MoCSSy Program: Graduate Student Seminar Series "Examining the Therapeutic Role of Cannabis: Substantiating its Medicinal Utility"

Abstract

The therapeutic use of cannabis has been documented by historians, social scientists and the medical profession.Opponents; however, argue that much of the findings are largely based on personal opinion and hearsay. Over the past 40 years there has been a growing body of research examining the medicinal applications of marijuana through more objective measures; often through double blind and placebo controlled studies of cannabis and its analogous pharmaceuticals. The findings from these studies have been mixed and suffer from high dropout rate and issues with the tools of measurement, but overall evidence suggests that cannabis is effective in the treatment of pain, nausea and emesis, appetite stimulation and glaucoma. Cannabis appears to be less effective in the treatment of spasticity. Upon review of the literature it is evident that future research needs to focus on smoked marijuana rather than synthetic compounds such as dronabinol or nabilone. Secondly, there needs to be more studies comparing the efficacy of cannabis to other drugs currently being used to treat the same condition, ailment or disease.