Cannabis has been identified as a
potential substitute for users of legal or illicit opioids, but a new
Vancouver-based study shows the drug may also help reduce people’s
cravings for another highly addictive substance: crack cocaine.
Scientists
at the BC Centre on Substance Use tracked 122 people who consumed crack
in and around Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside over a three-year period
and found they reported using that drug less frequently when they opted
to also consume cannabis.
“We’re not saying that these results mean
everyone will be able to smoke a joint and forget the fact that they are
dependent on crack,” said M.J. Milloy, an infectious-disease
epidemiologist at the centre and senior author of the study. “What our
findings do suggest is that cannabinoids might play a role in reducing
the harms of crack use for some people.
“That’s the next test: to what extent and for who?”
These
results, published in the latest issue of the international
peer-reviewed journal Addictive Behaviors, echo a smaller study of 25
crack users in Brazil that found just more than two-thirds of them were
able to stop consuming that drug while using cannabis.
A
recent global estimate pegs the number of people addicted to cocaine at
about seven million, Dr. Milloy said, with many of them marginalized
people smoking crack in cities across the Americas.
Brazil
is struggling to cope with an epidemic that has made it the largest
consumer of crack cocaine in the world. But the drug is also widely used
by Canadians, Dr. Milloy said.
“Crack
has not gone away and we have described in previous research how people
using crack in a frequent high-intensity manner suffer from not only
dependence, but other risks, in particular, HIV and hep C acquisition,”
Dr. Milloy said.
Addiction experts in
Vancouver can offer those consuming heroin effective – and legal –
substitutes such as suboxone and methadone, but there are no
pharmaceutical therapies for people addicted to crack cocaine, Dr.
Milloy said.
Cannabis was deemed less
dangerous than tobacco in a 2010 study that ranked 20 legal and illegal
drugs based on the dependence, social and physical harms they caused.
The report, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, said
both were considered far less dangerous to users and the general public
than heroin, cocaine and alcohol.
As
Ottawa gets set to legalize cannabis as early as next summer, addictions
and public health experts such as Dr. Milloy have urged the federal
government to consider the dangers – and potential benefits – that
Canada’s example of ending prohibition can offer the world.
One potential public-health benefit is more people may substitute cannabis for alcohol or opioids.
A recent study
from the University of British Columbia and funded by licensed cannabis
grower Tilray found more than half of the 271 medical-marijuana
patients interviewed said they use cannabis to help them get off heavier
prescription drugs, with the largest percentage saying pot acts as a
substitute painkiller for opioids.
That
research added to a small body of science that suggests patients are
effectively using marijuana to replace opioids, a class of legal and
illicit painkillers that has led to a crisis that last year killed hundreds of Canadians.
Last year, The Globe and Mail found fewer Canadian veterans
have sought prescription opioids and tranquillizers in recent years,
while at the same time, prescriptions for medical marijuana have
skyrocketed.
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