THE REAL GATEWAY DRUGS

If there are two unspoken crises currently happening in America, it’s the opioid crisis and the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders –  the latter which plagues our prison and criminal justice system in an inhumane way. Yet the former is a universal problem that involves the pharmaceutical industry and modern medicine, and these two crises are connected through the ways of medicine and profit.

Marijuana is legal at a state level (in many states) but not at the federal level, and so that allows the pharmaceutical industry to treat opioids as the sole medical solution for many people’s problems. Some of these issues can be things such as anxiety and insomnia, ranging to more general troubles like back pain or migraines – problems that are often diagnosed without much prescribed treatment than “take medication as needed.”

Now we are at a point where years of this has led to drug abuse, increases in crime, and healthcare chaos, none of which have direct solutions at this moment.  

But one of the two problems I named might just happen to be the solution to the other.

Federal legalization of marijuana could put a huge dent in the opioid crisis. I’m not saying that it would solve it completely, but the federal DEA and the medical community should re-examine the possible solutions and the whole “marijuana is a gateway drug” narrative.

The horror stories we hear from the opioid crisis lead me to believe that simple painkillers are the actual gateway drug. OxyContin, Vicodin, morphine – the use of these cause the hugely damaging ripple effects of drugs today. 

So, if the U.S. government relaxed the drug enforcement and gave researchers more ability to conduct tests with marijuana as a medicinal property, it could bring a solution to the opioid crisis and prevent future problems with marijuana, as well. 

For now, people in many states have the ability to use CBD, which is a non-intoxicating property of cannabis, for anti-anxiety and stress relief use – but it isn’t the extra relief needed to be an alternative to opiate painkillers. For states that have legalized cannabis more broadly, the marijuana industry is booming and bringing in all the benefits for use recreationally that other states don’t see .

But we’re forgetting what the original intent of state legalization of its use was: medicine.

We see now that culture and attitudes around marijuana are shifting toward acceptance, yet we’re all missing the gap between the culture and the legal semantics surrounding the use of weed. Drug incarceration, marijuana and the opioid crisis have a closer relationship than we might see at the surface level. We haven’t been willing to prevent one of those from affecting the other. That’s why marijuana is only legal in some states, not all; the opioid crisis is effectively ignored; and our prison system is only getting bigger. 

Our society has made much progress with the cultural shift regarding marijuana use. But there’s still more to go, and we can’t forget that the opioid crisis is a very real issue that extends far beyond just “drug culture” and marijuana – it’s life or death.