Medical Marijuana Is An ‘Effective Treatment Option’ For Chronic Pain Patients, Improving Quality Of Life, New Study Shows

A new study in the journal Pharmacy says that patients with chronic pain
who used marijuana for at least one year “exhibited significantly lower
healthcare utilization” compared to non-users, reporting fewer visits to
urgent care and emergency departments (EDs) as well as a higher quality of
life.

Hospitalization rates were also lower among chronic pain patients who used
medical marijuana, the report found, though not enough to be statistically
significant.

“Exposure [to cannabis] was associated with a 2.0 percentage point
reduction in urgent care visits, a 3.2 percentage point reduction in ED
visits and fewer unhealthy days per month,” says the report, authored by
researchers at the Miami-based cannabis telehealth company Leafwell and
George Mason University in Virginia.

“The findings of this study suggest, in line with existing research, that
medical cannabis is likely an effective treatment option for patients with
chronic pain,” authors wrote. “This underscores the potential for not only
[quality of life] gains associated with medical cannabis use, but also
positive downstream effects on the healthcare system resulting from
treatment.”

“Medical cannabis use was associated with reduced healthcare utilization
and improved self-reported [quality of life] among chronic pain patients.”

The self-reported patient data from the study comes from Leafwell, which
provides medical marijuana certifications in 36 states.

“The cannabis-exposed group included individuals who had used medical
cannabis within the prior year and were seeking recertification of their
medical card through Leafwell,” the study explains, “while the unexposed
group comprised first-time Leafwell patients who self-reported no cannabis
use in the past year.”

In all, the team looked at 5,242 chronic pain patients, including 3,943
with past-year cannabis use and 1,299 who reported no past-year use.

“We looked at a large set of real-world data, where we compared medical
cannabis users who we knew used for at least one year and people who had
never used cannabis,” lead author Mitchell Doucette explained in an
interview with Marijuana Moment. “When we compared those groups, we found
that medical cannabis users who had used for at least one year had lower
rates of emergency room visits, lower rates of urgent care visits and,
importantly, increased quality of life.”

“When we combine those outcomes,” added Doucette, who has a doctorate in
health and public policy from Johns Hopkins and is now senior research
director at Leafwell, “it suggests that medical cannabis is not only
leading to better quality of life for chronic pain patients but, again,
potentially better health outcomes.”

Some past studies have looked at quality-of-life changes in medical
marijuana patients, while others have looked at healthcare outcomes, he
said, “but really this is the first study to kind of connect these two
dots.”

That better allows researchers to answer questions such as, “Is that
increased quality of life translating into, you know, going to the doctor’s
less, going to urgent care less, going to the emergency room less?”

Overall, Doucette said, the picture that’s emerging is that medical
marijuana “is a helpful medicinal product for certain groups of people” and
that healthcare systems “should try to alleviate access and cost margins
for those individuals who it may be too costly of a product for them to
access.”

Leafwell is a regular backer of research into medical marijuana, with a
number of studies published in recent months.

Earlier this year, for example, a separate study by Doucette and others
looked at cannabis as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD), finding that medical marijuana—especially non-flower formulations—“represent
a cost-effective adjunctive therapy for moderate PTSD under various
reimbursement scenarios.”

The findings indicated that given certain assumptions about the efficacy
and cost of medical cannabis for PTSD, it would be worthwhile for health
insurance providers and other healthcare payors to include coverage of
marijuana alongside other standard forms of treatment.

“For the vast majority of types of products, there is pretty solid evidence
that medical cannabis is cost-effective,” Doucette told Marijuana Moment at
the time, “meaning that…adding these items to [patients’] drug formulary
would be advantageous for not only the patient—because of the lowering of
the cost—but also advantageous for health insurance.”

That study, published in the journal Clinical Drug Investigation, said
products such as edibles, oral solutions and tablets “consistently
demonstrated cost-effectiveness” under a standard model of insurers’
willingness to pay.

A separate study by Leafwell published last fall concluded that state-level
medical marijuana legalization appeared to significantly reduce health
insurance costs. In states with legal medical cannabis, companies paid 3.4
percent less for health insurance premiums compared to where marijuana
remained illegal—a savings of about $238 per employee per year.

