The researchers acknowledge that long-term cannabis use is not without risks, but it may be a cakewalk compared to the potential adverse—and even life-threatening—side effects of some of the more powerful conventional therapies, so the study was heralded in a paper entitled “High Hope for Medical Marijuana in Digestive Disorders.”
The study was funded by a medical marijuana advocacy organization, the main supplier in the country, in fact. So, expectations may have been placed on the participants about how much better they would feel—in other words, they may have been primed for the placebo effect. But the researchers controlled for that, right? Those getting the real cannabis did significantly better than those randomized to get the placebo. But the point of a placebo is that it is indistinguishable from the real thing, so the participants don’t know which group they’re in—the control group or the treatment group. How can that be accomplished with a psychoactive drug? It can’t, which is the problem. The researchers tried to hide which group participants were in by only recruiting patients who had never tried cannabis before in the hopes that they wouldn’t notice placebo pot, but, unsurprisingly, most of them did. So, we’re basically left with another unblinded study. The researchers asked a bunch of subjective questions, like “How are you feeling?” and those who pretty much knew they were taking the drug said they were feeling better.
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