“In the past twenty years, twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have passed some form of medical marijuana law. Using quarterly data on all fee-for-service Medicaid prescriptions in the period 2007–14, we tested the association between those laws and the average number of prescriptions filled by Medicaid beneficiaries. We found that the use of prescription drugs in fee-for-service Medicaid was lower in states with medical marijuana laws than in states without such laws in five of the nine broad clinical areas we studied. If all states had had a medical marijuana law in 2014, we estimated that total savings for fee-for-service Medicaid could have been $1.01 billion. These results are similar to those in a previous study we conducted, regarding the effects of medical marijuana laws on the number of prescriptions within the Medicare population. Together, the studies suggest that in states with such laws, Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries will fill fewer prescriptions.” https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.1135?journalCode=hlthaff
“Endocannabinoids are bioactive lipids that modulate various physiological processes through G-protein-coupled receptors (CB1 and CB2) and other putative targets. By sharing the activation of the same receptors, some phytocannabinoids and a multitude of synthetic 
“We recently uncovered a signaling mechanism by which the endocannabinoid anandamide mediates the action of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that is crucial for social behavior, to control social reward. Oxytocin signaling has been implicated in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and social reward is a key aspect of social functioning that is thought to be disrupted in ASD. Therefore, as a proof of principle for the core component of ASD—social impairment—we tested an endocannabinoid-enhancing compound on two widely studied mouse models of ASD, the BTBR and fmr1−/− (model of Fragile X Syndrome).
Remarkably, we found that FAAH blockade completely reversed the social impairment in both mouse models. CB1 receptor blockade prevented the prosocial action of FAAH inhibition in BTBR mice.
The results suggest that increasing anandamide activity at CB1 receptors improves ASD-related social impairment and identify FAAH as a novel therapeutic target for ASD.
