From Pharmaceuticals to Cannabis

Why are people making the change from prescribed pharmaceuticals to cannabis? First look at the numbers between the two. The CDC National Center for Health Statistics said that between 2015-2018, 48.6% of people in the United States were using at least one prescription medication in the past 30 days. According to the World Health Organization, about 147 million people consume cannabis. That is around 2.5% of the world’s total population. Here in 2022, that number has grown to 209 million according to the UN 2022 World Drug Report. Today over half of the United States have some sort of medical or recreational cannabis law in place.

Someone who has a wealth of knowledge in making the switch from prescribed pharmaceuticals to cannabis is Krystal Johnson. Krystal has been dealing with a lifelong disease known as Von Willebrand’s disease. This disease causes low levels of a specific protein factor that clots the blood. Most people would recognize this as Hemophilia. Krystal describes the pain as excruciating, resulting from bleeding joints that cause swelling and discomfort.

Krystal was prescribed addictive medications like Percocet and Soma to help with her daily pain. Medications like Percocet have been known for their role in the opioid epidemic and the long list of side effects prescription medications like this can cause.

Krystal Johnson said, “Before I started using cannabis to mitigate my pain, my medication was my life and I basically lived at the doctor’s office.”

There are many stories like Krystal’s. In the United Kingdom Instagram poster, the_tattooed_bloke_withabag talks about how in the UK cannabis is still highly illegal. The post states that the user has had suicidal thoughts when coming down off his prescribed meds but never had that happen from marijuana. They go on to say they personally feel that cannabis does far less harm than prescriptions do.

This seems to be the idea that most cannabis users have in mind. The notion that cannabis works better as a treatment for them than the prescriptions that have been prescribed to them by their doctors. According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research found that 44 percent of medical cannabis users stopped taking or used less of their pharmaceutical drugs.

It seems that as marijuana laws become less restrictive and the stigma behind cannabis subsides more people will be open to trying cannabis, becoming more likely to trade in their regimen of prescriptions for pot.

TMM Ep. 5 - From Pharmaceuticals to Cannabis