Open ziplock bag spilling fentanyl pills across a table in a safe handling facility. Fentanyl, an opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, is often illegaly produced, consumed and mixed with heroin, leading to tens of thousands of overdose deaths in the past decade. Dennis Yip/Flickr
At the Heritage Foundation's Fall Legal Strategy Forum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that police chiefs generally believe that addiction to hard drugs, such as methamphetamine and heroin, often begins with cannabis use. He further called cannabis a harmful drug, implying that the Department of Justice may target cannabis in the coming work on the opioid crisis.
When asked to explain about his plans for the opioid crisis, Attorney General Sessions made the remark:
“ I do think that this whole country needs to be not so lackadaisical about drugs. And I even, if you talk to police chiefs, consistently, they say much of the addiction starts with marijuana. It's not a harmless drug. ”
After suggesting that there is potential harm and addiction stemming from cannabis use, Attorney General Sessions continued to say:
“ But, fundamentally, the big dangers, the big killers are the heroin, the fentanyl and carfentanil, and those kinds of things. Cocaine, methamphetamine are all coming in record amounts. ”
It may be reassuring to cannabis advocates that Attorney General Sessions does acknowledge that the primary societal problem is the high number of deaths from overdoses on hard drugs. However, it is likely that Attorney General Sessions will seek to frame cannabis as a gateway drug as the federal administration gears up to end the opioid epidemic. A primary piece of evidence for this notion is the Attorney General's choice to speak at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation clearly believes that cannabis should not be legalized. Commentary provided by the Heritage Foundation spells out the foundation's belief that cannabis legalization would lead to “increased addiction and use of harder drugs.” The Heritage Foundation is obviously opposed to cannabis legalization and may use concern for the opioid crisis to lobby against cannabis advocacy efforts.
The Heritage Foundation strongly supports Jeff Sessions in his position as Attorney General. Meanwhile, NORML, a cannabis advocacy organization, has reported that Attorney General Sessions is adamantly against cannabis reform, committed to enforcing cannabis prohibition and is interested in prosecuting cannabis businesses. The policies aimed at alleviating the opioid crises could prove to be a tremendous danger to the cannabis industry if Attorney General Sessions is successfully lobbied by the Heritage Foundation to conflate cannabis use with opioid addiction.
Currently, people in the cannabis industry try to distance themselves from negative stigma, unsupported characterizations and false claims associated with opioid and hard druge use. Advocates for cannabis may find that it is difficult to convince the public that legalized cannabis can help alleviate opioid abuse rather than exacerbate the epidemic. Meanwhile, many cannabis businesses may wish to disassociate themselves with illegal practices, and avoid conversations about hard drugs, like amphetamines and opioids, even though cannabis may be a weak substitute and an aid in fighting opioid addiction.
It is important to convince the public and politicians that cannabis and opioids are substitutes, not compliments. If cannabis and opiods are substitutes, then when cannabis use rises due to the availability provided by legalization the use of opioids will decrease. Opponents to cannabis legalization argue that cannabis and opioids are compliments, implying that an increase in the availability of cannabis will lead to an increase in opioid use. With the objective to test the relation between cannabis and opiates, a recently published article in the American Journal of Public Health found that cannabis legalization has significantly reduced opioid-related deaths in Colorado, resulting in up to 3 fewer opioid-related deaths per month.
Further scientific and medical research could help the cannabis industry distinguish itself as a beneficial tool in reducing opioid consumption and overdoses. Cannabis may prove to be a useful medicinal product to treat pain as a substitute for opioids and other heavy pharmaceuticals. Cannabis may be a vital substitute that opioid abusers in states across the country desperately need. With better education, society may begin to believe that cannabis can be used as an aid for treating amphetamines and opioid addiction instead of seeing it as the blame. Given that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is of the latter view, it will be interesting to see how cannabis advocates will garner approval from the public and politicians amidst the opioid epidemic and anti-cannabis sentiment from the Department of Justice.
Updated: Tuesday, November 7th 2017
