Cannabis has historically been portrayed as a ‘gateway drug’ by cannabis opponents and mainstream media outlets. However, an increasing amount of evidence is demonstrating that not only is cannabis not a gateway drug, but it may be an effective weapon against the opioid crisis in the United States.
The latest example of this can be found in Michigan, where Washington Post reporter Julien Berman took a deep dive into cannabis dispensary location data and opioid death rates. The reporter found that counties with cannabis dispensaries had significantly lower rates of opioid deaths.
Can marijuana dispensaries help solve the opioid crisis? Using a new dataset from the University of Michigan that tracks store openings at the county level, I show that access to weed seems to causally reduce opioid mortality. pic.twitter.com/2Ac5FhgNkA
— Julien Berman (@julien_berman) August 6, 2025
“The theory is straightforward: making cannabis more available—and reducing its cost—could induce people to shift from opioids, which are super dangerous, to marijuana, a significantly safer alternative,” Berman wrote in their article.
“Existing opioid users seeking pain relief can choose marijuana instead of heroin, especially in counties where recreational use is legal and access is easy. And new potential users might never turn to opioids at all if they could get marijuana instead.” Berman also wrote.
Michigan is not the only state where cannabis commerce is associated with lower opioid rates. In Oregon, a study from late last year found that “results suggest that communities located closer to recreational dispensaries are associated with lower rates of prescription opioids per capita.”
Yet another study, conducted in 2020 by researchers affiliated with Yale University and the University of California, looked at opioid death rates in 812 total counties in 23 states that allowed medical and/or recreational cannabis dispensaries to operate.
“Higher medical and recreational storefront dispensary counts are associated with reduced opioid related death rates, particularly deaths associated with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.” the researchers concluded. “While the associations documented cannot be assumed to be causal, they suggest a potential association between increased prevalence of medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries and reduced opioid related mortality rates.”
“Provisional data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicate there were an estimated 80,391 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 2024—a decrease of 26.9% from the 110,037 deaths estimated in 2023.” states the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website.