Cannabis Detected in 21% of U.S. Overdose Deaths

The useful part

The study, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), looked at U.S. It's an alarming statistic, and also misleading because it doesn't tell us the cause of those deaths – only that cannabis was detected in a toxicology test. A deeper reading of the study shows that cannabis was listed as causing death (i.e., involved) in 0.8% of drug deaths and was the only drug involved in 0.004% of them.

How it works

• Most of the cannabis-related deaths also involved more risky substances, such as illicit fentanyl (73.5%) and stimulants like cocaine or methamphetamine (60.4%).
• "Because cannabinoids are rarely implicated in the cause of death, cannabinoid screening and confirmatory testing is not universally conducted.
• Thus, the identification of cannabis use among overdose deaths is likely underestimated." The CDC study is in line with previous ones, which found that the risk of death due to cannabis poisoning is negligible.

Details worth keeping

That represents just nine deaths over a five year period. "This evidence indicates that overdose deaths caused by cannabis are rare, and detection of cannabis among overdose deaths is primarily indicative of polysubstance use," wrote lead author Lauren Tanz, ScD, Senior Scientist of Overdose Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.