Despite the fact that the Drug Enforcement Agency categorizes marijuana as a schedule I drug, one that has no accepted medical use, a majority of Americans have thought medical pot should be legal since the late 1990s — and a majority now support recreational legalization as well. 29 states have legalized medical marijuana – that number is 43 states if we count laws with very limited access. Even the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse lists medical uses for cannabis. But even though researchers have identified some fascinating potential benefits of medical marijuana so far, it’s something that’s still hard to study, making conclusive results tough to come by. The schedule I classification means it’s hard for researchers to get their hands on pot grown to the exacting standards that are necessary for Florida marijuana doctors and medical research, even in states where it’s legal. Plus, no researcher can even try to make an FDA-approved cannabis product while it has that DEA classification, which removes some motivation to study the plant. More research would identify health benefits more clearly and would also help clarify potential dangers such as with any psychoactive substance, there are risks associated with abuse, including dependency and emotional issues. And many doctors want to understand marijuana’s effects better before deciding whether to recommend it or not. There’s a fair amount of evidence that marijuana does no harm to the lungs, unless you also smoke tobacco, and one study published in Journal of the American Medical Association found that marijuana not only doesn’t impair lung function, it may even increase lung capacity. Researchers and marijuana doctors in Florida looking for risk factors of heart disease tested the lung function of 5,115 young adults over the course of 20 years. Tobacco smokers lost lung function over time, but pot users actually showed an increase in lung capacity. It’s possible that the increased lung capacity may be due to taking a deep breaths while inhaling the drug and not from a therapeutic chemical in the drug. Those smokers only toked up a few times a month, but a more recent survey of people who smoked pot daily for up to 20 years found no evidence that smoking pot harmed their lungs. With that caveat about research in mind, here are the medical benefits of marijuana. Marijuana use can prevent epileptic seizures in rats, a 2003 study showed. A professor gave marijuana extract and synthetic marijuana to epileptic rats. The drugs rid the rats of the seizures for about 10 hours. Cannabinoids like the active ingredients in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (also known as THC), control seizures by binding to the brain cells responsible for controlling excitability and regulating relaxation. The findings were published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. During the research for his documentary interviewed the Figi family, who treats their daughter using a medical marijuana strain high in cannabidiol and low in THC. There are at least two major active chemicals in marijuana that researchers think have medicinal applications (there are up to 79 known active compounds). Those two are cannabidiol (CBD) — which seems to impact the brain mostly without a high— and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — which has pain relieving (and other) properties. The Figi family’s daughter, Charlotte, has Dravet Syndrome, which causes seizures and severe developmental delays. According to the film, the drug has decreased her seizures from 300 a week to just one every seven days. Forty other children in the state are using the same strain of marijuana (which is high in CBD and low in THC) to treat their seizures — and it seems to be working. The doctors who recommended this treatment say that the cannabidiol in the plant interacts with the brain cells to quiet the excessive activity in the brain that causes these seizures. As Gutpa notes, a Florida hospital that specializes in the disorder, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Drug Enforcement agency don’t endorse marijuana as a treatment for Dravet or other seizure disorders. CBD may also help prevent cancer from spreading, researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco reported in 2007. Cannabidiol stops cancer by turning off a gene called Id-1, the study, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, found. Cancer cells make more copies of this gene than non-cancerous cells, and it helps them spread through the body. The researchers studied breast cancer cells in the lab that had high expression levels of Id-1 and treated them with cannabidiol. After treatment the cells had decreased Id-1 expression and were less aggressive spreaders. But beware: these are studies on cancer cells in the lab, not on cancer patients.  Other very preliminary studies on aggressive brain tumors in mice or cell cultures have shown that florida medical marijauna THC and CBD can slow or shrink tumors at the right dose, which is a great reason to do more research into figuring out that dose. One 2014 study found that marijuana can significantly show the growth of the type of brain tumor associated with 80% of malignant brain cancer in people. Medical marijuana users claim the drug helps relieve pain and suppress nausea — the two main reasons it’s often used to relieve the side effects of chemotherapy. Researchers at Harvard Medical School suggested that that some of the drug’s benefits may actually be from reduced anxiety, which would improve the smoker’s mood and act as a sedative in low doses. Published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, found that THC, the active chemical in marijuana, slows the formation of amyloid plaques by blocking the enzyme in the brain that makes them. These plaques seem to be what kill brain cells and potentially cause Alzheimer’s. A synthetic mixture of CBD and THC seem to preserve memory in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Another study suggested that in population-based studies, a THC-based prescription drug called dronabinol was able to reduce behavioral disturbances in dementia patients. Get Started.

Medical Marijuana and relaxation have always had a bit of a funny relationship.

On the one hand, nearly half of cannabis users say that their goal is to relax. Yet many people are also familiar with the marijuana freak-out, or have seen a paranoid friend disappear from a party because they “just can’t handle it, it’s too much, man.”

So what gives? The simple answer is that feelings of panic probably mean someone has had too much — especially if they pulled and ate an edible without knowing what they were getting into.

Knowing how much is too much can be hard said one medical marijuana doctor in florida, and a new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence shows just how easy it is to overshoot the target. The study investigates the amount of cannabis that can push someone from relaxed to anxious, and suggests that the quantity that helps people relax is actually pretty small. 

Marijuana is dose dependent — the more someone uses, the stronger the effects. To figure out the ideal quantity for promoting relaxation, the researchers selected 42 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 40, all of whom were familiar with cannabis but not daily users. They split them into three groups, giving either a low dose (7.5 milligrams of THC, the cannabinoid in marijuana that’s mostly responsible for the high), high dose (12.5 mg), or placebo dose.

We found that THC at low doses reduced stress, while higher doses had the opposite effect, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University and an author of the study, said in a press release.

People on the low dose reported being more relaxed than those on the placebo, and their stress levels dissipated more quickly after the tasks. But people on the high doses paused more in the job interview and reported the tasks to be stressful, challenging, and threatening.

Those differences, however, were just in how people perceived the events. Physical stress markers like heart rate, blood pressure, and hormone levels were equal for all groups.

“The doses used in the study produce effects that are equivalent to only a few puffs of a cannabis cigarette. In other words, a few hits of a joint or bowl is enough to hit the low dose. And just a few more hits could easily bring THC levels in line with the “high” dose.

As a writer of the Post notes, The Cannabist has calculated the amount of THC people get from an average joint. According to Florida medical marijuana doctors and a study cited in their analysis, an average joint weighs about .32 grams. They say that smoking half of that would give users 9 to 11 mg of THC, assuming that about the same amount of THC would just burn off. That’s right in between the “low” and “high” doses used in the study.

The Cannabist’s formula multiples the weight of the joint by the THC potency of marijuana to tell you how much THC you’d ingest. So in a .32 g joint with a 13% potency, you’ve got about 42 mg of THC. The low 7.5 mg dose from the study would therefore be 18% of that joint, and the high 12.5 mg dose would be about 30% of it. (It’s worth noting, however, that exact calculations are hard since some will always burn off. Plus, some joints are a lot bigger, with another commonly cited average being about .75 grams.)

There’s a long list of caveats to the results of this study, however.

First, the sample size was relatively small and therefore not representative of how everyone might react. People with more experience are more likely to tolerate a higher dose without getting nervous, and we also know that the mode of marijuana ingestion affects the high. (An edible high isn’t the same as a smoked or vaporized high.)

Differences between marijuana plants further complicate things, since samples can vary dramatically and the stuff sold legally in state stores is usually far stronger than anything used in research studies.

Additionally, the tasks that the study participants were doing may have been particularly anxiety-provoking — so using cannabis in an easier setting may mean a stronger dose would be associated with less anxiety. 

And finally, the study evaluated the effects of pure THC, but this may not give a full picture of how marijuana affects users. Other cannabinoids in florida medical marijuana, particularly cannabidiol (CBD), may have soothing effects that reduce anxiety and may assuage some of effects of pure THC.

Lingering questions aside, this research does demonstrate a couple of things. For one, it’s easy to cross the line from the relaxing amount of marijuana to too much. And two, a lot more research on marijuana’s anxiety-reducing effects is needed (something that scientists who study marijuana frequently point out).

“Studies like these — examining the effects of cannabis and its pharmacological constituents under controlled conditions — are extremely important, considering the widespread use of cannabis for both medical and non-medical purposes. Unfortunately, significant regulatory obstacles make it extremely difficult to conduct this type of research.”

How Much Do Researchers Really Know About Medical Marijuana You Ask?

As of last December, more than 30% of Americans live in states that have voted to legalize recreational marijuana use. A majority live in states that allow access to medical marijuana.

In many states, cannabis consumers can attend dinners, where multiple varieties of weed are paired with chef-prepared gourmet meals. In New York — a state with a relatively strict medical marijuana law — 98-year-olds like Ruth rely on cannabis oil to soothe the debilitating pains of neuropathy. Weed’s more legally accessible now than it has been since the Reefer as well as others. The varieties available now, created with the aid of modern botany and chemistry, are unparalleled in history.

With that in mind you might think that scientific researchers would have a pretty good handle on exactly how regular or casual marijuana use affects humans, how medical marijuana should be best used, and what potential risks there may be to cannabis use.

But if you thought that the recent warming towards marijuana is fully backed by scientific understanding, you might be surprised.

“There are so many basic questions that need to be addressed,” says Ryan, an associate professor of psychiatry who researches marijuana at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “The practical use and legalization of these things is happening faster than the science can keep up.”

A number of other experts say that even though we know far more about marijuana than we did just a few decades ago, there are important topics — ranging from questions about how marijuana affects the brains of different users to questions about how to make use of medical cannabis — where the legal policy has far outpaced the science. It’s not about being anti- or pro-marijuana industry, it’s simply that scientists want to know more — especially now, when it’s such an important topic because of the wave of legalization.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) considers marijuana a drug with no medical value, so it’s hard to get approval to research it and impossible to study the cannabis products most people use, since researchers can only give study participants cannabis grown at DEA-approved facilities. “It’s pretty amazing” that we have so many unanswered questions, says Staci, an associate professor of psychiatry at Medical School and director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery program. “Its not new, it’s been around for thousands and thousands of years, it’s not like we just made this in a lab.” 

Many of the most common inquiries fit into three categories: questions about how recreational marijuana will affect users both young and old; questions about how medical marijuana affects patients; and questions about the marijuana plant itself.

And while marijuana is still distressingly hard to research, there are a number of ongoing studies that should help answer some of the most pressing questions.

Here’s what we’re learning from that research and what we still need to know.

The cannabis plant itself is a fascinating organism, one that humanity has used for thousands of years for reasons ranging from religious rituals to performance enhancement to just plain partying.

But within that plant there are somewhere around 400 chemical compounds, more than 60 of which are special compounds known as cannabinoids. These bond with a relatively recently discovered system in our brain that interacts with naturally-produced cannabinoids which is now being used by marijuana doctors in florida and other states around the country. In every animal, these natural (endogenous) cannabinoids play multiple roles, affecting mood, appetite, memory, consciousness, pain response, blood pressure, and more. The cannabinoids from marijuana tap into that same system, which is why the plant has such wide-ranging effects.

We’re pretty far from fully understanding how that system works and even further from understanding all the compounds in marijuana. The most famous cannabinoid, THC, is largely responsible for marijuana’s ability to get users high. Cannabidiol, CBD, is the next best known — it seems to be important for Florida marijuana doctors and many medical uses of marijuana. But those are still just two components of the plant. “We know a lot about THC and we’re starting to learn about CBD. “Out of about 400 compounds we know a decent amount about two.” That means there’s a lot to learn about which compounds might contribute to psychoactive effects and which might potentially have medical uses.

Further complicating this question is the fact that growers create numerous strains of cannabis with different characteristics. We see this most frequently now with high THC strains of marijuana. The data on this isn’t perfect, but it is true you can get stronger pot now than ever before, largely because of innovations in growing practices. About 20 years ago, a high THC concentration might have been 10 or 12%. In legal shops in Colorado and Washington now, it’s not hard to find concentrations of 18, 24, or even 30% THC.

Every tweak is going to change the health effects of the plant. High THC plants tend to have low CBD, for example, according to an associate professor of psychology and director of the Brain Imaging and Neuropsychology Lab. In general, THC potency keeps going up. Shesays this could be worrisome, since there is some research indicating that some of the brain changes seen in heavy marijuana smokers are not present in smokers who smoke higher CBD, lower THC strains. This could make the trend away from CBD a negative for some medical users.

Many wonder what will happen when THC concentration “goes up to 40,50, 60%.” People consume THC at those levels in some concentrated forms of cannabis, but we don’t know if that sort of consumption carries additional health risks or not. On the one hand, high potency stuff may be worse for cognition, but on the other, He says she’s had people tell her they smoke less when they use more concentrated products.

When it comes to marijuana, millions of people are using different types of cannabis products for supposedly therapeutic purposes. Different, strains, different concentrations, all consumed in different ways. He is studying the how different ways of consuming marijuana — orally, smoking, vaping — all affect the body. And while he says that not all of his work can be talked about yet, we do know that the mode of ingestion makes a big difference for how people feel the effects and how they manifest themselves.

Many substances might fall under the medical cannabis umbrella, but depending on their specific cannabinoid content and the means through which they are ingested, they’re going to have different effects. All those people using products for therapeutic purposes are “lacking information about which types of products to choose, what doses to use, and how cannabis compares to other medications,” according to Vandrey.

We do know that marijuana has legitimate medical uses — a recent report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine found a number of ways in which marijuana seems to be medically effective. But the report also noted that a lot more information about how marijuana and its various components affect users is needed.

At present, that’s hard to study. The marijuana that researchers can give people for experiments has to come from approved facilities and tends to be far weaker than what people actually use. A researcher in Colorado can walk into a store and buy marijuana but they can’t get approval to give that product to participants in a study.

Partially because of that, it’s even hard to measure what’s in these products. There’s no one approved system for testing cannabis products, so people running two different tests on marijuana samples might get different results. Those results might vary even more if they use a test meant for conventional marijuana (flower) on an edible. For those who really want to better understand the plant and to see how to use it most effectively to help people in a medical context, that’s a real problem.

Onething that’s absolutely critical is the development of standards around product manufacturing and labeling.

Some states have started to require that marijuana products be tested for potency and to make sure they are free of contaminants-Colorado, Nevada, Washington and Florida Medical Marijuana have rules that recreational and medical products be tested and Washington started to require testing after approving recreational marijuana, for example. However, it’s not clear that a fully accurate means of testing cannabis products exists yet.