Medical marijuana can reduce opioid use: study

Matt Robinson

A Nanaimo-based researcher has found medicinal cannabis can reduce or prevent opioid use and can even offer addicts an exit strategy.


In an academic paper published this month in the Harm Reduction Journal, Philippe Lucas concluded that governments and health care providers should immediately implement “cannabis-based interventions” in the opioid overdose crisis that has gripped North America.

For Lucas, years of research have rebutted government lines that cannabis is a “gateway drug”, and have instead shown that it can be an “exit drug” for problematic substance use.

“There’s a growing body of evidence that cannabis can be a safer substitute and play a harm-reduction role by reducing the use of prescription opioids, reducing the use of alcohol, and even reducing the use of tobacco and illicit substances,” Lucas said in an interview.

When Lucas started working with medical cannabis patients in the late 1990s, many of those he saw had contracted HIV, AIDS, or hepatitis C through injection drug use.

“They were getting doctors’ recommendations for the use of cannabis to deal officially with (their symptoms), but as I was working with these patients, they would tell me: you know, I’ve got a scrip for AIDS, but really, I’m using cannabis because when I eat a cookie or I smoke a joint, I don’t have a craving to go out there and use heroin or use crystal meth.”

That that led Lucas to start researching cannabis substitution.

Unlike opioids, cannabis has “no chance of (fatal) overdose, far less of a chance of developing dependence, and you don’t have a lot of the similar side effects you do with opioids,” Lucas said.

Meanwhile, overdose deaths — many involving the opioid painkiller fentanyl — have hit record numbers in this province. More people have already died this year from fatal overdoses in Vancouver than in all of 2016, and scores more are likely to die by the end of the year, according to City staff.

Among other recommendations, Lucas said doctors should consider prescribing cannabis rather than opioids as a treatment option for chronic pain.

“We’re right now in the throes of an opioid overdose epidemic and we need novel interventions,” he said.

Separately, Lucas recently received ethics approval for a study on the use of cannabis as an adjunct treatment for methadone and suboxone. Half of the participants in the study will take the opioid medications without cannabis, the other half will take them with a prescription for medical cannabis, and the researchers will examine the groups’ success rates. Results are expected by next fall.

Perry Kendall, B.C.’s chief provincial health officer, has said marijuana may offer a less-dangerous alternative for people who are struggling with chronic pain, and it is already being used in the Downtown Eastside as a harm reduction tool.

Earlier this summer, community activist and former Parks Board commissioner Sarah Blyth sparked an online fundraiser “to implement mobile cannabis dispensing units throughout the city, to provide aid to those most in need.” More than $1,300 had been donated as of Wednesday in support of what has been dubbed the High Hopes Foundation.