Medical Marijuana: What You Need to Know

What is medical marijuana?

Marijuana, also called cannabis and quite a few other names, is a plant grown around the world that has been used in herbal remedies for centuries. There are a number of biologically active compounds in marijuana, which are called cannabinoids. The two most-studied compounds in marijuana are:

- delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which causes marijuana’s high

- cannabidiol (CBD), which doesn’t cause a high

Each cannabinoid offers different benefits. Many people diagnosed with cancer feel that CBD is better at controlling pain than THC.

While marijuana is federally illegal in the United States, more than half of the states, as well as the District of Columbia, have passed laws legalizing the use of marijuana to treat certain medical conditions.

So medical marijuana means using marijuana or its cannabinoids for medicinal purposes.

What conditions is medical marijuana used for?

It’s extremely important to know that marijuana is not a treatment for breast cancer. People use marijuana to ease the side effects of treatment and pain caused by the cancer.

Still, because marijuana is federally illegal, research on marijuana to manage cancer treatment side effects is limited.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that marijuana may ease:

- pain

- nausea/vomiting

- hot flashes

- loss of appetite

- anxiety

- insomnia

caused by a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

“It’s important for people to know that anything they ingest that produces a change in their bodies is acting like a drug, and it has the potential for side effects, interactions with other drugs, as well as benefits,” said Virginia F. Borges, M.D., MMSc., professor of medicine and director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at the University of Colorado Cancer Center. She specializes in treating young women diagnosed with breast cancer. “People have to be as diligent about researching medical marijuana as they would be with any other supplement or drug they were taking. The hard reality is that because marijuana is illegal at the federal level, your treating doctor, who works under federal guidelines, isn’t going to be your primary source for information on this topic. Your doctor will only be able to report what she or he has observed in patients, and that may be very limited information depending on where you live.”

Because marijuana has been legal for both medical and recreational use in Colorado for a number of years, Dr. Borges has a number of breast cancer patients who use or have used medical marijuana to ease treatment side effects.

“I’ve mainly seen it used in conjunction with prescription drugs to control pain and other side effects in patients living with metastatic disease,” she said. “It’s rare that a person living with metastatic breast cancer would have only one side effect to manage. So, by adding in medical marijuana, it often allows me to cut back on the number of drugs I prescribe. With a high-quality source for medical marijuana and knowing how it affects an individual, using medical marijuana can put more control back in the hands of my patient. If someone is feeling good, she may only need to take one or two drops per day. If she’s not feeling good, she may need three or four drops per day. Many of the prescription drugs don’t have this flexibility. Any time you can give control back to a person when their living with cancer, it’s a good thing.”