Study: Medical cannabis did not reduce opioid pain prescriptions

Abstract

State laws that allow medical cannabis to be prescribed and dispensed did not result in the reduced treatment of chronic noncancer pain, researchers have found. In the study, “Effects of U.S. State Medical Cannabis Laws on Treatment of Chronic Noncancer Pain,” lead author Emma E. McGinty, Ph.D., and colleagues found that the availability of medical cannabis did not reduce opioid prescriptions or non‐opioid procedures for pain. Proponents of cannabis legalization have long used the opioid epidemic as an argument for making the cannabis more available, but this study, published in the July issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, said cannabis did not have any effect. The study looked at 583,820 commercially insured adults with chronic noncancer pain and reported that the availability of medical cannabis did not change their practices. The researchers used data from 12 states that implemented medical cannabis laws and compared that data to 17 other states. The study found that medical cannabis laws led to an average difference of 0.05 percentage points in the proportion of patients who received any opioid prescription. The study looked at the first three years of the law implementation. The researchers were able to predict what would have happened had the law not been implemented. Their study limitations included assumptions involving parallel trends, a finite number of states, and the possible lack of generalizability to non‐commercially insured populations, each of which could not be validated by testing.