If all states were to implement medical cannabis programs, that study said,
the country could save an estimated $29 billion in health insurance costs
annually.

In December, meanwhile, Leafwell authors had a scientific review in the
journal Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids indicating that high-CBD, low-THC
cannabis products have the potential to “significantly improve the quality
of life” for children with autism and epilepsy. It said the cannabis
products also showed “promising results in reducing key symptoms” of other
conditions experienced by young people, including cancer—all with mostly
“mild, manageable side effects.”

Other research, from authors at DePaul University in Chicago, used Leafwell
data to examine what conditions qualify minors for state-legal medical
cannabis programs, concluding that younger people enroll in the programs
for many of the same reasons that older adults do, including anxiety, PTSD
and chronic pain. Other common conditions included insomnia and depression.

Among minor patients—those under 18—cancer and epilepsy were more common
reasons for obtaining a medical marijuana recommendation than they were
among young adults, ages 18 to 20. Patients in the older age group,
meanwhile, were comparatively more likely to cite depression, chronic pain
or insomnia as their primary qualifying condition.

While Leafwell has looked at specific conditions, such as PTSD and chronic
pain, Doucette said his team’s future research is “a little bit broader,”
looking at sleep-related conditions including insomnia, sleep apnea and
others.

As for cannabis and chronic pain, meanwhile, a published earlier this year
found that more than 8 in 10 patients who used medical marijuana reported
it to be a useful tool for pain management.

Published in May in the journal Cureus, the report stemmed from a survey of
129 people who were medical marijuana patients in Pennsylvania between
October 2022 and December 2024. It said it “provides important insights
into the real-world patterns, perceived efficacy, and cognitive effects of
medical cannabis use among individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain
who employ cannabis regularly over extended periods.”

“Over 80 percent of patients who turned to medical cannabis found it
effective for managing their pain,” co-author Mohammad Khak, a researcher
at the Rothman Opioid Foundation, said in a press release at the time.

Past research has suggested that a variety of cannabinoids—including CBD
and others—may help ease pain symptoms. A study published in February, for
example, found that marijuana and its cannabinoid components may be useful
treatments for various types of chronic pain, in some cases helping to
reduce the use of other medications

The paper also said select mixtures of cannabinoids—such as cannabichromene
(CBC) and cannabigerol (CBG)—could have other benefits, including
minimizing undesirable effects like the psychoactivity of THC.

All told, more than 180 different cannabinoids have now been isolated from
the cannabis plant, the report noted, often interacting with different
parts of the body. CBD and THC, for example, “have a wide potential for
therapeutic effects based on their multiple molecular targets including ion
channels, receptors, transporters and enzymes.”

“The two most abundant and studied cannabinoids, THC and CBD, along with an
understudied cannabinoid, cannabigerol (CBG), have been shown, in our
laboratories, to reduce neuropathic pain in animal models,” authors wrote,
recommending that further study “into cannabinoids like THC, CBD and CBG
should focus on the optimal therapeutic doses and the effects these
cannabinoids can have on the management of chronic neuropathic pain in
humans.”

Separate research published earlier this year in the journal Pain found
that marijuana was “comparatively more effective than prescription
medications” for treating chronic pain after a three-month period, and that
many patients reduced their use of opioid painkillers while using cannabis.

The analysis “was able to determine, using causal inference techniques,
that use of medical marijuana for chronic pain under medical supervision is
at least as effective and potentially more effective in relationship to
patients with chronic pain treated by prescription medications (nonopioid
or opioid),” said the report, by authors at the University of Pittsburgh,
Harvard Medical School and the National Cancer Institute.

A recent federally funded study, meanwhile, found that legalization of
marijuana in U.S. states is associated with reduced prescriptions for
opioid pain medications among commercially insured adults—indicating a
possible substitution effect where patients are choosing to use cannabis
instead of prescription drugs to treat pain.

“These results suggest that substitution of cannabis for traditional pain
medications increases as the availability of recreational cannabis
increases,” authors of that report wrote, noting that there “appears to be
a small shift once recreational cannabis becomes legal, but we see stronger
results once users can purchase cannabis at recreational dispensaries.”

