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Keith Humphreys, PhD, Esther Ting Memorial Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, Professor of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, stated the following in their Feb. 1, 2019 viewpoint article titled "Should Physicians Recommend Replacing Opioids with Cannabis?," available at jamanetwork.com:

“Recent state regulations (eg, in New York, Illinois) allow medical cannabis as a substitute for opioids for chronic pain and for addiction. Yet… substituting cannabis for opioid addiction treatments is potentially harmful. Neither recommendation meets the standards of rigor desirable for medical treatment decisions…

To date, no prospective evidence, either from clinical trials or observational studies, has demonstrated any benefit of treating patients who have opioid addiction with cannabis…

Without convincing evidence of efficacy of cannabis for this indication, it would be irresponsible for medicine to exacerbate this problem by encouraging patients with opioid addiction to stop taking these medications and to rely instead on unproven cannabis treatment.”

Feb. 1, 2019