Doctor wants to expand use of medical cannabis, as legalization looms

As the legalization of cannabis quickly approaches, a doctor is trying to spread the word about the healing properties of the plant and its potential to stop the opioid crisis.

Dr. Ira Price is an Emergency Medicine Professor at McMaster University, he says during his medical work the number one complaint from patients was pain, and there’s not a lot of conventional ways to treat that.

“We’re limited to opioids, we’re limited to neuroleptics, and we’re limited by the side-effects of these things. And we have an opioid crisis in Canada.”

He then started looking into cannabis, but it was difficult to learn more about a decade ago.

“There was nobody who really had the education, even the colleges came around, saying what is happening here?” says Dr. Price. “You know, when I first began I was basically waving a flag by myself with every different colour of the rainbow. There was nobody else doing it in Ontario, there were some people, but nobody to that extent.”

So he gathered experts and did his own research.

“So I ended up doing my own research study, basically. I did literature reviews, and I took a lot of people from the cannabis community, who had expert knowledge in my opinion, I actually had them all sit around the table and start telling me all these things,” says Dr. Price.

Eventually, he opened Synergy Health Services in Ontario where they research cannabinoids and the medical benefit. Through his work, they created dosage guidelines that are now used by doctors across the country, and he is now using cannabis to reduce problems with opiates.

“We know that there’s a synergistic effect, which means if you take both those medications in low dose, the effect is greater than each one individually.”

Many patients have said cannabis will treat their conditions much better than opiates, and of course, there are none of the negative side-effects from those drugs. Dr. Price admits that cannabis won’t work for everyone, but he employs a five patient model, meaning for two people cannabis works extremely well, for one it has moderate effects, and for two other people it doesn’t work at all.

On the upcoming legalization in Canada, Dr. Price is largely in support of it.

“I think access and the barriers to cannabis will decrease, the stigma around cannabis will decrease, because more educational programs will be out there.”

But there are some concerns he cannot ignore.

“With time, we’re going to lose that medical momentum. And I fear that medical momentum for legalization is going to overshadow where we are now in the medical world, and I would hate for that to happen.”

But if the research does continue to move forward, he believes cannabis will become a wonder of modern medicine, moving even further beyond pain treatment.

“Cannabis are master regulators of all our bodily functions, so there’s science behind all that stuff. And as a scientist, I believe we have to follow the evidence,” says Dr. Price. “Cannabinoids, when researched properly, can really revolutionize medicine right now.”