JANUARY 22, 2025
While the public push to reduce the use of opioids for pain management continues, medical cannabis is emerging as a viable alternative. However, opioid manufacturers are working to make their products safer while still effectively reducing pain for patients.
A team led by Bikram Karmakar, a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, examined the effects of medical cannabislaws on direct payments from opioid manufacturers to physicians. The study used
While the public push to reduce the use of opioids for pain management continues, medical cannabis is emerging as a viable alternative. However, opioid manufacturers are working to make their products safer while still effectively reducing pain for patients.
A team led by Bikram Karmakar, a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, examined the effects of medical cannabislaws on direct payments from opioid manufacturers to physicians. The study used quarterly data on these payments from 2014 to 2017.
In the study, the researchers developed a novel penalized synthetic control method to account for zero-payment latent structures inherent in the data. They also used a truncated flexible additive mixture model to show that the synthetic control method presents maximal risk without legal penalties.
The results showed a significant decrease in direct payments from opioid manufacturers to pain medicine physicians after the passage of medical cannabis laws. This change is likely linked to the growing use of medical marijuana as a substitute for opioids in pain management.
The researchers performed a heterogeneity analysis and found the decrease in direct payments was particularly pronounced among physicians practicing in communities with higher proportions of white residents, lower affluence and a larger share of working-age individuals.
“The availability of new pain management options can change the financial dynamics between drug companies and health care providers,” study co-author Wreetabrata Kar, PhD, an assistant professor of marketing in the UB School of Management, in Buffalo, N.Y., said in a statement. “Our findings indicate that medical marijuana is increasingly viewed as a substitute for opioids in chronic pain treatment, with the potential to transform pain management practices and help mitigate the opioid crisis that has profoundly affected communities across the U.S.”
The study, “Using Penalized Synthetic Controls on Truncated Data: A Case Study on Effect of Marijuana Legalization on Direct Payments to Physicians by Opioid Manufacturers,” was published online in the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
—Kenny Walter
