Cannabis benefits shown in study

RESEARCHERS have called for cannabis policy to be reviewed after a collaborative study found its therapeutic benefits helped users decrease, or even stop, their use of prescribed medicines, many of which were opioidbased.

Study coauthor and Dunedin School of Medicine bioethics researcher Dr Geoff Noller said of the 213 people in the study who were taking cannabis for therapeutic reasons, almost 96% reported that taking cannabis helped them with pain relief, sleeplessness and anxiety, and 49% said they had been able to reduce or entirely stop their prescription medicine.

Participants were patients who had medically diagnosed conditions and were recruited through an established, experienced Green Fairy and through an Aucklandbased cannabis clinic.

Across the sample, the most common themes for therapeutic efficacy were pain management, with 96% of participants reporting cannabis helped, difficulty sleeping (97%) and mental health issues (98%).

Of the participants who took cannabis for other reasons, such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and difficulty eating, 98% found it helped.

‘‘An important finding of the study was that participants either decreased or stopped their use of prescribed medicines, many of which were opioidbased.’’

‘‘This both reinforces that they experienced some actual effect from using cannabis in that they ceased or decreased other medications with recognised efficacy, and in the case of many of these other medications, they reduced their use of potentially more problematic medications.

‘‘Opioids, for example, have well known issues in terms of dependence and other negative side effects,’’ Dr Noller said.

The researchers were not suggesting there was not a place for prescribed medicines, nor that it should be an ‘‘either/or’’ decision, he said.

‘‘There is a place for both approaches, with the results of this study suggesting that cannabis products could have a role in treating patients with chronic pain and other conditions refractory to treatment by conventional means.’’

However, that relied on an affordable and widely accessible medicinal cannabis system.

The majority of people who used cannabis for therapeutic reasons sourced it through illicit means because of the barriers to sourcing it legally, he said.

‘‘Specific barriers include cost, with currently available medicinal cannabis products being too expensive for many New Zealanders due to the compliance costs of production imposed by regulations, and also the lack of knowledge about it for physicians, leading to a reluctance to prescribe, in many cases.’’

Policies needed to be evaluated, particularly those associated with the present medicinal cannabis scheme that created barriers to access, he said.

More ‘‘real world studies’’ examining the experiences of people using medicinal cannabis were also needed, he said.

‘‘However, these need to be augmented by doing more creative clinical research, for example, trials incorporating active placebos, the success of which could reduce physicians’ concerns about efficacy.

‘‘But this takes funding and commitment from researchers who may feel nervous about working with cannabis, with its history of illicit use.

‘‘These attitudes change.’’ need to