Using marijuana appears to have a “positive outcome” on people struggling with some eating disorders, according to a new study.

“Cannabis is widely used by people with eating disorders and is widely perceived as beneficial in restrictive and food-averse, but not binge, eating disorder subtypes,” the paper, published in the Journal of Eating Disorders, found.

Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia surveyed more than 7,500 people with a diagnosed or self-reported eating disorder (ED), with more than 3,o00 of whom that used cannabis within the past year. Respondents represented 76 countries, with most residing in Australia (29.7 percent), the United Kingdom (21.7 percent) and the United States (17.6 percent).

“Cannabis received the highest mean ratings of any drug for improving ED symptoms” among people avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, anorexia nervosa and other specified feeding and eating disorder, the study found. People with unspecified feeding or eating disorder “also reported a favorable rating.”

For people with anorexia nervosa specifically, “cannabis use drove reductions in food-related anxiety and guilt, which, together with appetite stimulation, helped normalise their eating,” the study found. “The gastroprotective and antinausea properties of cannabis appear to provide additional therapeutic benefits over and above those provided by appetite stimulation and anxiety reduction.”

For people with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), which involves a lack of desire to eat and aversions to food based on sensory factors such as texture, taste and smell, there is a “transformational effect of cannabis” related to “increased appetite and enhanced ability to recognise hunger cues,” the researchers wrote.

“The higher frequency of daily cannabis use amongst those with ARFID may well reflect self-medication for these therapeutic benefits,” they said. “Indeed, daily use of cannabis flower was generally associated with higher ED symptom improvement scores relative to intermittent use, suggesting that symptom improvement may drive frequency of use.”

In contrast, people with binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa, “provided lower ratings” for marijuana’s efficacy—perhaps because “the appetite-stimulating properties of THC may exacerbate binge/purge symptomatology,” the paper said.

When participants were prompted with open-ended questions, “general mental health was self-reported as improved by cannabis in most respondents regardless of diagnosis,” the researchers wrote. Participants also said cannabis helps with improved ability to eat, improved awareness of hunger cues, reduced guilt related to their eating disorder, less nausea and diminished food-related anxiety.

“Our findings suggest that cannabis is widely used by individuals with an ED or disordered eating and that naturalistic use of cannabis is self-reported as having a positive outcome on ED symptoms.”

That said, “a substantial number described mixed experiences of both improvement and exacerbation of ED symptoms,” the study found.

The research is a follow-up to an earlier paper that some of the same authors published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found that marijuana and psychedelics were “the highest rated” drugs in effectively addressing eating disorder symptoms.

“Our top-level analysis indicated that cannabis was commonly used among respondents and was one of the few drugs rated positively for ED symptom improvement. In [anorexia nervosa], [avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder,], and [other specified deeding and eating disorder], this positive rating was superior to all prescription drugs.”

While daily use of marijuana flower specifically was more associated with improved eating disorder scores than intermittent use in the new study, symptom improvement didn’t vary overall based on cannabis product type or cannabinoid composition.

The researchers noted that the self-report and naturalistic nature of the study means that no strong causal conclusions can be drawn, saying that “future clinical trials of cannabis products are warranted in eating disorders.”

They also flagged concerns about cannabis dependence and “other adverse effects” of frequent use that some participants reported.

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Medical marijuana helps 91 percent of older adults improve their pain, insomnia and mood or behavioral symptoms, a new study has found.

The research involved 124 people over the age of 65 who received medical cannabis from a specialized practice in Colombia and whose symptoms were measured at baseline, 44 of whom had a follow-up visit after three months.

Most of the participants had not previously used marijuana, and the most frequent diagnoses they presented with were pain-related and musculoskeletal disorders, cancer and neurodegenerative and non-degenerative neurological disorders—with their top therapeutic objectives being relief of pain, mood/behavioral issues, insomnia and motor symptoms.

Patients’ symptoms were recorded by treating physicians and then coded by researchers on a four-point scale (0 = absent, 1 = mild, 2 = moderate, and 3 = severe), “classified according to its documented impact on patients’ autonomy, basic and instrumental activities of daily living, and participation in meaningful daily activities,” the paper said.

“Symptom severity decreased significantly across the three main symptom domains, with improvement in approximately 90% of patients.”

Symptom improvement was defined as a reduction of at least one point in severity relative to baseline, and 91 percent of participants met that threshold, the study, which has not yet been published in a journal and has been made available as a preprint, found.

“The first documented improvement occurred at visit 2 in 67.7% of patients with pain, 65.4% of those with insomnia, and 73.9% of those with mood or behavioral symptoms, with median times to first improvement of three, two, and one month, respectively,” the researchers wrote.

“Symptom evolution between baseline and the last available follow-up visit demonstrated a consistent reduction in symptom severity across the three most prevalent clinical domains. Median severity scores for pain, insomnia, and mood or behavioral symptoms decreased significantly from baseline to the last available assessment, and no patient showed worsening of symptom severity.”

Analyses also showed that there were “strong effect sizes” for descriptive improvements in digestive and motor symptoms, appetite, well-being and physical strength—though those were not statistically significant.

There was a “significant progressive decline in symptom severity over successive follow-up visits for pain, insomnia, and mood or behavioral symptoms.”

While total resolution of symptoms was uncommon, a small numbers of patients with pain, insomnia and mood/behavioral issues did report complete relief.

Notably, the researchers said that the clinically effective doses of cannabis, which was most commonly administered in oral oil-based formulations, was “low”—typically using just a few milligrams per day of THC, CBD and/or CBG.

The study, which received funding from the European Union, also measured patients’ ongoing use of other medications after starting cannabis, finding that while the “overall medication burden remained stable,” there were dose reductions or discontinuations of concomitant medications in a quarter of the patients.

Overall, there was a “favorable longitudinal evolution of the three most prevalent symptom domains—pain, insomnia, and mood or behavioral symptoms—during routine treatment with supervised medical cannabis,” the paper said.

“Symptom intensity decreased from predominantly moderate to mild levels, and most patients experienced at least a one-point reduction in the severity of their principal symptom during follow-up. Longitudinal analyses further showed progressive improvement across successive follow-up visits, suggesting that these changes reflected a sustained clinical trajectory rather than an isolated difference between baseline and the final assessment.”

“In this retrospective real-world study, older adults receiving supervised medical cannabis experienced favorable symptom evolution during follow-up, while treatment showed a clinically acceptable safety profile and was characterized by consistently low documented clinically effective doses,” the researchers concluded.

The findings, they said, “add to the growing evidence that cannabis may represent a therapeutic option for selected older adults under specialist supervision.”

The researchers cautioned that the observational nature of the study means that causality cannot be inferred, though they do plan to follow up with larger cohorts of patients in Colombia, Argentina and Chile, which they said will “improve statistical power, increase the diversity of clinical practice settings, and allow more robust evaluation of treatment patterns, effectiveness, and safety across different healthcare contexts.”

A separate recent federally funded study published by the American Medical Association (AMA) found that “older adults are increasingly turning to cannabis for symptom management”—with many motivated to try marijuana “as an alternative to traditional pharmaceuticals due to concerns about adverse effects.”

“As cannabis legalization becomes more widespread, older adults are increasingly turning to it not just for recreational use, but to manage symptoms associated with aging, including pain, sleep disturbances, and mental health concerns,” that research found.

AMA separately adopted a resolution this year that recognizes both the risks and potential therapeutic benefits of marijuana use among older adults.

Photo courtesy of Max Pixel.

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A comprehensive meta-analysis of previously published studies has found that cannabidiol (CBD) – widely touted as a way to reduce the negative effects of cannabis – may actually be making products more potent by significantly increasing blood levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

The review, published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, analysed data from 14 clinical trials involving 341 participants.

For years, health guidelines have nudged cannabis users towards products with more CBD and less THC, on the assumption that CBD softens THC’s effects. However, the researchers found that when CBD was taken alongside THC, it increased overall THC blood levels by an average of 31%.

More dramatically, high doses of CBD nearly doubled blood levels of 11-hydroxy-THC, an active metabolite which many scientists believe is equally or more potent than THC itself.

“Cannabis users and prescribers of cannabinoid-based products should be made aware of the potential for drug-drug pharmacokinetic interactions between CBD and THC,” wrote lead researcher Lucy Chester and her team at the Research Centre, Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal.

The interaction appeared most significant with orally consumed cannabis products, such as edibles, capsules and oils, where CBD doses ranged from 105mg to 800mg. 11-hydroxy-THC (11-OH-THC) is a common metabolite produced when consuming edible cannabis products containing THC. The research suggests CBD may be blocking key liver enzymes (CYP2C9 and CYP2C19) responsible for breaking down both THC and 11-OH-THC. By inhibiting these enzymes, CBD essentially allows the psychoactive compounds to accumulate in the bloodstream.

The researchers found less dramatic but still significant effects with inhaled cannabis, where CBD doses were typically much lower (4mg to 30mg). One study using 400mg inhaled CBD had to be modified because participants couldn’t tolerate the throat irritation from such high doses.

The authors called for better-designed clinical trials to fully characterise this interaction, particularly studies using realistic doses and chronic CBD administration patterns that reflect real-world use. They noted that many people use CBD daily as a supplement or medication, which could lead to even more pronounced interactions.

