Marijuana: a complete list of incomplete data
American academics have acknowledged the lack of scientific data on marijuana
Oleg Lischuk, N+1
The National Academies of Science, Technology and Medicine of the USA have released a large-scale report combining all modern scientific data on the effects of marijuana use.
The main provisions of the document are that it is reliably useful for a number of medical conditions, at the same time it has a number of side effects, but in general, qualitative evidence about cannabis sativa products is clearly insufficient, and one of the important reasons for this is the activities of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
To date, 28 US states and the Metropolitan District of Columbia have allowed the medical use of marijuana, eight of them and the capital have also legalized its use for recreational purposes. From 2002 to 2015, the proportion of Americans over the age of 12 who used marijuana at least once in the last month increased from 6.2 to 8.3 percent, or 22.2 million people. Despite this, the last American official review of scientific and medical data on this herbal product was published back in 1999.
In this regard, the commission of National Academies was instructed to prepare a new version of such a report, including the materials accumulated during this time. A commission of 16 experts in various medical and biological disciplines reviewed more than 10700 modern publications on the topic and prepared the current version of the report.
As follows from the document, to date, the following effects of marijuana can be considered proven: treatment of chronic pain; reduction of nausea during chemotherapy; reduction of spasticity in multiple sclerosis. At the same time, prolonged smoking worsens the course of chronic bronchitis, and is also statistically associated with an increased frequency of road accidents and the development of psychoses, including schizophrenia. The answers to the remaining questions related to the therapeutic and recreational use of marijuana (and the commission counted several dozen of them, divided into 11 categories) were found to have insufficient evidence base.
The report also says that a serious obstacle to the study of marijuana is its classification as the most controlled substances on the DEA list. Because of this, only one US scientific center has the right to grow cannabis for research, which in principle cannot ensure the production of the entire variety of available varieties. In addition, laboratories working with marijuana face numerous restrictions, and the study of edible products, concentrates and cannabis preparations that are gaining popularity for local (skin) use cannot be carried out at all due to the lack of a legislative framework. All this hinders the systematic and standardized study of cannabis and its products, experts say.
Based on the processed data, the commission made four general recommendations, the justifications of which are devoted to separate chapters of the report. Firstly, according to experts, it is necessary to create a single comprehensive evidence base on the effects of marijuana, filling gaps in which should be supported and funded at the national level. Secondly, it is necessary to fine-tune mechanisms for monitoring public health at the level of individual states and the federation as a whole. Thirdly, a working group should be created to develop uniform standards and reports on clinical and epidemiological studies of cannabis. And fourthly, there is a need to convene an expert council designed to "fully characterize regulatory obstacles to the study of marijuana" and develop a strategy for full-scale scientific work in this direction. The first results of the implementation of these recommendations should be received within the next three years.
Previously, a large–scale population study conducted in New Zealand showed that the only serious risk that smoking marijuana poses to health is the development of gum diseases. In turn, American epidemiologists have found that the legalization of marijuana reduces its popularity among teenagers, and the use of cannabis for medical reasons reduces the consumption of prescription drugs.
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17.01.2017