Cannabinoids for the treatment of cannabis abuse disorder

Cannabis stands as the most used illegal drug in the world. Currently there are no pharmacologic alternatives to treat its addiction, so the use of Cannabinoids has been postulated as a therapeutic tool. They would act mainly through decrease in abstinence and craving symptoms but its effectiveness remains unclear.

To answer this question we used Epistemonikos, the largest database of systematic reviews in health, which is maintained by screening multiple information sources, including MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, among others. We extracted data from the systematic reviews, reanalyzed data of primary studies, conducted a meta-analysis and generated a summary of findings table using the GRADE approach.

We identified seven systematic reviews including 15 studies, of which four were randomized trials. We concluded the use of cannabinoids might result in little or no increase in abstinence at the end of treatment, and it probably increases adverse effects.