The internet is full of claims about the health benefits of cannabis, but are they true? This was the question asked by a group of researchers who decided to search the internet for health claims related to cannabis and compare them to available scientific research to determine their validity. your study was recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine and they found most of the claims to be false, meaning they do not have enough scientific evidence to credibly support the claims. [1]
We came to that conclusion by searching Google and searching the top ten websites for the terms “marijuana benefits,” “weed benefits,” and “marijuana health.” To include articles that were mentioned on social media, the group used buzzsumo and searched for the terms “marijuana benefits OR cannabis benefits OR weed benefits” and “marijuana health.” Once the top websites and social media articles were collected, they were reviewed and each of the health claims was categorized, rated, and rated using published systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials available on Medline.
In the end, a total of 467 individual health claims were identified and divided into 81 categories. The most common health benefit claim for cannabis emerged Pain relief. However, claims related to the general pain category were ultimately classified as “not true” along with cancer, anxiety, PTSD, neuroprotection, and Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, the treatment of chemotherapy-induced nausea and spasticity caused by multiple sclerosis has been found to be “true” and it is claimed that cannabis is effective in treating seizures and seizures sleep were rated as “partially true”.
Overall, only 4.9% of all entitlement categories were rated “true”, which suggests that we cannot always trust what the internet has to say, but that is not new information. The search terms used for this study, particularly on Google, excluded the word cannabis and included the terms “marijuana” and “weed”, both of which are not used by cannabis industry professionals. This search term variable could easily have skewed the search results because they are heavily made up of unreliable resources to begin with. As always, when it comes to information on the Internet, choose your sources wisely.
References:
Lau, N. et al. Internet claims on the health benefits of cannabis use. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-06421-w