Paris: People with psychiatric disorders may want to pass on the joint — at least until further research is done, a new Australian study suggests. The paper, published Monday in The Lancet Psychiatry, looked at 83 previous studies conducted over almost four decades on medical cannabinoids, including products from the cannabis plant, such as leaves, buds and oils.
The authors found little evidence that the products were safe and effective in treating six common disorders: depression, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis. Cannabis and cannabinoids are increasingly being made available for medicinal use in North America, Britain and Australia without undergoing standard testing, lead author Louisa Degenhardt told AFP.
“One of the most striking things about the spread of legislation in multiple countries permitting cannabis/cannabinoids for medicinal purposes is that this is in many instances happening outside of the regulatory frameworks that medicine development typically occurs within,” said Degenhardt, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
The study found that after chronic non-cancer pain, mental health is one of the most common reasons for using medicinal cannabinoids. But no reviews have considered the varying effects of the different types of cannabinoids or their safety, and the only studies into long-term effects were conducted on individuals using cannabis for recreational use.
—AFP
