Health Conditions Treated With Medical Cannabis

Right now in the United States, there are 25 states plus Washington D.C. that have legalized medical cannabis. And that number is likely to continue growing as more and more states consider making changes to their marijuana laws. Even though it hasn’t been legalized in every state yet, there’s been enough medical cannabis activity for us to start seeing what the medical marijuana landscape looks like for certain health conditions.

There have been a couple of important surveys this year that have shed light on how patients are using medical cannabis. The first survey was taken by Hello MD and was published in January. This one was sent out to 17,000 medical marijuana patients. 1,400 of them responded.

The second survey was published more recently by Marijuana Business Daily. It used data from patients in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon. These are the only states that publicly release this kind of data.

Using these surveys, here are the health conditions most frequently being treated with medical cannabis.

Top 10 Health Conditions Treated With Medical Cannabis

Of course, there are a ton of other things being treated as well. These include conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, menstrual pains, and Multiple Sclerosis.

Challenges For Medical Cannabis Patients

The above list shows that there’s a broad range of health conditions currently being treated with cannabis. Despite all this, there are still some serious challenges facing the medical marijuana community.

The most obvious one is that medical cannabis still isn’t legal in every state. It depends on where you happen to live. And that’s why there have been waves of people moving to states with legal medical cannabis. Individuals who travel to places in search of medical marijuana have been nicknamed “marijuana refugees.”

But the other big problem facing medical cannabis patients is that not all health conditions can be treated with cannabis. Most states with medical marijuana programs have limited lists of conditions that qualify for medical marijuana. And if you’re illness isn’t on the list you won’t be able to use it.

The good news is that a lot of states have started adding conditions to their lists of qualifying illnesses. For example, las month New Jersey added PTSD to its list of qualify health conditions.

But the fact remains that most medical marijuana states haven’t made cannabis accessible to any and all health conditions. And that limits the degree to which people can use cannabis for medical reasons.

Beyond all that, there are also restrictions that can make it hard for researchers to study medical cannabis. And some states only let patients use particular types of medical cannabis products. In New York, for example, patients can only get certain types of extracts, and they’re not allowed to use smokable marijuana.

The Final Hit

As revealed by patient surveys, medical cannabis is currently being used to treat a wide range of health conditions. There are still legal challenges that stand in the way of a more widespread use of medicinal cannabis.