Medical cannabis use is highly under-researched, according to UNM professors Jacob Vigil and Sara Stith — and their recent findings suggest that it could actually help to battle addiction.

The pair, along with pain specialist Dr. Anthony Reeve, presented their research on how enrollment in the New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program has affected prescription opioid use in patients with chronic pain on Friday at UNM.

Vigil said the Medical Cannabis Program is unprecedented because patients manage their own care, since doctors can’t prescribe doses of cannabis, only authorize patients to obtain it.

He said it’s difficult to obtain federal funding for research on medical cannabis use and New Mexico is a great place to do research on it now, because recreational use is not currently legal.

The study compared prescription opioid use in Reeve’s patients who were enrolled in the medical cannabis program and his patients who were not enrolled over an 18 month period, Stith said.

New Mexico keeps track of prescription opioid use, allowing them to check whether patients who reported a reduction in opioid use were telling the truth, she said.

Their research found a 31 percent reduction in opioid use after 18 months in the medical cannabis patients and a slight increase in opioid use in the control group, she said. (Daily Lobo.com, The Independent Voice of University of New Mexico since 1895, 05.03.2017)

http://www.dailylobo.com/article/2017/03/medical-cannabis-research