At a U.S. Senate Aging Committee hearing entitled, “Opioid Use Among Seniors – Issues and Emerging Trends,” on Feb. 24, 2016, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, discussed how investing in medical marijuana research could help tackle the opioid crisis among senior citizens.
As previously reported in MJINews, a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine in 2014 found that states with medical marijuana had 24.8 fewer opioid-related deaths.
In Warren’s discussion, the senator questioned doctors on the panel, including Dr. Sean Mackey, Professor of Neurology at The Stanford University Medical Center, who stated,
“Get [marijuana] as a Schedule II; allow, fund NIDA, let them do the research that we desperately need. And I would agree with the CDC, we’re running this incredible social experiment throughout this country and we need to better understand the results of that social experiment; I say that not pro or con, but just, we’re doing it, let’s monitor what is happening and find out, is medical marijuana having an impact?”
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