> The result has not been the sudden reversal of opioid addiction that you had hoped for.

I didn't say "sudden". I think it would take time.

Addiction doesn't happen overnight. I am open minded and I am not going to ignore research if the research doesn't support my view. But my hunch is, it is too soon or too much damage has already been done and we need to take other steps to reduce usage not just legalization.

Incidentally I thought I saw some research that showed the opposite effect but I can't find the link right now... I'll take a look for it later and see if I can find it.

When ANYTHING is used to escape from emotional pain be it heroin, pot or food it is wrong and causes problems.

Intuitively, this makes sense. Anyone buying heroin/meth/whatever would've likely also been exposed to the option of buying marijuana just as easily among those alternatives when it was still completely illegal. If marijuana was a viable alternative for their drug of choice, I imagine they would've just stuck with that regardless of legalization, since it's cheaper and safer.

Hence I wouldn't really expect legalization of any drug X to improve problems with any drug Y in most cases. But if legalization itself helps with drug problems in general, I might expect that only legalizing drug Y would help drug Y's problems.

It will be interesting to see if this eventually puts a dent in the number of new opioid addictions - but that is a very different thing than addressing current addictions and/or transference from prescriptions to street drugs.

I suspect it will be about a decade before any really good analysis can be done on that aspect.

> the sudden reversal of opioid addiction

I don't think anyone (even the parent commentor) thinks that would happen. At best, I think we can only hope for prevention, and even that will require a lengthy period reeducation and destigmatization. Speaking from experience, it's nearly impossible to truly reverse opioid addiction. Preventing that addiction in the first place by utilizing other non-or-less-addictive pain control methods, such as marijuana, is our only hope.

Is there an easy way to collect and cross reference opioid deaths in non-prohibitive states? You seem familiar with the problem and the data - is Colorado's rate of overdose increase proportional to that of places like West Virginia, for instance?

I wouldn't take issue with your overall point, but the headline in your second link contradicts the article:

As prescription opioid deaths drop 6 percent in Colorado, heroin deaths rise 23 percent

vs.

Overall, the total number of opiate deaths — meaning deaths from both prescription painkillers like fentanyl or from illegal opiates like heroin — fell by about 6 percent, from 472 deaths in 2015 to 442 deaths in 2016.

Also, as an aside, heroin and opioids aren't not automatically fatal so that number is a subset of users. An important number is not just deaths but also hospital visits and new users are important.