Minnesota Medical Marijuana Program Helps Relive Pain While Reducing Use Of Opioids And Other Drugs, State Government Study Shows

A new state government report on chronic pain patients enrolled in Minnesota’s medical marijuana program says participants “are finding a noticeable change in pain relief” within a few months of starting cannabis treatment.

The large-scale study of nearly 10,000 patients also shows that nearly a quarter who were taking other pain relievers reduced the use of those drugs after using medical marijuana.

The report, published this week by the state’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), says that more than 3 in 10 (31.7 percent) of people who experienced moderate to severe pain time they enrolled in the program reported meaningful relief within four months of beginning treatment. Of those who initially experienced relief, nearly half (49.7 percent) said marijuana continued to reduce pain for an additional four-month period.

As in many states, pain is the most common symptom among people in Minnesota’s medical cannabis system, with qualifying conditions including chronic pain, intractable pain, cancer with severe pain, terminal illness with severe pain and sickle cell disease, OCM said.

Proportions of patients who saw pain relief differed slightly by condition, the new report notes. “Meaningful pain relief within four months was found among 30.5% of intractable pain patients, 32.9% of chronic pain patients, and 28.3% of cancer pain patients,” it says.

By law, OCM is required to study and report on how patients are using the drug. For the new report, officials compiled data from patient enrollment, survey results, purchase data and “symptom and side-effect ratings at the time of each purchase,” according to an OCM news release. In all, the review looked at records from 9,961 patients over a roughly one-year period, from March 2, 2022 to February 28, 2023.

“Though these percentages may seem low,” Grace Christensen, OCM senior research analyst, said of the findings, “cannabis treatment offers other benefits to patients experiencing pain-related conditions that allows for their pain to be better managed and ultimately improve their quality of life.”

“Many patients report that they have much higher quality sleep when treating their pain with cannabis,” Christensen said, for example. “Getting better sleep often allows for patients to start the day in a better mental and emotional state.”

The new report also found that among health care practitioners who reported their patient was taking other medications for pain management, nearly a quarter (24.6 percent) “reported a reduction in pain medications in the six months after starting to use medical cannabis.”

“Typically,” the OCM report added, “pain patients are treated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) or opioids. However, the use of cannabis-based medicines to manage pain management has become more popular.”

Officials said the observed reductions in pain “are similar to current research on treating pain with cannabis.”

Pain was one of eight “standard” symptoms asked about in the state survey. Another—vomiting—was actually the most improved symptom among pain patients, the report says, adding that “40.7% of patients with moderate to severe vomiting at baseline were able to both achieve ≥30% reduction and maintain it for at least four months.”

As for other symptoms, “Around one-third of patients with moderate to severe appetite lack (33.2%), depression (31.1%), and nausea (33.4%) at baseline were able to both achieve ≥30% reduction and maintain it for at least four months.”

Only 15 percent of surveyed pain patients reported adverse side effects. Of those side effects, two thirds (66.0 percent) were mild, with the most common being dry mouth.

“Only 5.6% of patient-reported side effects were severe,” the report adds, noting: “The most commonly reported severe side effect was also dry mouth.”

A separate, federally funded study published late last year in the Journal of the American Statistical Association found that legalizing medical marijuana appeared to significantly lessen monetary payments from opioid manufacturers to doctors who specialize in pain, with authors finding “evidence that this decrease is due to medical marijuana becoming available as a substitute” for prescription painkillers.

Other recent research also showed a decline in fatal opioid overdoses in jurisdictions where marijuana was legalized for adults. That study found a “consistent negative relationship” between legalization and fatal overdoses, with more significant effects in states that legalized cannabis earlier in the opioid crisis. Authors estimated that recreational marijuana legalization “is associated with a decrease of approximately 3.5 deaths per 100,000 individuals.”

“Our findings suggest that broadening recreational marijuana access could help address the opioid epidemic,” that report said. “Previous research largely indicates that marijuana (primarily for medical use) can reduce opioid prescriptions, and we find it may also successfully reduce overdose deaths.”

“Further, this effect increases with earlier implementation of [recreational marijuana legalization],” it added, “indicating this relationship is relatively consistent over time.”

Another recently published report into prescription opioid use in Utah following the state’s legalization of medical marijuana found that the availability of legal cannabis both reduced opioid use by patients with chronic pain and helped drive down prescription overdose deaths statewide. Overall, results of the study indicated that “cannabis has a substantial role to play in pain management and the reduction of opioid use,” it said.

Yet another study, published in 2023, linked medical marijuana use to lower pain levels and reduced dependence on opioids and other prescription medications. And another, published by the American Medical Association (AMA) last February, found that chronic pain patients who received medical marijuana for longer than a month saw significant reductions in prescribed opioids.

About one in three chronic pain patients reported using cannabis as a treatment option, according to a 2023 AMA-published report. Most of that group said they used cannabis as a substitute for other pain medications, including opioids.

Other research published that year found that letting people buy CBD legally significantly reduced opioid prescription rates, leading to 6.6 percent to 8.1 percent fewer opioid prescriptions.

A 2022 research paper that analyzed Medicaid data on prescription drugs, meanwhile, found that legalizing marijuana for adult use was associated with “significant reductions” in the use of prescription drugs for the treatment of multiple conditions.

A 2023 report linked state-level medical marijuana legalization to reduced opioid payouts to doctors—another datapoint suggesting that patients use cannabis as an alternative to prescription drugs when given legal access.

Researchers in another study, published last year, looked at opioid prescription and mortality rates in Oregon, finding that nearby access to retail marijuana moderately reduced opioid prescriptions, though they observed no corresponding drop in opioid-related deaths.

Other recent research also indicates that cannabis may be an effective substitute for opioids in terms of pain management.

A report published recently in the journal BMJ Open, for instance, compared medical marijuana and opioids for chronic non-cancer pain and found that cannabis “may be similarly effective and result in fewer discontinuations than opioids,” potentially offering comparable relief with a lower likelihood of adverse effects.

Separate research found that more than half (57 percent) of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain said cannabis was more effective than other analgesic medications, while 40 percent reported reducing their use of other painkillers since they began using marijuana.

A related report published late last year examined the effects of adding medical marijuana to state prescription drug monitoring programs, concluding that the additional tracking had mixed effects, both reducing the prescription of medications that could cause complications with cannabis and also exposing a possible bias against medical marijuana patients among healthcare providers.

GOP Congressman Seeks To Undermine Marijuana Rescheduling Process With Amendment To Fentanyl Bill

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.