Medical cannabis use for pain control is increasing as opioid use for chronic pain drops. A new study found that many doctors now turn to medical cannabis instead of opioids for patients with chronic pain.
Summary: Opioids for chronic pain are less common in the US now, so doctors are looking at other options. One of the latest studies shows that many doctors are switching to medical cannabis. So medical cannabis use is going up, and opioid use is going down.
There is no doubt that opioids are among the strongest painkillers known to science. That is why doctors favor them for severe pain and for chronic pain. And opioids do more than kill pain. They help in several ways at once. That explains why they work so well for chronic pain.
But a new study shows that many doctors may now choose medical cannabis over opioids. The rules keep changing, so doctors are more wary of prescribing opioids.
Opioid prescriptions have dropped in the US in recent years. Safety worries have made the rules for prescribing opioids stricter.
Of course, the companies that make opioids are also working to make them safer. Doctors are not likely to stop using opioids any time soon. Drug makers are trying to build safer opioids that are less likely to cause addiction and other health problems.
Until then, doctors seem to be hunting for options that are safer but still work. So many are prescribing medical cannabis more often. Medical cannabis does not kill pain as strongly as opioids. But it may work well for some chronic pain conditions because it does many things at once. For example, it can lower stress and tune other brain pathways.
For this study, researchers looked at direct payments from opioid makers to doctors. They found that these payments are falling. Opioid makers pay doctors to build their skills and to improve how they prescribe. But as prescriptions fall, these payments have become less common.
Researchers say this is also because more doctors see medical cannabis as a stand-in for opioids in treating chronic pain. Doctors are quite excited about medical cannabis. They think that in some cases it may even beat opioids.
Of course, medical cannabis is still a field in motion. For decades, cannabis was listed as a controlled substance, which blocked research into its health benefits. Now, cannabis and its products are used more and more.
There are many kinds of cannabis products. They range from very mild CBD products sold without a prescription to medical cannabis prescribed by doctors.
CBD is now a hot topic. Health experts have learned that cannabis extract holds many cannabinoids, and each works in its own way. Some of these cannabinoids even work against each other.
So there are cannabinoids like cannabidiol, or CBD, that relax you. Then there is THC, known for getting people high. THC may get you high, but it is also stronger for some medical conditions, for severe pain, and for other health problems. So medical cannabis holds a full-spectrum cannabis extract. It is high in CBD, THC, and other minor cannabinoids.
Medical cannabis is not the same as CBD products sold online. It has a much higher dose of cannabinoids like CBD, THC, and others. That makes medical cannabis much stronger. It also means there are safety worries about using it for a long time.
To sum up, medical cannabis is slowly becoming one of the strong treatments for chronic pain. More and more doctors see it as a stand-in for opioids.
Source:
Karmakar, B., Mukherjee, G., & Kar, W. (n.d.). Using Penalized Synthetic Controls on Truncated Data: A Case Study on Effect of Marijuana Legalization on Direct Payments to Physicians by Opioid Manufacturers. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 0(0), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2024.2406583
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