Pittsburgh, PA: Older adults who reside within a 30-minute drive of a licensed medical cannabis dispensary report experiencing fewer days of poor mental health, according to data published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Researchers affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh and with John Hopkins University in Baltimore assessed whether proximity to medical cannabis dispensaries was associated with self-reported changes in adult’s mental health.
They reported that local dispensaries were associated with “considerable mental health benefits for older adults.” Specifically, they determined, “[M]edical cannabis availability affected a 3.48 percentage point decrease in persons aged 65 and above reporting having any past-month poor mental health days, a nearly 10 percent decrease from a baseline of 36.3 percent.”
The study’s authors suggested that older adults are likely using cannabis for pain relief and that its analgesic efficacy is also influencing their overall mental health. Data published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open reported that nearly one in three patients with chronic pain use cannabis as an analgesic agent and that many of them substitute it in place of opioids.
Researchers did not identify similarly significant effects on mental health among any other subgroups.
Full text of the study, “Medical cannabis availability and mental health: Evidence from New York’s medical cannabis program,” is available online from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Additional information is available from the NORML Fact Sheet, ‘Societal Impacts of Cannabis Dispensaries/Retailers.’