“While it remains to be determined how CBD-related increases in THC and 11-OH-THC levels translate into behavioural or adverse effects, the findings from the meta-analysis highlight the need for caution and nuance when broadly encouraging high doses of CBD in combination with THC,” the study concluded.

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Regular cannabis users experienced significantly fewer early or extra heartbeats on days they smoked or vaped compared with days they abstained, according to the results of a new trial published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The study, led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), tracked 108 adults who regularly smoked or vaped cannabis but had no history of diagnosed heart rhythm problems. Over 14 days, each participant was randomly told to either inhale cannabis or abstain. During the study, they wore a monitor that continuously recorded their heartbeat, alongside an activity tracker, sleep monitor and glucose monitor. Because each participant switched between cannabis and abstinence days, they effectively acted as their own control group, letting researchers compare the two conditions directly.

On the days participants used cannabis, they had about 9% fewer premature heartbeats than on the days they didn’t – the opposite of what the research team predicted.

“We were surprised by the results because they contradicted our original hypothesis,” said Gregory Marcus, the study’s senior author and an endowed professor in atrial fibrillation research at UCSF’s Division of Cardiology. “That’s why randomised trials are so important. When the data challenge our expectations, our job as scientists is to understand them, not ignore them.”

Early or extra heartbeats – known clinically as cardiac ectopy – are common, and can originate in either the heart’s upper or lower chambers. The improvement seen in this trial was driven entirely by fewer premature atrial contractions (PACs), the type that begin in the upper chambers and are considered the strongest known predictor of atrial fibrillation, a rhythm disorder linked to blood clots and stroke. There was no meaningful change in premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), which begin in the lower chambers and are linked to future heart failure risk instead.

The monitors also picked up no meaningful differences in how much participants slept, how many steps they took, or their blood sugar levels between cannabis and abstinence days – ruling out some of the more obvious explanations for the effect.

Marcus was careful to stress that the findings shouldn’t be read as a green light. “The overall health effects of inhaled cannabis may still be net negative, but these findings suggest there may be something about cannabis that can teach us more about the biological mechanisms that produce premature atrial contractions,” he said. “That knowledge could eventually lead to new approaches for preventing or treating abnormal heart rhythms.”

He added that the trial only looked at short-term, acute effects in existing regular users, not the long-term consequences of cannabis use, and that it “is not sufficient” on its own to change clinical guidance.

Most previous research linking cannabis to heart problems has relied on self-reported use or medical records gathered after the fact, making it hard to separate cause from coincidence. This trial’s randomised, crossover structure – swapping each participant between cannabis and abstinence days rather than comparing separate groups of users and non-users – is considered a far more reliable way of isolating cause and effect.

A 2025 study tracking more than 4,000 US military veterans with existing heart disease found no increased rate of heart attacks, strokes or cardiovascular death among those with a history of cannabis smoking, despite researchers initially expecting the opposite.

Randomised studies “are the only way to fully avoid confounding effects that interfere with revealing underlying realities…that are so common in the majority of observational research,” Marcus added.

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4,516 people logged what they drank for three weeks. On the days they had a THC beverage, their odds of also drinking alcohol fell by roughly half. The finding held for 23 of the 36 products tested, and moved the same direction in every one.

The largest real-world study of hemp THC beverages has published its numbers, and the clearest thing in it has nothing to do with sleep, pain or productivity.

It’s beer.

MoreBetter, a Philadelphia research firm that has run observational studies on consumer products since 2016, tracked 4,516 people across 36 products from 23 brands, at doses between 1 and 10 milligrams of THC. Each participant logged seven days before touching any product, fourteen days on it, then answered an exit survey. Every person served as their own control, measured against their own pre-use baseline. The fieldwork ran in two waves across 2025, so the results are new rather than the research. The company published the full dataset free on its Real-World Data Exchange platform and prepared a findings summary exclusively for High Times, breaking out the numbers behind each measure.

On a participant’s ordinary day, before any of this started, the modeled probability that they would drink alcohol was 22.9%. On days they drank one of these beverages, it was 10.9%.

Two Measurements, One Direction

What gives that number weight is that it doesn’t come from asking anybody about it. It comes from what people logged, day by day, about what they actually drank, run through a model that compares each person to themselves.

The exit survey asked the question directly, and the answers point the same way. Two-thirds said they were consuming less alcohol. Fifty-six percent called the drinks a regular replacement for it. Those are people describing themselves, which is a weaker kind of evidence, but they line up with the behavioral measure instead of contradicting it.

The tightest number in that group is the health one. An 86.6% average with a floor of 80% across every single product means the belief holds no matter which drink somebody picked up. Worth being precise about what that measures: it’s what people think, not what is true. Nothing in this study tested whether these products are safer than alcohol.

