Patients frequently replacing cannabis with anti-anxiety drugs

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Patients frequently replacing cannabis with anti-anxiety drugs

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Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of NORML
February 1, 2019

Patients allowed to legally use cannabis for medical purposes frequently replace it with benzodiazepines, according to two new studies released this week. Benzodiazepines are a clbad of drugs primarily used to treat anxiety. According to data compiled by the US Centers for Disease Control, the drug has been attributed to more than 11,500 overdose deaths in 2017.

In the first study, Canadian researchers badessed the relationship between cannabis and benzodiazepines in a cohort of 146 patients enrolled in the national medical marijuana access program. They reported that 30% of participants had stopped taking anti-anxiety medication less than two months after starting cannabis treatment, and that 45% had done so after six months. "Patients under medical cannabis treatment showed significant drop-out rates after the first follow-up visit to their medical cannabis prescriber and continued to show significant abandonment rates thereafter," concluded authors.

In the second study, researchers at the University of Michigan interviewed more than 1,300 patients under state-approved medical cannabis, regarding their use of opioids and benzodiazepines. They reported that 53% of respondents agreed to replace marijuana with opioids and 22% with benzodiazepines.

These results are consistent with many other documents – such as here, here, here and here – that document patients' use of cannabis in place of various prescription drugs, particularly opioids and anti-cancer drugs. anxiety.

The full text of the study, titled "Reduction of Benzodiazepine Use in Patients Controlled by Cannabis," is published in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.

A summary of the study entitled "Pills to Pot: Observational Analyzes of Cannabis Substitution Among Medical Cannabis Consumers with Chronic Pain" is published here in The Journal of Pain.

Additional information is available in NORML's "Marijuana-Opioids Relationship" fact sheet here.