Medical Marijuana Is A ‘Safe And Effective Treatment’ For Pain And Sleep Issues In Older People, Study Shows

A new study on the use of medical marijuana by older patients—age 50 and above—concludes that “cannabis seemed to be a safe and effective treatment” for pain and other conditions.

“Most patients experienced clinically significant improvements in pain, sleep, and quality of life and reductions in co-medication,” the paper says.

Published late last month in the journal Cannabis, the study evaluated 229 participants in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada, with an average age of 66.7 years. The bulk of participants—around 90 percent—used medical marijuana to treat pain-related conditions, including chronic pain and arthritis. About two thirds (66.2 percent) were female.

Nearly all patients used products consumed orally, such as edibles and extracts, as opposed to smoked or vaporized cannabis, and most preferred products high in CBD and relatively low in THC.

“Cannabis is a relatively safe and cost-effective therapeutic option for adults dealing with age-related health conditions.”

The study involved use of medical marijuana by patients under the care of a health care provider, with the treating physician reporting data around the use of cannabis and other medications as well as impacts on pain, sleep, quality of life and any adverse effects.

“Over the six-month study period, significant improvements were noted in pain, sleep, and quality of life measures,” the report says, “with 45% experiencing a clinically meaningful improvement in pain interference and in sleep quality scores.”

“Additionally, nearly 50% of patients taking co-medications at baseline had reduced their use by the end of the study period,” it adds, “and quality of life improved significantly from baseline to [month three] and from baseline to [month six].”

Notably, no serious side effects were reported. Of all participants, fewer than 5 percent reported any adverse effects, and most involved nausea and feeling “too high.”

Beyond improving patient outcomes, the use of medical marijuana also appeared to reduce costs.

“Among patients with medication costs at baseline,” authors wrote, “mean monthly medication costs dropped from $74.10 at baseline (SD=$193.30) down to $28.70 at M6 (SD=$69.50), representing a $45.40 mean monthly savings, and a 61.3% decline in prescription medication costs.”

Authors, from Greenly Medical Consulting, the medical cannabis company Tilray and the University of Victoria, said in the paper that the study represents “one of the largest longitudinal study of older medical cannabis patients to date.”

“The results of this multi-site, prospective, longitudinal study of medical cannabis patients age 50 years and older indicate that cannabis may be a relatively safe and effective treatment for chronic pain, sleep disturbances, and other conditions associated with aging,” authors wrote, “leading to subsequent reductions in prescription drug use and healthcare costs, as well as significant improvements in quality of life. As the use of cannabis for medical purposes by older patients continues to increase in North America and around the globe, these findings suggest that further studies employing more robust methodological approaches, including clinical trials, are certainly justified.”

The report comes alongside other new research into the use of cannabis for pain that found that marijuana was “comparatively more effective than prescription medications” for treating chronic pain after a three-month period, and that many patients reduced their use of opioid painkillers while using cannabis.

That study, conducted in part by a federal researcher at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and funded by the state of Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana Academic Clinical Research Program, was published late last month in the journal Pain.

Despite some methodological limitations, the analysis “was able to determine, using causal inference techniques, that use of medical marijuana for chronic pain under medical supervision is at least as effective and potentially more effective in relationship to patients with chronic pain treated by prescription medications (nonopioid or opioid).”

A separate, federally funded study indicated that legalization of marijuana in U.S. states is associated with reduced prescriptions for opioid pain medications among commercially insured adults—indicating a possible substitution effect where patients are choosing to use cannabis instead of prescription drugs to treat pain.

“These results suggest that substitution of cannabis for traditional pain medications increases as the availability of recreational cannabis increases,” authors of that report wrote, noting that there “appears to be a small shift once recreational cannabis becomes legal, but we see stronger results once users can purchase cannabis at recreational dispensaries.”

“Reductions in opioid prescription fills stemming from recreational cannabis legalization may prevent exposure to opioids in patients with pain,” the paper, published in the journal Cannabis, continues, “and lead to decreases in the number of new opioid users, rates of opioid use disorder, and related harms.”

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 published 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.

In Minnesota, meanwhile, a new state government report on chronic pain patients enrolled in the state’s medical marijuana program said recently that 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.

As for cannabis and sleep, a recent industry-backed survey found that 16 percent of Americans aged 21 and older said they use cannabis as a sleep aid. That makes marijuana more popular for sleep than prescription sleep aids (12 percent) or alcohol (11 percent), but still not quite as common as using supplements (26 percent) or over-the-counter sleep aids (19 percent).

Last year, separate studies found that both older medical marijuana patients as well as people with fibromyalgia reported that cannabis improved their sleep.

A different study last year from the retirement group AARP found that marijuana use by older people in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the last three years, with better sleep as among the most frequently cited reasons.

Another industry-backed survey last year found that an oral CBD solution effectively treated mild to moderate anxiety, as well as associated depression and poor sleep quality, with no serious adverse events observed.

A study published last spring, meanwhile, found that using marijuana before sleep has minimal if any effect on a range of performance measures the next day, including simulated driving, cognitive and psychomotor function tasks, subjective effects and mood.

In 2023, a federally funded study found that people with anxiety experienced better quality sleep on days when they used marijuana compared to days when they used alcohol or nothing at all.

Separate studies in 2019, meanwhile, found that fewer people purchased over-the-counter (OTC) sleep medications when they had legal access to cannabis and that many adult-use consumers at the time said they used marijuana for the same reasons medical cannabis patients did: to help with pain and sleep.

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