A new study found that more than 62 percent of people who use medical marijuana do so to treat chronic pain.
As medical marijuana becomes more mainstream, debates have continued surrounding what motivates people to use it the most.
一项新的研究发现答案不是娱乐使用，而是治疗慢性疼痛。
这项研究，发表在卫生事务期刊, aimed to determine exactly how people are utilizing medical marijuana.
The study authors looked at state registry data to determine what conditions qualify for medical cannabis treatment. They found that 20 states and Washington, D.C. had data on total patient numbers while 15 states had data on reported qualifying conditions.
They compared all of this information to data laid out in an expansive2017 report来自国家科学，工程和医学院，这是对娱乐和医疗大麻的健康影响的10,000个科学摘要的审查。
作者发现，2016年有641,176名注册医疗大麻患者，2017年以后每年有813,917名，但他们认为数字低于使用医疗大麻的人的实际数量。
这些数据显示，这些人中有85.5％的人带有医疗大麻的许可证正在使用它来寻求“基于证据的条件”。
慢性疼痛站在名单的顶部，62.2％的人使用它来治疗他们的持久痛苦。
“许多观测调查发现许多people use cannabis for chronic pain, but whether these surveys were representative was uncertain. To our knowledge, this was the first study that examined nationwide trends of patient-reported qualifying conditions based on these state registries,” lead authorKevin Boehnke, PhD是一家在密歇根大学的麻醉学和慢性疼痛和疲劳研究中心的研究员告诉健康线。雷竞技app官网
Boehnke表示，该研究结果在增加了我们目前的了解如何使用Marijuana如何使用。
他指出，发现“人们使用大麻的绝大多数条件具有大量或确凿的大麻证据是有效治疗的绝大多数条件。”
他指出这很重要，因为医学大麻仍然是“有争议和偏振的话题”。
他说支持者声称大麻是一系列条件的宝贵药物，而批评者称之为“滥用或娱乐药物”，“医疗大麻法则只是禁区的封面”。
然而，Boehnke表示，从这个最新研究表明，大多数人都有大多数人用医学大麻以获取基于证据的原因，并且尚未合法化医疗大麻的国家没有将政策与科学联系起来。
“We now know that chronic pain is indeed the most common qualifying condition for which people obtained medical cannabis licenses. Given the context of the opioid epidemic and the consistent observational studies that report medical cannabis patients substituting cannabis for pain medications, we now have a better sense of how widespread that practice and rationale may be.”
Chronic pain is certainly a common issue. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The high numbers of people in pain has precipitated the opioid epidemic, with increasingly more Americans using — and getting addicted to — prescription medications to treat their chronic pain.
2015年，
These figures have led the medical community to seek out alternatives to these drugs.
虽然Boehnke的学习并没有调查医疗大麻的效果，但他说它确实强调了现在在处理慢性疼痛等问题时扮演的突出角色。
“This study is important now because, up until this point, there wasn’t much concrete, nationwide data about why people are using cannabis. There’s still a lot to be learned, but this is a good starting point to build from,” he said. “It clarifies something that we had been thinking for quite some time, that chronic pain was the most common reason that people were using cannabis.”
“这是有道理的，因为慢性痛苦是非常常见的，影响数百万美国人，”他补充道。
However, Boehnke stresses there are some things that do “complicate this picture.”
Chronic pain in and of itself is a broad category. It can be a standalone medical condition like fibromyalgia but also a symptom of something else, like pain tied to Parkinson’s disease.
鉴于宽恕慢性疼痛的宽伞的变异性，Boehnke表示，有些人可能会列出痛苦作为大麻的主要资格状况，但它们可以使用它来治疗国家法律不具体涵盖的其他症状或条件。
“Many chronic pain medications, like opioids, come with significant side effects, and cannabis is perceived as being relatively safe because the risk of fatal overdose is so incredibly low. Fewer side effects is one of the common reasons in observational studies that patients say that have substituted cannabis for medications, which is consistent with this idea,” he said.
Boehnke表示，随着更多的州注册管理机构在线出现，他将继续遵循新数据。
“我们也希望更深入潜入大麻和大麻素如何影响不同类型的痛苦，”他补充道。“为此，我们有一些持续的观察研究，我们随着时间的推移，我们遵循当前的大麻用户，我们也希望将来做一些临床试验。”
新的研究在期刊上，卫生事务发现了大多数使用医疗大麻的人使用它来治疗慢性疼痛。
The study’s data provides further evidence that medical marijuana may be an effective, safer alternative treatment than prescription opioids to manage chronic pain.
