Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Cheech and Chong Were Not Self-Medicating

Not being someone who partakes of the devil's lettuce, I have no dog in the "should marijuana be legalized" fight.  I don't care if it's legalized at the federal level or not, what I do care about is that several states (California included) openly flout federal law.  Marijuana is not "legal" in these states; rather, use or possession is not a state crime, while it still absolutely is a federal crime.

You'd think California would have gone all in on legalizing marijuana, but you'd be wrong.  Its state-level decriminalization was sold to the public as "medical marijuana", so people with cancer and glaucoma can have their suffering eased.  You want to ease suffering, right?

I never bought into the "medical marijuana" argument.  If you "believe the science", you wouldn't buy into it, either:

Cannabis is one of the most widely used drugs in the world. While there are only a few countries where cannabis is legal for recreational use, many more countries have legalized the use of cannabis for medical reasons.

Reducing pain is one of the most common reasons people report using medical cannabis. According to a US national survey, 17 percent of respondents who had reported using cannabis in the past year had been prescribed medical cannabis.

When it comes to self-medication, the numbers are even higher – with estimates that between 17-30 percent of adults in North America, Europe and Australia reporting they use it to manage pain.

Although cannabis (and cannabis-derived products, such as CBD) may be widely used for reducing pain, how effective it really is in doing this is still unclear. This is what our recent systematic review and meta-analysis sought to uncover.

Our study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests cannabis is no better at relieving pain than a placebo.

Shocking, I know.

No comments: