Should health insurance cover marijuana? Should it cover vodka? Lucky Strikes? Bacon cheeseburgers?
Kevin Sabet
Like all those substances, marijuana contains pleasure-giving, mind-altering chemicals that the brain desperately wants more and more of (especially at today’s ultra-high potencies).
It’s not medicine and never has been. Health insurance, which is supposed to keep people healthy, should not cover it. Health insurance shouldn't promote addiction.
Medicines are derived from marijuana. Marinol is used to help cancer patients eat. Epidiolex is used to treat people with seizure conditions. These are already covered by health insurance.
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But Ozempic is derived from a chemical found in the saliva of the Gila monster. That doesn’t mean letting venomous desert lizards bite you is a legitimate medical treatment.
Indeed, the whole regime of state-level “medical” marijuana programs is based on political decisions, not science. Majorities voted to let doctors recommend (not prescribe) marijuana for pretty much anything.
We all want people to have access to real treatment, especially people suffering from severe conditions such as chronic pain, significant anxiety or post traumatic stress disorder. The best evidence shows that marijuana do not help with those issues and can even make them worse.
Advocates claim that marijuana helps with chronic pain. A 2017 report from the National Academies of Sciences backed this up.
I have spent my career caring for patients with chronic pain, dementia and other conditions that drain the quality of people's lives and the resources of our health care system. Too often, I’ve prescribed medications that are costly and dangerous, carrying high risks of dependency and death.
Yet an alarming study from the American Society of Anesthesiologists shows weed users experience more pain and use more opioids after surgeries. The drug has the opposite effect from what its advocates and industry pushers claim.
When it comes to mental health issues, the drug can increase anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and suicide. Adolescents who used the drug have a higher risk of suicide attempts, according to an analysis of survey data by the National Institutes of Health.
A massive study from Denmark linked higher cases of schizophrenia in younger men to heavy cannabis use. According to federal data, 9% of veterans who died of suicide in 2022 had cannabis use disorder.
The argument that it is some undiscovered wonder drug deserving of insurance coverage lacks merit. Nor will normalizing it somehow advance the research around it.
It’s already been extensively researched. How many more studies could advocates possibly want?
The pharmaceutical industry has been trying to make weed a marquee drug for decades. It hasn’t succeeded because the drug's treatment potential does not seem to be that significant.
Raw weed isn’t medicine. Getting the government and insurance companies to suggest otherwise will only get more people hooked, ruin more lives and wreck public health while fattening the wallets of addiction profiteers.
Sabet is the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana: learnaboutsam.org. He was a drug policy adviser to three presidential administrations and wrote this for InsideSources.com.
