New Study: Nearly Half of Medical Marijuana Users Cease Using Opioids After Twelve Months

Opioid Use For Chronic Pain Goes Down by Half!

A new study was published this past month in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia, which makes significant contributions to the medical marijuana community. The purpose was to study patients that use medical marijuana for chronic pain.

Since chronic pain is one of the main reasons why patients use medical marijuana, this study is of high importance. They studied the long-term effectiveness of medical marijuana for chronic pain, the patterns of use, and basic demographics.

The patients were enrolled in the study between September 2015 and July 2018 from medical marijuana clinics in Ontario, Canada. Pain intensity and pain-related inference were the two main variables that were studied using a validated questionnaire that was given at the beginning of the study, then again at three, six and twelve months.

Chronic Pain Reduced With Medical Marijuana

It was found that pain intensity and pain-related interference significantly reduce over time when using medical marijuana for chronic pain. There have been other research studies done that support this conclusion. This new study adds to the consistency of using medical marijuana for chronic pain.

The most exciting news of this study was that opioid use for chronic pain went down by nearly half! At the beginning of the study, 40.8% of patients were using opioids for pain management and by month twelve that number was down to 23.9%.

The results of this study point to a few things. One, medical marijuana is a great treatment for pain management and is backed by consistent research. Second, since this was a longitudinal study, the effectiveness of medical marijuana seems to be beneficial over a long period of time, so tolerance may not play a significant role as long as the treatment is stable over time.

Lastly, medical marijuana can be a viable substitute for opioids when used for pain management which is a much safer solution.

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