An estimated six in ten US adults believe that the home cultivation of cannabis for one’s personal use should be legally permissible, according to nationwide survey data compiled by Harris Polling on behalf of European cannabis company Royal Queen Seeds.

Among those respondents who consume cannabis, 81 percent support home cultivation rights. Sixty-two percent say that they would prefer to grow their own marijuana rather than buy it from retailers.

Of the 24 states that have legalized the adult-use marijuana market, only three states maintain criminal prohibitions on home cultivation.

NORML has long supported the rights of patients and others to grow personal use quantities of cannabis at home, arguing that the practice provides consumers with an affordable alternative to the retail marketplace.

Additional information is available from the NORML Fact Sheet, ‘Core Attributes of Adult Access Regulations.’ Additional polling data is available from NORML.

Patients authorized to use medical cannabis products report decreasing their use of opioids, alcohol, tobacco, and other substances, according to a data analysis published in the journal Cannabis.

Investigators surveyed 2,697 Canadian medical cannabis registrants. The mean age of participants was 54.3 years of age.

Consistent with other surveys, respondents frequently reported substituting cannabis in lieu of other substances.

Among those respondents prescribed opioids, 54 percent said that they had reduced their intake over the past year. Among those taking other medications, just under one-third said that they had decreased their use.

Of those respondents who reported consuming alcohol, 38 percent reported reducing their use. About one in four respondents who consumed tobacco products said that they had reduced their use. “Given the significant rates of morbidity and mortality associated with both alcohol and/or tobacco/nicotine use in Canada and around the globe, the … reported reduction in use in the present study may represent a significant public health impact,” the study’s authors wrote.

They concluded: “Our data suggests that transitions towards higher risk substance use patterns are unlikely to be exacerbated by the use of medical cannabis. … Use of medical cannabis was associated with symptom improvement and meaningful reductions in the use of prescription opioids and non-opioids, unregulated drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. … Overall, our results highlight that older patients represent an increasingly important subset of the medical cannabis population whose unique needs and patterns of use warrant further investigation.”

Commenting on the study’s conclusions, NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano said: “These findings belie that claim that cannabis is a so-called ‘gateway drug’ and reinforces the notion that, for many individuals and for patients especially, it acts as a exit drug. As legal access continues to expand, one would expect the cannabis substitution effect to grow even more pronounced in the future.”

The full text of the study, “Age-related patterns of medical cannabis use: A survey of authorized patients in Canada,” is available from The Research Society on Marijuana. Additional information is available from the NORML Fact Sheet, “Marijuana and the ‘Gateway Theory.’”

Patients suffering from chronic health conditions, particularly chronic pain, report improvements in their mental health following the adoption of medical marijuana access laws, according to data published in the journal Health Economics, Policy, and Law.

Researchers from Switzerland and the United Kingdom assessed the relationship between state-level medical marijuana laws and patients’ self-reported mental health over a 26-year period (1993-2018).

Investigators reported, “Eased access to marijuana through medical marijuana laws reduce the reported number of days with poor mental health for individuals [who] consume marijuana for medical purposes and for those individuals who likely suffer from frequent pain.”

State laws permitting patients to home-cultivate medical cannabis and allowing its use for a wide range of pain conditions were associated with the most significant improvements.

The study’s authors concluded: “Overall, our results are in line with the hypothesis that MMLs [medical marijuana laws] benefit those individuals for whom they are nominally designed without systematically harming other groups.”

Full text of the study, “Marijuana laws and mental health in the United States,” appears in Health Economics, Policy, and Law. Additional information on the use of cannabis for chronic pain is available from NORML’s publication, Clinical Applications for Cannabis and Cannabinoids.