Whether medical marijuana is ever substituted for other substances is not the full story

Abstract

Lucaset al. [1] recently stated that 87% of a sample(n= 473) of medical cannabis patients in Canadareported substituting marijuana for either alcohol, illicitsubstances or prescription drugs. The 87%figure wasprominently displayed in both the abstract and thefirstsentence of the results section, making it appear to bethe main result of the study. Indeed, the headline‘87%’finding gained momentum in popular mediaand news sources, as journalists atThe Atlantic[2]andThe Washington Post[3] used thefinding as evi-dence that barriers to access medical marijuana arefuelling the United States’problems with other drugs.This assertion appears, however, to be an extrapolationfrom an inadequately worded question.