A new study has found that many individuals with cancer turn to medical marijuana for symptom relief.
The findings were published in CANCER. For the study, researchers analyzed self-reported marijuana and prescription opioid use among patients with cancer over a 10-year period using the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between the years 2005 and 2014.
A total of 19,604 respondents and 826 patients with cancer were matched to 1652 controls.
The researchers found that among the survey respondents who had cancer, 40.3% reported using marijuana within the past year compared with 38% of those without cancer.
Respondents with cancer were also more likely to indicate use of prescription opioids at 13.4% while counterparts without cancer were at 6.4%.
“Medical marijuana legalization has previously been associated with a reduction in hospitalizations related to opioid dependence or abuse, suggesting that if patients are in fact substituting marijuana for opioids, this may introduce an opportunity for reducing opioid-related morbidity and mortality,” lead study author Jona Hattangadi-Gluth, MD, stated.
“Of course, it will also be important to identify risks and adverse effects of marijuana, which has not previously been studied on large randomized clinical trials, given its scheduling as a class 1 controlled substance.”
