According to the results of a new research study, adults with chronic pain who participated in New York State’s (NYS) Medical Cannabis Program were significantly less likely to need prescription opioids. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine and carried out by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System, included 204 adult participants who were prescribed opioids for chronic pain and were newly certified for medical cannabis over the period spanning between September 2018 and July 2023. They were tracked for 18 months, with data on both their cannabis and opioid use collected from the New York State Prescription Monitoring Program.

“Chronic pain and opioid addiction are two of the most pressing health challenges in the United States,” said Dr. Deepika E. Slawek, the study’s principal author, associate professor of medicine at Einstein, and an internal medicine and addiction medicine specialist at Montefiore, in her interview with Medical Xpress. “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 combating the opioid crisis.”

At the beginning of the study, participants reported high pain levels and an average daily opioid dose of 73.3 mg morphine equivalents. However, over 18 months, this dose declined to 57 mg, corresponding to a 22% reduction. Moreover, participants receiving a 30-day supply of medical cannabis used an average of 3.5 mg fewer morphine equivalents per day compared with those who received no cannabis in the same month.

“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 Dr. Julia Arnsten, 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 behavioural sciences. “We hope these findings will lead to new policies encouraging the effective management of chronic pain through use of regulated substances.”