Journal of Pain Research

Cannabis as pain medicine - the dark vs. the light side of a newly discovered treatment

With the increasingly frequent, widespread and ultimately also earlier use of medical cannabis as pharmacotherapy for pain, the need for high-quality medical-scientific information is growing - especially in order to be able to provide well-founded answers to the unanswered questions of many health professionals and patients regarding the real additional benefit of cannabis in pain medicine, the differential effects of THC and CBD as the most prominent components cannabis, the peculiar role of other constituents of the cannabis plant(s) (such as terpenes and flavonoids) and the relevance of the undesirable cognitive and psychiatric side effects known from recreational use also for the use in patients with chronic pain. This Collection provides an overview of the current state of scientific knowledge around cannabis as a pain medicine.