Jan. 9, 2023 -- About a third of Americans have used medical marijuana to deal with chronic pain, a new study says.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine surveyed 1,661 adults who reported having chronic pain who are residents of one of the 36 states with medical marijuana programs plus Washington, D.C., according to the study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study says 31% of respondents reported using medical marijuana to relieve chronic pain at some point in their life.
About 36% of respondents said they used the drug to deal with pain in the last 12 months, and 23.2% used it in the last 30 days, the survey said. Most of the people who used medical marijuana said they used at least one other drug or non-drug therapy.
The use of medical marijuana affected the use of those other therapies.
More than half the people said the drug led to lower use of prescription opioids, nonopioids, and over-the-counter pain medications, the study said. About 1% said they used more of those drugs.
About 39% of people said they decreased their use of physical therapy, while 5.9% said they increased it. About 19% said they meditated less, whereas 23.7 said they meditated more. Twenty-six percent said they used cognitive therapy less, but 17.1% said they used it more.
“The fact that patients report substituting cannabis for pain medications so much underscores the need for research on the benefits and risk of using cannabis for chronic pain,” Mark Bicket, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and co-director of the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network, said in a news release.
The survey was conducted last March and April. Of all the respondents, 57.1% were female. The average age was 52.3 years.
Many doctors define chronic pain as a physical distress that persists at least six months, often in the back, neck, head, and bones.