The number of fatal poisonings involving opioid painkillers more than tripled from 1999 to 2006, from 4,000 to 13,800 in one year, according to a new report from the CDC. These drugs – Vicodin, OxyContin, fentanyl, and their relatives – now account for 37 percent of poisoning deaths, up from 21 percent in 1999. And the Associated Press reports that drug deaths now exceed auto accident fatalities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

The drugs that killed nearly 14,000 people in 2006 are, of course, legal medicines. They have been approved for sale by the same federal government that bars medical use of marijuana – for which the count of medically confirmed overdose fatalities remains zero.

This gets even crazier when you consider that – as we’ve pointed out before – there is evidence that use of medical marijuana can help some pain patients reduce their doses of these dangerous and addictive narcotics.

Okay, let me say right up front that a) I know that headline is provocative, and b) neither I nor anyone can answer the question with any certainty given what we know and don’t know so far about Michael Jackson’s death. But the question needs to be asked.

It needs to be asked because suspicions that prescription painkillers may have been involved in Jackson’s death are strong enough that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has been brought into the investigation. And we know that he had a documented history of battling pain and at least some acknowledged problems with prescription painkillers.

We don’t know yet what pain drugs Jackson was on or what they were prescribed for. But if he was addicted to prescription painkillers, that addiction almost certainly started with legitimate and needed treatment for real pain. And that’s where medical marijuana might have helped. [Read more →]