Medical marijuana can reduce use of deadly opioids, study says
A Nanaimo-based researcher has found medicinal cannabis can reduce or prevent opioid use and can even offer addicts an exit strategy.
In an academic paper published this month in the Harm Reduction Journal, Philippe Lucas concluded that governments and health care providers should immediately implement “cannabis-based interventions” in the opioid overdose crisis that has gripped North America.
For Lucas, years of research rebutted government lines that cannabis is a “gateway drug,” instead showing it can be an “exit drug ” for problematic substance use.
“There’s a growing body of evidence that cannabis can be a safer substitute and play a harm-reduction role by reducing the use of prescription opioids, reducing the use of alcohol, and even reducing the use of tobacco and illicit substances,” Lucas said.
When Lucas started working with medical cannabis patients in the late 1990s, many them had contracted HIV, AIDS, or hepatitis C through injection drug use.
“They were getting doctors’ recommendations for the use of cannabis to deal officially with (their symptoms), but as I was working with these patients, they would tell me: ‘You know, I’ve got a scrip for AIDS, but really, I’m using cannabis because when I eat a cookie or I smoke a joint, I don’t have a craving to go out there and use heroin or use crystal meth.”
Unlike opioids, cannabis has “no chance of (fatal) overdose, far less of a chance of developing dependence, and you don’t have a lot of the similar side-effects you do with opioids,” Lucas said.
Meanwhile, overdose deaths — many involving fentanyl — have hit record numbers in this province.