Does Medical Cannabis Use Increase or Decrease the Use of Opioid Analgesics and Other Prescription Drugs?
In observational and retrospective studies, people who use cannabis are more likely than people who do not use cannabis to also use other drugs. People who take medical cannabis are also more likely to report medical and non-medical use of opioid analgesics, stimulants, and tranquilizers. To fully understand the effect of medical cannabis on the use of other drugs, prospective longitudinal studies randomizing individuals to cannabis versus other treatments are urgently needed.
