HIGH NEWS New York City Opens Third Legal Cannabis Store
DEA Data Shows Marijuana Legalization Linked To ‘Reductions In Opioid Demand,’ New Study Finds
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n the largest city in the United States, cannabis retail stores are sprouting up while unlicensed locations continue to prosper despite multiple attempts to close them down. The third adult-use cannabis shop in New York City opened its doors on February 13 in Lower Manhattan. Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store will be the newest authorized retailer to operate, and it will be situated on East 13th Street between Broadway and University Place. According to the store’s website, it will sell smokable flower, edibles, concentrates, and vapes. Governor Hochul stated in a statement, “We’re building a cannabis industry here in New York State that is equitable and delivers new resources to Nonprofits that bring supportive services to our communities”. “This is the latest recent milestone in our efforts to grow the cannabis industry while creating jobs and opportunities for those who have historically been disproportionately targeted for cannabis offenses,” the statement reads. After the non-profit Housing Works launched one on East 8th Street, Broadway, and Smacked LLC, a store that opened on Bleecker Street last month, it is the third legal cannabis establishment. During the governor’s announcement, the new store management marked the occasion of its opening. “We are incredibly grateful to everyone who has contributed to the opening of the Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store. From our amazing partners at The Doe Fund who had the courage and innovation to embrace this opportunity; to the OCM, New York State and New York City in paving the way for this new industry and their ongoing commitment in ensuring this legal industry will be a success; our amazing team members who have worked day and night to get us to this point; and our friends & family who have supported us in this endeavor from the beginning,” said CEO of Union Square Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store, Paul Yau. “We thank you all.”
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ccording to a recent study that uses data from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the legalization of marijuana at the state level is linked to considerable drops in the opioid codeine’s prescription (DEA).
The study, which was released last week in the journal Health Economics, compared 11 states that legalized cannabis for adult use between 2010 and 2019 against prohibitionist ones by examining data on prescription opioid shipments. A “26 percent decrease in retail pharmacy-based codeine distribution” was discovered to be a result of recreational marijuana legalization. The same trend, according to the researchers from Cornell University, George Mason University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Pittsburgh, was not seen for shipments of other opioids, such as hydrocodone and morphine, or to hospitals, which frequently have stricter prescription guidelines. But because codeine is a lower-potency opioid with a significant potential for abuse, the study’s findings “are suggestive that [recreational legalization] may help achieve reductions in opioid overuse.” Collectively, the study’s findings “are consistent with the notion that, unlike [medical cannabis laws], [recreational cannabis laws] may be evidence of decreased opioid misuse more so than decreased usage of prescription opioids to relieve chronic pain,” the authors said. This research piece is distinctive in that the DEA’s Automation of Reports and Consolidation Orders System served as its “main data source” (ARCOS). To our knowledge, this is the first study to use ARCOS data, which breaks down distribution by endpoint (pharmacies, hospitals, doctors, and narcotic treatment programs), to analyze the impact of legalizing marijuana for recreational use. The effect of legalization on the prescription of codeine, they said, “rising from -17.5 percent one year after RCL implementation to -37.3 percent four years after implementation,” over time. That our findings suggest RCLs affect a reduction specifically in codeine distribution is of particular interest because, among legally distributed opioids, codeine is particularly likely to be misused and diverted,” they wrote. We cannot rule out that these reductions are due to a reduction in use of codeine as prescribed; however, the lack of other reductions in opioid dispensing suggests that this is not the case. Our findings stand in contrast to the literature on MCLs, which finds that MCLs affect reductions in the dispensing of a variety of opioids that do not have misuse rates as high as codeine.” According to a recent survey by the American Medical Association (AMA), one in three people with chronic pain report using marijuana as a therapy option. The majority of this population has substituted cannabis for other painkillers, such as opiates.
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A different recent AMA study discovered that legalizing medical marijuana at the state level is linked to a considerable decline in opioid prescriptions and use among some cancer patients.
