Chronic Pain: Cannabis,
A Safer Alternative
to Opioids?
Treating chronic pain— one of the most prevalent and debilitating conditions in the world — presents burdensome challenges. In the U.S. alone, 100 million adults suffer from chronic pain. Accounting for direct medical costs and lost productivity, annual financial cost estimates range between $560 to $635 billion. More significantly, in recent years opioid misuse and fatal overdoses have increased exponentially. North America has been hit especially hard with the opioid epidemic. Facing this crisis, the medical community grapples with how to compassionately treat those suffering from chronic pain. With clinical cannabis gaining greater acceptance — legally and in public perception — could cannabis be part of the solution?
Legal medical cannabis is available to more than half of America and all of Canada. Given how widespread chronic pain is and how limited truly efficacious treatment options are, predictably, an increasing number of sufferers are turning to cannabis to treat their condition.
However, whether cannabis is right for you is a highly personal decision. What works for others, may not be appropriate for your situation. Likewise, deciding on whether cannabis should be an adjunctive therapy to your current treatment protocol or a replacement, is yet another consideration.
We have accumulated more evidence supporting a therapeutic role for cannabis to treat chronic pain than we have for most other conditions. Nonetheless, before you decide to use cannabis, it’s important you develop a fundamental understanding of the dynamics of chronic pain, and how cannabis may (or may not) fit into your treatment program. In this paper, we put forth the case for why cannabis should play a role in chronic pain treatment.
Palliative Care
Palliative Care
30