The modern day United States is currently facing a crisis. No, I’m talking about the national debt crisis or the social security crisis (but we should be, right?). Instead, I am talking about the opioid addiction crisis that many Americans are grappling with on a daily basis. In fact, it is written that, in 2020, drug overdose deaths in the United States hit a record high of more than 96,000. Honestly, a number that large is extremely hard to process.
Not only is it something that money people see from a day to day basis, but opioid related deaths are almost always preventable. Not to mention, the rate at which people are overdosing continues to climb in this country. So what can be done about it? To start, many people are rallying around the idea of looser laws around medical and recreational marijuana.
It is becoming more and more evident that opioid medications are not working for a lot of people, especially in long term use. There is a high potential for addiction and mental health collapse, as well as many physical side effects that these opiates can create. There is also an inherent risk of overdose for people who are really struggling. Opioids have been getting a lot of heat in the media, but I still don’t think that it’s enough. Of those 96,000 deaths related to opioid overdose in 2020, how many could have been prevented if medical marijuana was used as a substitute? I firmly believe that it would have been a lot more.
This fact is backed by scientific evidence; medical marijuana is more effective for pain relief. Over time, opioids can become less effective at dealing with people’s pain. However, there are several things that we know about how cannabis can deal with pain. Because chronic pain can come from more than one location in the body, it is true that marijuana could be more effective than regular pain medications and opioids.
Not to mention, there are way less adverse side effects when consuming cannabis in any form, especially when compared to recent opioid related death numbers. When comparing cannabis to other forms of pain medication, cannabis is more effective at targeting various nerves throughout the whole body. Because the body can feel chronic pain in more than one location, it makes sense that cannabinoids are naturally better at keeping nerves from firing off pain messages to report to the brain.

Some doctors and other medical professionals are suggesting that cannabis could disrupt the pharmaceutical industry. This doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me. Big pharmaceutical companies have been taking advantage of regular people for far too long, and a lot of these companies have existed by going under the radar in their unethical practices. Do we really need opioids to control chronic pain and other conditions? Is it possible that cannabis could be a substitute for these medications? Possibly. We are beginning to see more into the effects of marijuana as a medical treatment now that it is becoming legalized all over the United States.

Cannabis becoming a frontline drug for battling pain instead of opioids could potentially save lives and prevent crippling addictions from taking place. I am personally on board with destroying the opioid industry, especially given all the information we have that suggest how terrible opioids can be to the human body and mind. Cannabis can even work in tandem with different drugs, which could offer a better solution for dealing with pain than getting addicted to other drugs like opiates.

