Is Cannabis a Viable Treatment of Chronic Non-Cancer Pain? - A Mini Review

Abstract

The practice of pain medicine today is faced with the ever-rising burden of the nation's opioid epidemic. There has been a strong push to redefine chronic pain treatments and to find analgesic alternatives that avoid the harmful risks of opioid use that lead to diversion, overdose and addiction. Cannabis has been suggested to be an efficacious and safer alternative or replacement for opioids, but a large gap remains between the reported opioid-sparing benefits of cannabis and scientific evidence from high-quality research.