I have read countless studies looking at medical cannabis as a pain treatment. Some studies show support for cannabis, others do not. Indeed, it can be hard to make sense of the data when it conflicts so easily. Here is my take: the best efficacy study is real life.
We could figure out pretty quickly how well medical cannabis works by studying the lives of people before and after beginning treatment. A person barely living life prior to medical cannabis would be a poster child for the treatment by going on to live a normal life after treatment begins.
The Secret About Pain Medicine
Managing chronic pain is an entire industry these days. Pain medicine is not only a fully recognized specialty within America’s healthcare system, but also a profitable one. I am going to let you in on a little secret: pain medicine is not designed to be curative. It is designed to help patients manage pain so they can improve both function and quality of life.
Something else you might not know is that traditional treatments for pain are not as effective as we have been led to believe. For example, having a knee replaced in order to relieve arthritis pain doesn’t actually guarantee pain relief. Joint replacement surgery doesn’t always work.
Likewise for prescription medications, physical therapy, and all the other things we try. For that matter, cannabis doesn’t work for every patient either. But it should be an option that patients have alongside more traditional treatments.
Pain Is Subjective by Nature
One of the difficulties in exploring cannabis as a treatment for pain is the fact that pain is so subjective. What seems like a minor pain to you could be major to someone else. How you perceive the actual sensation of pain is not identical to your neighbor’s perception.
Measuring the efficacy of any pain therapy, medical cannabis included, relies exclusively on patient reports and ratings. But those reports and ratings are as subjective as the pain experience itself. That being the case, scientific pain evaluations are not foolproof. What researchers think they know about cannabis as a pain treatment might not reflect reality at all.
The Biggest Medical Cannabis Motivation
I am not someone who completely dismisses clinical research into cannabis as a pain treatment. But I tend to give more credence to individual patient experiences. I hold this position because pain continues to be the primary motivation for using medical cannabis.
Beehive Farmacy is a medical cannabis dispensary located in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company has a second location in Brigham City. The majority of patients at both locations use medical cannabis to treat pain.
Beehive operators say that more than 85,000 of the state’s 100,000 medical cannabis card holders cite persistent pain as their qualifying condition. The fact that they continue using medical cannabis week-after-week, month-after-month says something. If it were not working, would patients keep using it?
There Are Always Exceptions to the Rule
You could make the case that some medical cannabis patients are only taking advantage of their state programs to get high legally. It is understood. There are always exceptions to the rule. But what is observed in Utah is observed across the rest of the country. Millions of people now use medical cannabis to treat persistent pain.
I am not going to argue with those numbers. I know far too many people who live with chronic pain. If any of them were to opt for medical cannabis, I would be the last person on earth to judge them. If it works, it works. Enough said.
