Johns Hopkins Researchers to Track 10,000 Medical Cannabis Patients 

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are set to track 10,000 medical cannabis patients across the U.S. at length to better understand cannabis medicine. The study, which is supported by a $10 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), aims to inform clinicians about the efficacy of medical cannabis.

Ryan Vandrey, one of the creators of the Johns Hopkins Cannabis and Health Research Initiative and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said that while cannabis is available “as a therapeutic” in the majority of U.S. states, “we’re lacking the quality of data that we have with other medicines.”

“Our mission with this research is to understand the health impacts of therapeutic cannabis use. We hope to provide some starting points for understanding what types of products may or may not be helpful and what types of products may be more risky for use in certain populations or for certain therapeutic purposes.” — Vandrey, in a press release

Johannes Thrul, associate professor of mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and collaborator on the project, said the researchers will follow the 10,000 patients as they start as new patients through a year or more of medical cannabis use.

“We’re tracking them with multiple assessments over the course of their first year with more tightly spaced assessments toward the beginning because our assumption is that as people are starting their medical cannabis journey, they’re likely going to try different products until they find the products that best help them with their symptoms,” Thrul said.