In a blow to the medical cannabis establishment, a team of psychiatrists performed a detailed analysis on 15 years of cannabis research — and found not only that medical marijuana doesn’t seem to help people with acute pain or insomnia, which proponents often tout, but that almost of third of medical weed users are abusing the drug.
The findings, published in the medical journal JAMA, will likely further fuel an ongoing debate on whether the states went too far with legalization. And it comes at a wild moment: just as president Donald Trump signaled this week he’ll loosen federal restrictions on weed.
“While many people turn to cannabis seeking relief, our review highlights significant gaps between public perception and scientific evidence regarding its effectiveness for most medical conditions,” said Michael Hsu, lead author and addiction psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement about the study.
“Clear guidance from clinicians is essential to support safe, evidence-based decision-making when discussing medical cannabis with their patients,” he added.
The team looked over more than 2,500 clinical trials that studied the efficacy of medical marijuana products and also certain cannabinoids, which are isolated cannabis compounds, approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in “HIV/AIDS-related anorexia, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and certain pediatric seizure disorders.”
On the question of pain management, the team found very little sign that cannabis helps with acute pain. They found the same for insomnia, and sleep trials that studied whether cannabis helped with getting a restful night of slumber came up with very little evidence of its effectiveness as well.
Researchers also found that 29 percent of medical marijuana users showed evidence of “cannabis use disorder,” a catch-all term for people who show a problematic usage pattern with the drug.
But the team did find that FDA-approved cannabinoids had a “small but significant reduction in nausea and vomiting” for people going through chemotherapy for cancer and other situations where people have difficulty keeping food down. They also helped people with AIDS/HIV retain or increase body weight when up against a placebo.
“There are some legitimate purposes for these compounds,” Kevin Hill, one of the study authors and an addiction psychiatrist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told The New York Times. “And there’s a whole other group of people who are saying they’re using it medically, but they’re really not. They’re just rationalizing their recreational use.”
Related to that point, the team found that high-potency cannabis was associated with increased risk for developing signs of psychosis compared to the low-potency stuff, while smoking weed daily increased the risk for heart complications, such as coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and stroke.
It’s clear that there are people who abuse medical marijuana, judging from the evidence — but something tells us that this study will not stop the growing clout of the cannabis industry, a $32 billion sector and growing.
More on cannabis: If You Blazed Massive Amounts of Weed as a Youth, Scientists Have Interesting News
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