Dr. Patricia Halligan and Dr. Laurence Westreich discuss whether (or not) cannabis actually has medical uses.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Patricia Halligan:
Does cannabis have some medical uses?
Dr. Laurence Westreich:
Experts in the field of medical use of cannabis tell me yes. My understanding is that there's FDA approval for treating some pediatric seizures, that there is some benefit for pain syndromes. There's certainly benefit for nausea related to chemotherapy. And those are pretty convincing data sets, I'm told. I'm not an expert in that. But the other things that it's touted for really have no data behind them. For instance, the psychiatric disorders. There's a lot of study being done about PTSD and about anxiety with THC. And if I see multiple randomized studies that are replicated, I'll believe it. Before that, I wouldn't recommend a unregulated substance for the use of any of those conditions because I think they're serious conditions. And that being said, I see people who have serious problems with THC. So if there are people out there who are well treated, they're not coming to my office,
Dr. Patricia Halligan:
They're not coming to mine either. And I make people mad all the time. They come to me and say, "Please give me a card for medical marijuana for my PTSD, for my anxiety, for my depression. And I rely on the statement, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) statement of 2019. And they basically say that there's not enough evidence to support using cannabis to treat any psychiatric condition. And the APA does not recognize cannabis as medicine at this point. So I think to your point, they are looking for more in-depth research that's convincing. And the APA actually says, in fact, cannabis typically makes psychiatric conditions worse.
Dr. Laurence Westreich:
Absolutely there there's a association between heavy cannabis use in first breaks of schizophrenia. So I certainly wouldn't recommend it for the treatment of any condition. But I only treat psychiatric conditions. So there we are.
Dr. Laurence Westreich Bio:
Laurence M. Westreich, M.D. is a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of patients diagnosed with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs).
Dr. Westreich completed a residency in Psychiatry at New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center and a two-year fellowship in addiction psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital. He is board–certified in general psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry.
Dr. Westreich is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, and the author of Helping the Addict you Love (Simon and Schuster, 2007), and A Parent’s Guide to Teen Addiction (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017). Dr. Westreich is Past President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and serves as Consultant on Behavioral Health and Addiction to the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
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