“Reductions in opioid prescription fills stemming from recreational
cannabis legalization may prevent exposure to opioids in patients with
pain,” the paper, published in the journal Cannabis, continues, “and lead
to decreases in the number of new opioid users, rates of opioid use
disorder, and related harms.”

Other recent research also showed a decline in fatal opioid overdoses in
jurisdictions where marijuana was legalized for adults. That study found a “consistent
negative relationship” between legalization and fatal overdoses, with more
significant effects in states that legalized cannabis earlier in the opioid
crisis. Authors estimated that recreational marijuana legalization “is
associated with a decrease of approximately 3.5 deaths per 100,000
individuals.”

“Our findings suggest that broadening recreational marijuana access could
help address the opioid epidemic,” that report said. “Previous research
largely indicates that marijuana (primarily for medical use) can reduce
opioid prescriptions, and we find it may also successfully reduce overdose
deaths.”

“Further, this effect increases with earlier implementation of
[recreational marijuana legalization],” it added, “indicating this
relationship is relatively consistent over time.”

Another recently published report into prescription opioid use in Utah
following the state’s legalization of medical marijuana found that the
availability of legal cannabis both reduced opioid use by patients with
chronic pain and helped drive down prescription overdose deaths statewide.
Overall, results of the study indicated that “cannabis has a substantial
role to play in pain management and the reduction of opioid use,” it said.

Yet another study, published in 2023, linked medical marijuana use to lower
pain levels and reduced dependence on opioids and other prescription
medications. And another, published by the American Medical Association
(AMA) last February, found that chronic pain patients who received medical
marijuana for longer than a month saw significant reductions in prescribed
opioids.

About one in three chronic pain patients reported using cannabis as a
treatment option, according to a 2023 AMA-published report. Most of that
group said they used cannabis as a substitute for other pain medications,
including opioids.

Other research published that year found that letting people buy CBD
legally significantly reduced opioid prescription rates, leading to 6.6
percent to 8.1 percent fewer opioid prescriptions.

A 2022 research paper that analyzed Medicaid data on prescription drugs,
meanwhile, found that legalizing marijuana for adult use was associated
with “significant reductions” in the use of prescription drugs for the
treatment of multiple conditions.

A 2023 report linked state-level medical marijuana legalization to reduced
opioid payouts to doctors—another datapoint suggesting that patients use
cannabis as an alternative to prescription drugs when given legal access.

Researchers in another study, published last year, looked at opioid
prescription and mortality rates in Oregon, finding that nearby access to
retail marijuana moderately reduced opioid prescriptions, though they
observed no corresponding drop in opioid-related deaths.

Other recent research also indicates that cannabis may be an effective
substitute for opioids in terms of pain management.

A report published recently in the journal BMJ Open, for instance, compared
medical marijuana and opioids for chronic non-cancer pain and found that
cannabis “may be similarly effective and result in fewer discontinuations
than opioids,” potentially offering comparable relief with a lower
likelihood of adverse effects.

Separate research published found that more than half (57 percent) of
patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain said cannabis was more effective
than other analgesic medications, while 40 percent reported reducing their
use of other painkillers since they began using marijuana.

In Minnesota, meanwhile, a state government report this year on chronic
pain patients enrolled in the state’s medical marijuana program said
recently that participants “are finding a noticeable change in pain relief”
within a few months of starting cannabis treatment.

The large-scale study of nearly 10,000 patients also shows that nearly a
quarter who were taking other pain relievers reduced the use of those drugs
after using medical marijuana.

Another new study on the use of medical marijuana by older patients—age 50
and above—concluded that “cannabis seemed to be a safe and effective
treatment” for pain and other conditions.

A separate presentation reviewing research on student athletes’ use of
cannabis recently found that marijuana “has demonstrated positive findings
as an alternative for pain management among NCAA athletes.”

Yet another study found that 40 percent of military veterans suffering from
chronic pain reported using marijuana to treat their symptoms.

Most of them said they use cannabis to deal with pain, mobility and sleep
issues, while substantial numbers of veterans also said it helps with PTSD,
anxiety and stress. Nearly all participants (98 percent) said healthcare
providers should discuss the use of natural products with their patients.

The post Medical Marijuana Is An ‘Effective Treatment Option’ For Chronic
Pain Patients, Improving Quality Of Life, New Study Shows appeared first on Marijuana
Moment.