Research: Medical Cannabis Program Reduces Opioid Use

*BRONX, NY* — Adults with chronic pain who participated in New York State’s
(NYS) Medical Cannabis Program were significantly less likely to require
prescription opioids, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal
Medicine and led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and
Montefiore Health System.

“Chronic pain and opioid addiction are two of the most pressing health
challenges in the United States,” said Deepika E. Slawek, M.D., M.S., the
study’s lead author, associate professor of medicine at Einstein, and an
internal medicine and addiction medicine specialist at Montefiore. “Our
findings indicate that medical cannabis, when dispensed through a
pharmacist-supervised system, can relieve chronic pain while also
meaningfully reducing patients’ reliance on prescription opioids.
Supervised use of medical cannabis could be an important tool in combatting
the opioid crisis.”

The study involved 204 adults who were prescribed opioids for chronic pain
and were newly certified for medical cannabis between September 2018 and
July 2023. Participants were tracked for 18 months, with data on both their
cannabis and opioid use collected from the New York State Prescription
Monitoring Program.

At the beginning of the study, most participants reported high levels of
pain and were taking an average daily opioid dose equivalent to 73.3 mg of
morphine. Over the 18-month follow-up period, that average daily dose fell
to 57 mg, a 22% reduction.

More specifically, those participants who received a 30-day supply of
medical cannabis used the equivalent of 3.5 fewer mg of morphine per day
than those who received no cannabis during the same month. “Those changes
may seem small, but gradual reductions in opioid use are safer and more
sustainable for people managing chronic pain than stopping suddenly,” Dr.
Slawek noted.

“This research adds to the growing body of evidence supporting a
medicalized model of cannabis use, where pharmacists are actively involved
in dispensaries and cannabis is treated like other prescription drugs,”
said Julia Arnsten, M.D., M.P.H., the study’s senior author, chief of the
division of general internal medicine at Montefiore Einstein, and professor
of medicine, of epidemiology & population health, and of psychiatry and
behavioral sciences. “We hope these findings will lead to new policies
encouraging the effective management of chronic pain through the use of
regulated substances.”

Other Montefiore Einstein authors were Chenshu Zhang, Ph.D.; Yuval Zolotov,
Ph.D.; Joanna L. Starrels, M.D., M.S.; Yuting Deng, Ph.D.; Giovanna
Calderon DiFrancesca, B.A.; Jonathan Ross, M.D., M.S.; and Chinazo O.
Cunningham, M.D., M.S.