What Does the Future Hold for Marijuana for Pain?
By Bill H. McCarberg, M.D. Millions of people in the United States suffer from chronic pain, and much of that suffering cannot be relieved adequately by existing treatments. Patients are in desperate need of new pain management approaches. Cannabinoid medicines appear very promising, although the subject often is obscured by controversy, prejudice, and confusion in part because cannabinoids have some relation to the cannabis plant — also known by the slang term marijuana. What scientific reasons do doctors have to think that cannabinoids actually work? Do they provide genuine symptom improvement, or do patients become intoxicated and merely think that their symptoms are reduced? Basic research conducted over the past 20 years provides us with many answers. In the early 1990s, researchers identified the cannabinoid receptor system. This system is found in some of the most primitive animal forms on earth — it is also the most widespread receptor system in the human body. The cannabinoid
