Tel Aviv, Israel: The overwhelming majority of pain patients provided medical cannabis treatment report either reducing or ceasing their use of opioid medications, according to data published in the Journal of Addictive Diseases.
A team of Israeli investigators affiliated with Tel Aviv University assessed the relationship between cannabis and opioids in a cohort of patients with non-cancer specific chronic pain. All of the patients enrolled in the study were prescribed medical cannabis therapy in accordance with Israel’s medical cannabis access laws.
Among those patients who reported using opioids at baseline, 93 percent either “decreased or stopped [using] opioids following cannabis initiation” – a finding that is consistent with dozens of other studies.
Full text of the study, “Risk and benefit of cannabis prescription for chronic non-cancer pain,” appears in the Journal of Addictive Disorders. Additional information is available from the NORML fact sheet, “Relationship Between Marijuana and Opioids.”