"Study Discover The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids"

In March 2016, the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) was asked to convene a committee of experts to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature regarding the health effects of using cannabis and/or its constituents that had appeared since the publication of the 1999 IOM report Marijuana and Medicine. 

-The resulting Committee on the Health Effects of Marijuana consisted of 16 experts in the areas of marijuana, addiction, oncology, cardiology, neurodevelopment, respiratory disease, pediatric and adolescent health, immunology, toxicology, preclinical research, epidemiology, systematic review, and public health.


Given the large scientific literature on cannabis, the breadth of the statement of task, and the time constraints of the study, the committee developed an approach that resulted in giving primacy to recently published systematic reviews (since 2011) and high-quality primary research for 11 groups of health endpoints. For each health endpoint, systematic reviews were identified and assessed for quality using published criteria. Only fair- and good-quality reviews were considered by the committee. 


The committee's conclusions are based on the findings from the most recently published systematic review and all relevant fair- and good-quality primary research published after the systematic review.From their review, the committee arrived at nearly 100 different research conclusions related to cannabis or cannabinoid use and health.

-The Study...

The health conditions reviewed in this study is chronic pain, cancer, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, anorexia and weight loss associated with HIV, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, spasticity, Tourette syndrome, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, dystonia, dementia, glaucoma, traumatic brain injury, addiction, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia and other psychoses. The committee has formed a number of research conclusions related to these health endpoints.

-The Results...

We found conclusive or substantial evidence for benefit from cannabis or cannabinoids for chronic pain, cancer, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, anorexia and weight loss associated with HIV, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, spasticity, Tourette syndrome, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, dystonia, dementia, glaucoma, traumatic brain injury, addiction, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder,schizophrenia and other psychoses

The potential efficacy of cannabinoids for several of these conditions, such as epilepsy and posttraumatic stress disorder, should be prioritized, given the substantial number of persons using cannabis for those conditions

The Hole Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/