Centralia, WA: Medicinal marijuana patients and their physicians will benefit from the development of dosing guidelines for medical cannabis, according to the findings of a new study released by the Lifevine Foundation.
According to the author’s findings, the daily dosing recommendation for patients smoking cannabis of 10 percent THC is between .15 grams and 5.55 grams. If a patient is smoking cannabis of 20 percent THC, the recommended dosage is .08 grams to 2.79 grams, and if a patients is smoking cannabis of 30 percent THC, he or she is recommended to consume between .01 gram and 1.86 grams. The authors formulated their dosing recommendations for natural cannabis upon existing prescription guidelines for Dronabinol (aka Marinol).
“We have outlined reasonable guidelines for dosing of medical cannabis, based on the known pharmacology,” authors conclude. “However, because of the complexities of the cannabis plant, the chemistry of the various forms of cannabinoids, patient tolerance, differing routes of intake and delivery systems, there are inherent limitations to these guidelines. Recognizing this, we recommend that an individual, patient-controlled, self-titration dosing model be used. The guidelines we have described provide a dosing construct for patients and physicians to do this. These guidelines also provide legal authorities some reference points as to what would be considered a reasonable amount of cannabis to use for medicinal purposes.”
Full text of the study, entitled “Medical Cannabis: Rational Guidelines for Dosing,” is available online at:
http://www.cannabismd.org/foundation/dosing-guidelines2.php