Out-of-state residents appear to be driving the recent increases in marijuana-related emergency department visits in Colorado, Dr. Howard S. Kim and his associates reported online Feb. 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Using statewide data from the Colorado Hospital Association, they found that ED visits related to cannabis by out-of-state residents rose from 78 per 10,000 ED visits in 2012 to 163 per 10,000 in 2014, an increase of 109%. For Colorado residents, cannabis-related ED admissions over that same time period went up 44% – from 70 per 10,000 to 101, said Dr. Kim of Northwestern University, Chicago, and his associates (N Engl J Med. 2016 Feb 24;374[8]:797-8. doi:10.1056/NEJMc1515009).
The investigators also looked at a single urban academic hospital in Aurora, Colo., and found that cannabis-related ED visits there for out-of-state residents went from 85 per 10,000 visits in 2013 to 168 per 10,000 in 2014, compared with respective rates of 106 and 112 for Colorado residents.
“The flattening of the rates of ED visits possibly related to cannabis use among Colorado residents in an urban hospital may represent a learning curve during the period when marijuana was potentially available to Colorado residents for medical use (medical marijuana period) but was largely inaccessible to out-of-state residents,” they suggested.