Of the hundreds of thousands of applications to Australia’s medicines regulator for special access to medical cannabis, chronic pain is the top reason given.
With so many seeking access to medical cannabinoids for pain, you’d expect strong evidence for its effectiveness as a treatment. But such evidence is hard to find when looking at clinical studies and independent, high quality, ‘systematic’ reviews of well conducted, randomised, controlled trials.
The reviews have consistently found medical cannabinoids have only a small effect; for most people in the trials, their pain is not reduced. Just one in 24 people across all the reviewed trials experience a clinically meaningful reduction in pain after using medical cannabis.
