“While most human research has concluded that the active ingredient of marijuana, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, tends to dampen rather than provoke aggression in acute doses, recent evidence supports a relationship between the ingestion of synthetic cannabinoids and emergence of violent or aggressive behavior.
To summarize, this paper will draw upon basic and clinical research to explain how the endocannabinoid system may contribute to the genesis of aggressive behavior.”
“Research suggests that daily cannabis users have impaired memory for past events, but it is not clear whether they are also impaired in prospective memory (PM) for future events.
The present study examined PM in daily cannabis users who were either dependent or non-dependent, and compared them with non-using controls.
Findings suggest that when carefully matched on baseline variables, and not differing in premorbid IQ or alcohol use, young, near-daily cannabis users do not differ from non-using controls in PM performance.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29636705
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00097/full
“First-pass evidence is provided that the legalization of the cannabis market across US states is inducing a crime drop. We exploit the staggered legalization of recreational marijuana enacted by the adjacent states of Washington (end of 2012) and Oregon (end of 2014). Combining county-level difference-in-differences and spatial regression discontinuity designs, we find that the policy caused a significant reduction in rapes and property crimes on the Washington side of the border in 2013–2014 relative to the Oregon side and relative to the pre-legalization years 2010–2012. The legalization also increased consumption of marijuana and reduced consumption of other drugs and both ordinary and binge alcohol. Four possible mechanisms are discussed: the direct psychotropic effects of cannabis; substitution away from violence-inducing substances; reallocation of police effort; reduced role of criminals in the marijuana business.”
“The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine conducted a rapid turn-around comprehensive review of recent medical literature on The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids.
In the Therapeutics chapter reviewed here, the report concluded that there was conclusive or substantial evidence that Cannabis or cannabinoids are effective for the treatment of pain in adults; chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. Moderate evidence was found for secondary sleep disturbances. The evidence supporting improvement in appetite, Tourette syndrome, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy and a variety of neurodegenerative disorders was described as limited, insufficient or absent. A chapter of the NASEM report enumerated multiple barriers to conducting research on Cannabis in the US that may explain the paucity of positive therapeutic benefits in the published literature to date.
The 2017 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report, like the 1999 Institute of Medicine publication before it, did conclude that there is evidence to support the therapeutic effect of Cannabis and cannabinoids in a number of conditions. Although it is well appreciated that the plural of anecdote is not evidence, it must also be remembered that in the case of evaluating the therapeutic effects of Cannabis as published in the medical literature, the absence of evidence is not necessarily indicative of evidence of the absence of effectiveness. ”
http://www.ejinme.com/article/S0953-6205(18)30003-7/fulltext
“Cannabidiol (CBD) is a component of Cannabis sativa that has a broad spectrum of potential therapeutic effects in neuropsychiatric and other disorders. However, few studies have investigated the possible interference of CBD on the sleep-wake cycle.
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of a clinically anxiolytic dose of CBD on the sleep-wake cycle of healthy subjects in a crossover, double-blind design.
The drug did not induce any significant effect.
Different from anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs such as benzodiazepines and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, acute administration of an anxiolytic dose of CBD does not seem to interfere with the sleep cycle of healthy volunteers. The present findings support the proposal that CBD do not alter normal sleep architecture.
Cannabidiol may play a therapeutic role in sleep regulation.
We found no differences between CBD and placebo in respect to polysomnographic findings or cognitive and subjective measures in a sample of healthy subjects. Unlike widely used anxiolytic and antidepressant drugs such as benzodiazepines and SSRIs, the acute administration of an anxiolytic dose of CBD does not appear to interfere with the sleep cycle of healthy volunteers. Future studies should address the effects of CBD on the sleep-wake cycle of patient populations as well as evaluate the chronic effects of CBD in larger samples of patients with sleep and neuropsychiatric disorders.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29674967
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2018.00315/full
“The decision to authorize a patient for continued enrollment in a state-sanctioned medical cannabis program is difficult in part due to the uncertainty in the accuracy of patient symptom reporting and health functioning including any possible effects on other medication use.
We conducted a pragmatic convenience study comparing patient reporting of previous and current prescription opioid usage to the opioid prescription records in the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) among 131 chronic pain patients (mean age = 54; 54% male) seeking the first annual renewal of their New Mexico Medical Cannabis Program (NMMCP) license.
