Pot's Potential Against Cancer Isn't Just Fighting Symptoms

Cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes for some time, providing relief from pain, insomnia, anxiety, and nausea. Now, scientists say that pot shows promise in fighting the big "C" itself. The Guardian reports on the largest-ever study on using medical marijuana to treat cancer, with "overwhelming scientific support" for pot's potential to alleviate symptoms, as well as to mitigate the progression of the disease itself. "Our goal was to determine the scientific consensus on the topic of medical cannabis, a field that has long been dominated by a war between cherry-picked studies," says Ryan Castle, research director at the Whole Health Oncology Institute and lead author of the new study published Monday in the Frontiers in Oncology journal.

The huge meta-study reviewed more than 10,000 peer-reviewed studies on the matter using AI-driven "sentiment analysis," which looked to see whether each study had a negative, positive, or neutral conclusion on how cannabis could be used to treat cancer and its symptoms. Castle and his team figured they'd find "a moderate consensus" on using cannabis to treat cancer, expecting a "best-case scenario" of about 55% of the studies suggesting a positive correlation. Instead, that figure was more like 75%, Castle notes, calling that level "shocking." "That 3:1 ratio—especially in a field as rigorous as biomedical research—isn't just unusual, it's extraordinary," notes a release.

Researchers found there was especially support for cannabis use in treating some of the symptoms of various cancers, including nausea, appetite loss, and inflammation. The Guardian notes that, "perhaps more surprisingly, it also showed that cannabis has the potential to fight cancer cells themselves, by killing them and stopping their spread." "This is one of the clearest, most dramatic validations of medical cannabis in cancer care that the scientific community has ever seen," Castle notes in the release. He and his crew hope that this study will also help to spur the DEA to reclassify cannabis so it's no longer an illegal Schedule 1 narcotic—a fact that has stymied clinical research on cannabis used for cancer patients. (More medical marijuana stories.)