Crack cocaine is a hell of a drug but it may be easier for people to wean themselves off of it with cannabis.
According to a new study out of Vancouver, the drug may help reduce people’s cravings for crack cocaine. The results were recently published in the latest issue of Addictive Behaviors.
The BC Centre on Substance Use was behind the study where scientists tracked 122 people who consumed crack cocaine over a three-year period around the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. The study found that these people used the drug less when they also consumed cannabis too.
M.J. Milloy, the senior author of the study as well as an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the centre said, “We’re not saying that these results mean everyone will be able to smoke a joint and forget the fact that they are dependent on crack.
What our findings do suggest is that cannabinoids might play a role in reducing the harms of crack use for some people.
“Crack has not gone away and we have described in previous research how people using crack in a frequent high-intensity manner suffer from not only dependence, but other risks, in particular, HIV and hep C acquisition,” Dr. Milloy also said.
According to Milloy, there are no pharmaceutical therapies for people addicted to crack cocaine. There could be a tremendous health benefit in replacing crack cocaine with cannabis instead.
