In a recent report, the Minnesota State Government said that chronic pain sufferers who have enrolled into Minnesota’s Medical Marijuana Program are “finding a significant change in pain relief within months” of commencing cannabis treatment.
In a large-scale, nearly 10,000 patient study, nearly a quarter of patients who previously took painkillers reduced their usage after using medical cannabis.
In a report published by the Office of Cannabis Management in Washington State this week, more than 31 percent of those who reported moderate or severe pain when they first enrolled in OCM’s program experienced meaningful relief in just four months. Nearly 50% of people who experienced pain relief initially said marijuana helped to relieve it for another four months.
OCM stated that, as in other states, the majority of people using Minnesota’s system for medical cannabis suffer from pain. This includes chronic pain or intractable, painful cancer, terminal illness, intense pain due to a terminal disease and sickle cell.
New report notes that proportions of pain-relieving patients differed by condition. It states: “Meaningful relief of pain in four months has been found for 30.5% patients of intractable and chronic pain as well as 28.3% cancer patients.”
OCM has a legal obligation to report how the patients are using a drug. Officials gathered data for the report from data collected by OCM, including patient data, survey data, and purchase information. The review examined records of 9,961 patient over an approximately one-year span, between March 2, 2020 and February 28, 2023.
Grace Christensen said, OCM Senior Research Analyst, that “these percentages might seem low, but cannabis treatment provides other benefits for patients with pain-related disorders, allowing them to better manage their pain and improve their quality.
Christensen stated, “Many people report having a better sleep quality when using cannabis for their pain.” Patients who get better sleep can start their day feeling more mentally and emotionally stable.
Nearly a quarter (24,6 percent) of health care providers who said their patients were taking pain medication also reported a decrease in those medications six months after they began using medical cannabis.
According to the OCM, most pain patients receive treatment with opioids or nonsteroidal analgesic drugs (NSAIDs). Cannabis-based pain medications are becoming more common.
The officials stated that the reduction in pain observed “is similar to current research regarding pain treatment with cannabis.”
The state survey asked respondents about eight standard symptoms. Another—vomiting—was actually the most improved symptom among pain patients, the report says, adding that “40.7% of patients with moderate to severe vomiting at baseline were able to both achieve ≥30% reduction and maintain it for at least four months.”
As for other symptoms, “Around one-third of patients with moderate to severe appetite lack (33.2%), depression (31.1%), and nausea (33.4%) at baseline were able to both achieve ≥30% reduction and maintain it for at least four months.”
In a survey of pain patients, only 15 percent reported side effects. Sixty-six percent of the side effects reported by pain patients were mild. Dry mouth was most commonly experienced.
The report notes that “dry mouth was the most frequently reported severe side-effect.”
Separately, a federally funded, late-last year Journal of the American Statistical Association study found that the legalization of medical marijuana seemed to have significantly reduced monetary payments by opioid manufacturers to physicians who specialize in chronic pain. Its authors concluded “evidence to the effect that the decrease was due to the medical marijuana being available as a substitution” for prescription drugs.
Another recent study also found a decrease in opioid fatal overdoses when marijuana for adults was legalized. That study found a “consistent negative relationship” between legalization and fatal overdoses, with more significant effects in states that legalized cannabis earlier in the opioid crisis. According to the authors, recreational marijuana legalization is “associated with an approximate 3.5 death reduction per 100,000 persons.”
The report concluded that, “Our results suggest that expanding recreational marijuana use could be a way to combat the opioid crisis.” Previous research has shown that marijuana, primarily used for medical purposes, can help reduce the number of opioid prescriptions. We also found it could reduce overdose deaths.
The effect of earlier implementation is greater. [recreational marijuana legalization]This relationship appears to be relatively stable over the years,” said it.
Another recently published report into prescription opioid use in Utah following the state’s legalization of medical marijuana found that the availability of legal cannabis both reduced opioid use by patients with chronic pain and helped drive down prescription overdose deaths statewide. The study concluded that cannabis has an important role in the management of pain and reduction of opioid usage.
Yet another study, published in 2023, linked medical marijuana use to lower pain levels and reduced dependence on opioids and other prescription medications. And another, published by the American Medical Association (AMA) last February, found that chronic pain patients who received medical marijuana for longer than a month saw significant reductions in prescribed opioids.
About one in three chronic pain patients reported using cannabis as a treatment option, according to a 2023 AMA-published report. A majority of this group claimed to have used cannabis in place of other pain medicines, including opioids.
Other research published that year found that letting people buy CBD legally significantly reduced opioid prescription rates, leading to 6.6 percent to 8.1 percent fewer opioid prescriptions.
A 2022 research paper that analyzed Medicaid data on prescription drugs, meanwhile, found that legalizing marijuana for adult use was associated with “significant reductions” in the use of prescription drugs for the treatment of multiple conditions.
A 2023 report linked state-level medical marijuana legalization to reduced opioid payouts to doctors—another datapoint suggesting that patients use cannabis as an alternative to prescription drugs when given legal access.
Researchers in another study, published last year, looked at opioid prescription and mortality rates in Oregon, finding that nearby access to retail marijuana moderately reduced opioid prescriptions, though they observed no corresponding drop in opioid-related deaths.
Recent research has also shown that cannabis can be an alternative to opioids for pain relief.
A report published recently in the journal BMJ Open, for instance, compared medical marijuana and opioids for chronic non-cancer pain and found that cannabis “may be similarly effective and result in fewer discontinuations than opioids,” potentially offering comparable relief with a lower likelihood of adverse effects.
A separate study found that almost half of chronic pain patients (57%) said marijuana was better than analgesics, and 40 percent had reduced their painkiller use since using cannabis.
A related report published late last year examined the effects of adding medical marijuana to state prescription drug monitoring programs, concluding that the additional tracking had mixed effects, both reducing the prescription of medications that could cause complications with cannabis and also exposing a possible bias against medical marijuana patients among healthcare providers.
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Mike Latimer provided the photo.