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Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study
BACKGROUND: US states have been adopting their own medical cannabis laws since 1996. There is substantial variability in the medical cannabis programs between states, and these differences have not been thoroughly investigated in the literature. The objective of the study was to compare medical cann...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8161659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34044878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42238-021-00075-z |
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author | Mahabir, V. Kishan Smith, Christopher S. Vannabouathong, Christopher Merchant, Jamil J. Garibaldi, Alisha L. |
author_facet | Mahabir, V. Kishan Smith, Christopher S. Vannabouathong, Christopher Merchant, Jamil J. Garibaldi, Alisha L. |
author_sort | Mahabir, V. Kishan |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: US states have been adopting their own medical cannabis laws since 1996. There is substantial variability in the medical cannabis programs between states, and these differences have not been thoroughly investigated in the literature. The objective of the study was to compare medical cannabis patient characteristics across five states to identify differences potentially caused by differing policies surrounding condition eligibility. METHODS: We conducted secondary analyses following a retrospective study of a registry database with data from 33 medical cannabis evaluation clinics in the US, owned and operated by CB2 Insights. This study narrowed the dataset to include patients from five states with the largest samples: Massachusetts (n = 27,892), Colorado (n = 16,434), Maine (n = 4591), Connecticut (n = 2643), and Maryland (n = 2403) to conduct an in-depth study of the characteristics of patients accessing medical cannabis in these states, including analysis of variance to compare average ages and number of conditions and chi-squared tests to compare proportions of patient characteristics between states. RESULTS: Average ages varied between the states, with the youngest average in Connecticut (42.2) and the oldest in Massachusetts (47.0). Males represented approximately 60% of the patients with data on gender in each state. The majority of patients in each state had cannabis experience prior to seeking medical certification. Primary medical conditions varied for each state, with chronic pain, anxiety, and back and neck problems topping the list in varying orders for Massachusetts, Maine, and Maryland. Colorado had 78.7% of patients report chronic pain as their primary condition, and 70.4% of patients in Connecticut reported post-traumatic stress disorder as their primary medical condition. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated the significant impact that policy has on patients’ access to medical cannabis in Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, Connecticut, and Maryland utilizing real-world data. It highlights how qualifications differ between the five states and brings into question the routes through which patients in states with stricter regulations surrounding eligible conditions choose to seek treatment with cannabis. These patients may turn to alternative treatments, or to the illicit or recreational cannabis markets, where permitted. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42238-021-00075-z. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8161659 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81616592021-06-01 Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study Mahabir, V. Kishan Smith, Christopher S. Vannabouathong, Christopher Merchant, Jamil J. Garibaldi, Alisha L. J Cannabis Res Original Research BACKGROUND: US states have been adopting their own medical cannabis laws since 1996. There is substantial variability in the medical cannabis programs between states, and these differences have not been thoroughly investigated in the literature. The objective of the study was to compare medical cannabis patient characteristics across five states to identify differences potentially caused by differing policies surrounding condition eligibility. METHODS: We conducted secondary analyses following a retrospective study of a registry database with data from 33 medical cannabis evaluation clinics in the US, owned and operated by CB2 Insights. This study narrowed the dataset to include patients from five states with the largest samples: Massachusetts (n = 27,892), Colorado (n = 16,434), Maine (n = 4591), Connecticut (n = 2643), and Maryland (n = 2403) to conduct an in-depth study of the characteristics of patients accessing medical cannabis in these states, including analysis of variance to compare average ages and number of conditions and chi-squared tests to compare proportions of patient characteristics between states. RESULTS: Average ages varied between the states, with the youngest average in Connecticut (42.2) and the oldest in Massachusetts (47.0). Males represented approximately 60% of the patients with data on gender in each state. The majority of patients in each state had cannabis experience prior to seeking medical certification. Primary medical conditions varied for each state, with chronic pain, anxiety, and back and neck problems topping the list in varying orders for Massachusetts, Maine, and Maryland. Colorado had 78.7% of patients report chronic pain as their primary condition, and 70.4% of patients in Connecticut reported post-traumatic stress disorder as their primary medical condition. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated the significant impact that policy has on patients’ access to medical cannabis in Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, Connecticut, and Maryland utilizing real-world data. It highlights how qualifications differ between the five states and brings into question the routes through which patients in states with stricter regulations surrounding eligible conditions choose to seek treatment with cannabis. These patients may turn to alternative treatments, or to the illicit or recreational cannabis markets, where permitted. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42238-021-00075-z. BioMed Central 2021-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8161659/ /pubmed/34044878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42238-021-00075-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Original Research Mahabir, V. Kishan Smith, Christopher S. Vannabouathong, Christopher Merchant, Jamil J. Garibaldi, Alisha L. Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study |
title | Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study |
title_full | Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study |
title_fullStr | Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study |
title_full_unstemmed | Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study |
title_short | Comparing medical cannabis use in 5 US states: a retrospective database study |
title_sort | comparing medical cannabis use in 5 us states: a retrospective database study |
topic | Original Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8161659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34044878 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42238-021-00075-z |
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