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Pain Management And Cannabis Introduction

Cannabis for Pain The status and use of marijuana in the United States has taken some rather circuitous and different paths. For many years, the dealing or possession of cannabis in any form has been a ticket or a trip to jail for many people. To this very day, marijuana and cannabis remain Schedule I drugs, meaning that they have "no medical use" and thus should never be possessed or used by anyone. However, the legalization of cannabis in many states, sometimes even for recreational uses, and the corresponding permissiveness from the federal government as well as medical trials and tests relating to cannabis have shown that the tide is starting to turn when it comes to the perceptions and reactions to cannabis and legitimate uses that may exist. One such use is for pain.

Statement of the Problem

One significant reason why the studying of cannabis for pain management has come to light is that it can serve as supplement or even a replacement for opioids. Given the addictive properties of opioids and the destruction that is left from such addiction, this has become a clarion call to study and implement the use of cannabis as a means to mitigate or even prevent addiction to opioids. Just a few examples of diseases and disorders that are in play here include non-cancerous chronic pain conditions and pelvic pain in men (Tripp et al., 2014; Degenhardt et al., 2015)

Research Questions

Given the background and introduction that has been covered thus far, the research questions surrounding the study to be completed are as follows:

• In what situations can cannabis...

For example, if there is a pool of one hundred people that suffer from the pain of fibromyalgia, half of the group could be given the cannabis treatment while the other half could be given the opioid treatment. After a round of treatment and drug administration, the positive and negative effects of each group over the same period of time but with the different drugs can be compared and contrasted. Ergo, the fibromyalgia (or whatever disorder is being studied) would be the dependent variable whereas the drug used (cannabis or opioids) would be the independent variables. It would be assessed to what manner and degree each of the independent variables (the drugs . . . cannabis or opioids) affect and change the dependent variable (fibromyalgia). If one does better than the other in terms of treatment, then this would tend…

Sources used in this document:
Wilsey, B., Marcotte, T. D., Deutsch, R., Zhao, H., Prasad, H., & Phan, A. (2016). An exploratory human laboratory experiment evaluating vaporized cannabis in the treatment of neuropathic pain from spinal cord injury and disease. The Journal of Pain, 17(9), 982-1000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2016.05.010

Wilsey, B., Marcotte, T., Deutsch, R., Gouaux, B., Sakai, S., & Donaghe, H. (2013). Low-dose vaporized Cannabis significantly improves neuropathic pain. The Journal of Pain, 14(2), 136-148. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2012.10.009

Zajicek, J. P., Hobart, J. C., Slade, A., Barnes, D., & Mattison, P. G. (2012, November). Multiple Sclerosis and extract of cannabis: Results of the MUSEC trial. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 83, 1125-1132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jnnp-2012-302468
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