures, sleep disorders and spasticity. Their results found that there were fewer prescriptions filled for the majority of those categories. The pain category, for instance, saw a decrease in 1,826 daily doses, while the depression category saw a 265 daily dosage decrease. As the researchers noted in their release, they specifically looked at glaucoma patients’ use of marijuana. “It turns out that glaucoma is one of the most Googled searches linked to marijuana, right after pain,” Dr. David...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news