Could Marijuana Use Make Injuries More Painful?

Marijuana use may affect how much pain people feel and the dose of painkillers they need following a traumatic injury, such as an injury from a car accident, a new study suggests. The study found that, after experiencing a traumatic injury, marijuana users reported higher levels of pain, and needed higher doses of opioid painkillers, compared with patients who didn’t use marijuana. The researchers stressed that the findings are preliminary, and more studies are needed to confirm the results. But if the results are confirmed, the study could have implications for treating pain in marijuana users — a population that may be growing due to increased legalization of the drug, the researchers said. “These data suggest that patients with marijuana use and abuse issues merit special consideration during acute pain management,” the researchers, from the Swedish Medical Center’s Trauma Research Department in Englewood, Colorado, wrote in the June 19 issue of the journal Patient Safety in Surgery. Marijuana and pain The study researchers analyzed information from about 260 people who were involved in motor vehicle accidents between January and April 2016 and who were admitted to trauma centers in Colorado and Texas. Of these patients, 21 percent (54 patients) reported using marijuana recently or tested positive for marijuana on a drug test, and 6 percent (16 patients) reported daily or near-daily marijuana use. (Marijuana use was reported four times more frequently in Colorado, where the drug is legal for medical and recreational purposes, compared with Texas, where the drug is illegal for both purposes.) About 9 percent of participants tested positive for prescription or “street” drugs other than marijuana, including amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cocaine, methamphetamine and opiates. Patients who used marijuana but not other drugs consumed 7.6 milligrams of opioid medications a day while in the hospital, on average, compared with 5.6 milligrams for patients who didn’t use marijuana or other drugs. What’s more, when asked to report their level of pain on a scale of 0 to 10 (with 0 being the lowest pain and 10 being the worst), marijuana users had a daily pain score of 4.9, on average, compared with 4.2 for nonmarijuana users. These effects were less pronounced in patients who used other drugs in addition to marijuana, the study found.