With Increased Access to Legal Marijuana, Fewer Americans are Picking Up Prescriptions for Anti-Anxiety Meds

In states where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal, fewer patients are filling prescriptions for medications used to treat anxiety. That is the key finding of my recent study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

I am an applied policy researcher who studies the economics of risky behaviors and substance use within the United States. My collaborators and I wanted to understand how medical and recreational marijuana laws and marijuana dispensary openings have affected the rate at which patients fill prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications among people who have private medical insurance.

These include:

• Benzodiazepines, which work by increasing the level of gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, a neurotransmitter that elicits a calming effect by reducing activity in the nervous system. This category includes the depressants Valium, Xanax and Ativan, among others.
• Antipsychotics, a class of drug that addresses psychosis symptoms in a variety of ways.
• Antidepressants, which relieve symptoms of depression by affecting neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. The most well-known example of these is selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.

We also included barbiturates, which are sedatives, and sleep medications – sometimes called “Z-drugs” – both of which are used to treat insomnia. In contrast to the other three categories, we did not estimate any policy impacts for either of these types of drugs.

We find consistent evidence that increased marijuana access is associated with reductions in benzodiazepine prescription fills.

Read the full article on The Conversation.