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Medical marijuana can lower the number of opiates abuse.
After months of anticipation, New York allows medical marijuana in local dispensaries. The official announcement did not please patients, who think the number of medical dispensaries offering marijuana will not suffice to the number of patients.
The law allowing marijuana to be used for medical purposes in the New York State was first passed in June 2014. The first eight dispensaries will be opened on Thursday and things could take a while until all 20 medical facilities will be available.
This is patients’ main concern at present because many of them fear the dispensaries won’t be enough to cover all their medical needs. People, who live in Long Island for instance won’t benefit of an authorized place where they can get their medical marijuana prescription.
There are only two possibilities for them: they can either travel to a nearby facility or they can switch to other medical drugs. Either way, it won’t be easy for them, especially since their medical condition does not always allow them to travel long distances.
Patients are further worried that the number of authorized medical marijuana producers may be too small for their actual needs. Moreover, there are specific conditions that doctors have to observe in order for patients to benefit of medical marijuana prescriptions. There are currently only 150 physicians, who have graduated the four-hour course allowing them to release medical marijuana prescriptions.
All these conditions could determine patients to resort to other drugs, which are easier to obtain. Unfortunately, opiates are the only ones that fall into this category, so the use of these drugs could increase in the near future.
Using opiates has been described as much more dangerous than medical marijuana. Many patients lost their lives as a result of opiates abuse, whereas such cases did not take place among medical marijuana users, official have reported.
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