HOW MEDICAL CANNABIS DOES AND DOESN’T WORK

According to a recent survey by the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines (IACM), most individuals who use cannabis for medical reasons are seeking symptomatic relief from pain or physical discomfort—for example, back pain, injury or accident, migraine, etc.—followed by sleeping disorders, depression, neuropathy, and multiple sclerosis. There is a body of evidence for using cannabis as a medicine for some of these conditions, and less evidence for others.

Use or Abuse?

Although cannabis is often cited as being one of the most commonly abused drugs on the planet, such a characterization is a little bit misleading. There is a common and false distinction made between the misuse of licit drugs versus the abuse of illicit ones. Both licit and illicit drugs can be used rationally and irrationally; both are misused. The molecules that make up the drugs are neither good nor evil. To claim that cannabis is completely safe and can cause no harm is as irrational as claiming that cannabis has no medicinal use whatsoever. The reality is that cannabis can be used medicinally, and that cannabis can cause harm if not used intelligently.

Understanding what we don’t know about cannabis can be as important as making use of what we do know. Cannabis may well be effective for treating certain forms of cancer. Does that mean it is a cure for cancer? No. A cure for cancer is something that will keep a cancer patient free from cancer for at least five years. It has not been proven that cannabis can do that. Cancer is complex. It’s not one disease; it is dozens of diseases lumped together under the umbrella of a single word: cancer. It’s not reasonable to expect any one plant to solve the mystery of cancer. But cannabis certainly may provide promising treatments for certain cancer types.

The way to approach cannabis as a medicine is to do so cautiously, despite the fact that human beings have been using medicinal cannabis for millennia. Such caution is warranted since humans have used various traditional medicines incorrectly, and have inadvertently harmed ourselves in the process. It is worth remembering that arsenic was used as a medicine by nearly every doctor in the eighteenth century.