Doctors in British Columbia are questioning the tight regulations on medical marijuana saying it does more harm than good.
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has denounced prescribing cannabis for medical purposes due to what BC doctors call “a perceived lack of evidence”. The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) argues that prescription medical cannabis and its therapeutic pain relief can benefit patients with HIV/AIDS. According to the BC-CfE, the CMA has discouraged prescribing medical marijuana, putting the onus on physicians, which requires them to complete paperwork on a case-by-case basis.
“Given CMA et al.’s failure to acknowledge various peer-reviewed and high-quality clinical research studies on the therapeutic application of cannabis, we feel this position is not entirely evidence-based,” said authors Stephanie Lake, Research Assistant at the BC-CfE; Dr. Thomas Kerr, Co-Director of the BC-CfE’s Urban Health Research Initiative; and Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the BC-CfE.
The authors highlight cannabis as being held to more stringent standards than other pain-relieving drugs with potentially harmful effects. This includes opioids, which are being prescribed at rapidly increasing rates.
Five recent randomized control trials and two systemic reviews recorded neuropathic pain relief associated with cannabis treatment. In contrast, while marijuana is not associated with an elevated risk of mortality, prescription opioids directly contribute to over half of overdose deaths - exceeding deaths from motor vehicle accidents in North America.
Doctors say there is a growing body of scientific evidence pointing to increasing rates of abuse, overdose, and other complications from non-opioid drugs that are commonly used to treat conditions such as shingles, fibromyalgia, and spinal cord injuries.
“When it comes to prescription marijuana, patients’ needs should be considered above political considerations,” said Dr. Montaner, Director of the BC-CfE. “Federal legislators and medical bodies should take an impartial and scientific look at the potential uses of cannabis. There could potentially be great harm in ignoring the medical uses of marijuana.”
