Worth repeating: Marijuana can help end the opioid epidemic

Despite what the Trump administration tells you, marijuana can actually help put an end to America’s addiction to painkillers.

A new study has found that the rate of hospitalization related to opioid painkillers dropped at an average of 23 percent in states that allow medical marijuana, reports Reuters.

The study, which was published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence report, also observed a 13 percent drop in the average of opioid overdoses in said states.

In order to find their conclusions, researchers from the University of California San Diego analyzed hospitalization records from 27 states — nine of which provide legal access to medical marijuana — from the years 1997 to 2014.

“Medical marijuana laws may have reduced hospitalizations related to opioid pain relievers,” Yuyan Shi, the study’s author and University of California San Diego public health professor, told Reuters Monday. “This study and a few others provided some evidence regarding the potential positive benefits of legalizing marijuana to reduce opioid use and abuse, but they are still preliminary.”

These findings may come as a major blow to…