Cannabis can boost the pain relief and other benefits of opioid medicines when used in conjunction with them.

The therapeutic window, or the interval between an effective dose of opioids and a deadly dose, is also widened when cannabis is used with opioids, according to Dr. Sulak.

The fact that cannabis does not cause overdose is likely the most significant advantage of using marijuana as part of an opiate treatment program.

This article Can Legal Cannabis Help Slow the Opioid Drug Epidemic in the U.S.? explains how cannabis has enormous promise for slowing opioid drug overdoses.

For example, Dr. Dustin Sulak found that 39 percent of opioid users who started using cannabis were able to totally quit taking opioids and another 39 percent were able to lower their opioid dosage in a 2016 research study he conducted. Dr. Sulak discovered that adding cannabis to the treatment lowered pain by roughly 40 percent in almost half of the patients and enhanced function in the other 80 percent.

This article written by Kinsey Grant was originally published by The Street in August 2018.