Seventy-six percent of the patients reported using prescription opioids prior to enrollment in the NMMCP, however, the PMP records showed that only 49% of the patients were actually prescribed opioids in the six months prior to enrollment.
Of the 64 patients with verifiable opioid prescriptions prior to NMMCP enrollment, 35 (55%) patients reported having eliminated the use of prescription opioids by the time of license renewal.
PMP records showed that 26 patients (63% of patients claiming to have eliminated the use of opioid prescriptions and 41% of all patients with verifiable preenrollment opioid use) showed no prescription opioid activity at their first annual NMMCP renewal visit.”
“Humans have used marijuana for millennia, variously as a spiritual sacrament, herbal medicine, dietary supplement or psychoactive inebriant. Use of Medical Cannabis (MC) is advocated for an increasing range of medical indications. Anecdotally, use of naturally occurring cannabis (phytocannabinoids) is said to have a calming effect in some children. There has been little drug discovery work in the field of child and adolescent mental health for many years, and there is an urgent need to develop safe and effective therapeutics for this vulnerable patient group. Medical cannabis may be one such treatment. In summary, MC has potential as a therapeutic option in the management of paediatric mental health symptoms; however, the evidence to support its use for these patients is not yet in. ” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpc.13902
“In this population-based, cross-sectional study using the all-capture Medicaid prescription data for 2011 to 2016, medical marijuana laws and adult-use marijuana laws were associated with lower opioid prescribing rates (5.88% and 6.38% lower, respectively).
Medical and adult-use marijuana laws have the potential to lower opioid prescribing for Medicaid enrollees, a high-risk population for chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and opioid overdose, and marijuana liberalization may serve as a component of a comprehensive package to tackle the opioid epidemic.
These findings suggest that medical and adult-use marijuana laws have the potential to reduce opioid prescribing for Medicaid enrollees, a segment of population with disproportionately high risk for chronic pain, opioid use disorder, and opioid overdose.
Marijuana is one of the potential nonopioid alternatives that can relieve pain at a relatively lower risk of addiction and virtually no risk of overdose.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2677000
“In this study, we investigated whether medical cannabis access was associated with prescription opioid prescribing in Medicare Part D. We found that overall opioid prescribing in Part D was lower when states permit access to medical cannabis. When examining data by individual drug classes, we found that prescriptions for hydrocodone and morphine had statistically significant negative associations with medical cannabis access via dispensaries; while not statistically significant, there were also negative associations between dispensary MCLs and fentanyl and “other opioid” use. Combined with previously published studies suggesting cannabis laws are associated with lower opioid mortality, these findings further strengthen arguments in favor of considering medical applications of cannabis as one tool in the policy arsenal that can be used to diminish the harm of prescription opioids.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2676999
“Chronic cannabis use has been associated with impaired cognition and elevated psychological symptoms, particularly psychotic-like experiences. While Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is thought to be primarily responsible for these deleterious effects, cannabidiol (CBD) is purported to have antipsychotic properties and to ameliorate cognitive, symptomatic, and brain harms in cannabis users. However, this has never been tested in a prolonged administration trial in otherwise healthy cannabis users. Here, we report the first study of prolonged CBD administration to a community sample of regular cannabis users in a pragmatic trial investigating potential restorative effects of CBD on psychological symptoms and cognition.
Results: CBD was well tolerated with no reported side effects; however, participants retrospectively reported reduced euphoria when smoking cannabis. No impairments to cognition were found, nor were there deleterious effects on psychological function. Importantly, participants reported significantly fewer depressive and psychotic-like symptoms at PT relative to BL, and exhibited improvements in attentional switching, verbal learning, and memory. Increased plasma CBD concentrations were associated with improvements in attentional control and beneficial changes in psychological symptoms. Greater benefits were observed in dependent than in nondependent cannabis users.
Conclusions:Prolonged CBD treatment appears to have promising therapeutic effects for improving psychological symptoms and cognition in regular cannabis users. Our findings require replication given the lack of a placebo control in this pragmatic trial, but suggest that CBD may be a useful adjunct treatment for cannabis dependence.”