Trial reportThe American journal on addictions2015
No evidence for reduction of opioid-withdrawal symptoms by cannabis smoking during a methadone dose taper.
Trial report in The American journal on addictions, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cannabinoid exposure across substance use disorders: Short-term symptom benefits without sustained therapeutic gains in a tier-weighted systematic review.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2026Pooled it
- Alleviation of opioid withdrawal by cannabis and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol: A systematic review of observational and experimental human studies.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2022Pooled it
- Clinicians' Perspectives on Cannabis Use and Cannabis Treatment in Clients Undertaking Opioid Dependence Treatment.Drug and alcohol review · 2025Article
- The Role of Medicinal Cannabis as an Emerging Therapy for Opioid Use Disorder.Pain and therapy · 2024Review
- The Cannabis-Dependent Relationship Between Methadone Treatment Dose and Illicit Opioid Use in a Community-Based Cohort of People Who Use Drugs.Cannabis and cannabinoid research · 2023Article
- The endocannabinoid system and breathing.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Review
- Cannabinoids-Perspectives for Individual Treatment in Selected Patients: Analysis of the Case Series.Biomedicines · 2022Article
- The impact of marijuana use on cocaine use outcomes among patients in methadone maintenance treatment across five trials of contingency management.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2022Article
- Article
- Cannabis use in patients treated for opioid use disorder pre- and post-recreational cannabis legalization in Canada.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2021Article
- Prospects for the Use of Cannabinoids in Psychiatric Disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Review
- Choosing Between a Rock and the Pot Place.Cannabis and cannabinoid research · 2021Article
- The impact of naturalistic cannabis use on self-reported opioid withdrawal.Journal of substance abuse treatment · 2020Article
- Non-Opioid Neurotransmitter Systems that Contribute to the Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome: A Review of Preclinical and Human Evidence.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2019Review
- Therapeutic potential of medicinal marijuana: an educational primer for health care professionals.Drug, healthcare and patient safety · 2018Review
- Emerging Evidence for Cannabis' Role in Opioid Use Disorder.Cannabis and cannabinoid research · 2018Review
- Non-medical Cannabis Self-Exposure as a Dimensional Predictor of Opioid Dependence Diagnosis: A Propensity Score Matched Analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Article
- The impact of cannabis use on patients enrolled in opioid agonist therapy in Ontario, Canada.PloS one · 2017Article
- Opiate withdrawal syndrome in buprenorphine abusers admitted to a rehabilitation center in Tunisia.African health sciences · 2016Article
- Association between cannabis use and treatment outcomes in patients receiving methadone maintenance treatment: a systematic review protocol.Systematic reviews · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectivesTo support medication development with cannabinoids, smoked cannabis has been said to alleviate symptoms of opioid withdrawal. We evaluated that hypothesis.
methodsWe analyzed data from the methadone-taper phase of a clinical trial we had conducted. Participants were 116 outpatient heroin and cocaine users (of whom 46 were also cannabis users) who stayed for the 10-week taper. Main outcome measures were weekly urine screens for cannabinoids, plus every-two-week assessments of opioid-withdrawal symptoms.
resultsOpioid-withdrawal scores did not differ overall between users and nonusers of cannabis. In a lagged analysis in the 46 users, there was a slight (not statistically significant) indication that weeks of higher opiate-withdrawal symptoms preceded weeks of cannabis use (effect-size r = .20, 95% CI -.10 to .46, p = .52). Even if this finding is taken to suggest self-medication with cannabis, a lagged analysis in the other temporal direction showed no indication that cannabis use predicted lower opiate-withdrawal symptoms the next week (effect-size r = .01, 95% CI -.28 to .30, p = .69). These findings persisted in sensitivity analyses controlling for each of 17 potential confounds. DISCUSSION AND
conclusionWith our findings, the clinical evidence for smoked cannabis as a reducer of opioid-withdrawal symptoms moves slightly further from "inconclusive" or "mixed" and closer to negative, at least in the context of a methadone dose taper like the one used here. SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE: This finding may remove one rationale for medication development using cannabinoids to treat opioid withdrawal, but leaves other rationales intact.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.