The eleven-point gap between the health answer and the social one is the more interesting detail. People are more confident about what these drinks do to their body than about how showing up with one plays in a room.

Fifty Days Later

The obvious question about a two-week study is whether anything survives it. MoreBetter went back and asked.

Fifty days after the study period ended, the company surveyed participants from 18 of the 36 products about how their relationship with alcohol had changed. It got 1,420 responses. Setting aside the 249 who weren’t drinking alcohol before any of this began leaves 1,171 people who were. Those results are not on the public dashboard; MoreBetter provided them to High Times on the record.

Two things to hold onto there. A third of respondents reported no change at all, which is the honest headline alongside the 63%. And this is people recalling their own drinking seven weeks later, on a narrower base than the main dataset, which makes it softer evidence than the daily logs. It points the same direction anyway, and the gap between 63% and 2.4% is not a close call.

MoreBetter also says a portion of the original group has continued into a second and now a third cohort, the third of which is currently open, spanning 12 to 18 months between the first and the present one. The point is to see whether consumption patterns and substitution behavior hold up over that kind of stretch. Those results don’t exist yet.

What It Actually Feels Like

The experience these numbers describe is mild and short, which is the whole design premise of the category and now has some evidence under it.

Duration is the most consistent thing in the entire dataset. Thirty-six products, 23 brands, doses spanning a factor of ten, and every one of them landed between two and 2.9 hours. The standard deviation is 0.2 hours. Whatever else varies in this category, how long it lasts does not.

Feeling high is the opposite. It swings from 18.8% of use days to 81.5%, which is what a 1 to 10 milligram spread would predict, and it means the 53.3% average describes almost nobody’s actual product. Half the people buying in this category are not particularly trying to get high, and the products know it.

The onset figure needs an asterisk. Participants picked from bands rather than clocking themselves, so 26.9 minutes is a center of mass, not a stopwatch reading.

And the hangover number, which the industry will want to run with, is a share of use days rather than a share of people. There was no alcohol comparison group in this study, so it cannot be read as better or worse than a hangover from drinking. MoreBetter says so itself, in writing, which is not something most industry-funded research bothers to do.

The Productivity Number, Handled Carefully

Participants reported roughly 36 more minutes of productive time on product days than on their own non-product days, a jump from 5.64 hours to 6.24. That reached significance for 20 of the 36 products, and every significant result was positive.

The companion measure is messier and deserves the scrutiny. The probability of reporting a productive day rose 12.5 points on average, but that only held for 13 of 36 products, and one product moved 15 points in the other direction. The accurate version is that for about a third of the products tested, people were more likely to report a good day, and for one of them the reverse was true.

Both are estimates people made about their own hours, not measured output.

How to Read Any of This

This is observational, not a clinical trial. There is no placebo arm and no separate comparison group; the comparison is each participant against their own pre-use baseline, which is a real method with real limits. People chose to enroll and chose their product through what MoreBetter calls a semi-blinded process. Almost everything here is self-reported, including the alcohol logs behind the headline finding. This describes what a large group of people reported while drinking these products. It does not establish that the products caused any of it.

One caveat matters more than the rest, and it comes from MoreBetter rather than from us. When a finding is significant for 23 of 36 products, the headline average covers only those 23. Products that showed no significant change are left out of the average, not counted as zero. Quote the twelve-point drop without the coverage number and you have overstated it. That warning is printed in the company’s own summary, in bold.

Who Paid For It

MoreBetter says it funded the Infused Beverage Study primarily itself, with partial funding from the beverage brands whose products were tested, and that those brands had no influence over protocol design, data analysis or published findings.

Twenty-three brands participated: BRĒZ, Cantrip, Nowadays, Uncle Arnie’s, Willie’s Remedy+, Woodstock, Medterra, Rebel Rabbit, Snoop Dogg’s Iconic Tonics, Herbal Oasis, Cornbread Hemp, Stiiizy, 1906, Sober(ish), Wims!, Hippie Water, Squared, Hightail, Kava Haven, 23rd State, Drippy, Good Feels and Rexis Biotech.

None of that makes the data bad, and the company reports 17 peer-reviewed publications across 12 university research partnerships behind it. It does mean some of the companies that helped pay for the study sell the products the study is being used to defend, and anyone citing these numbers in a policy fight should say so. Nothing is broken out by brand, so no figure here belongs to any individual participant.

The Products in This Study Are About to Stop Being Legal

Section 781 of Public Law 119-37 caps finished hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, applied to the whole package rather than a serving. It takes effect November 12.

The products in this study run from 1 to 10 milligrams per serving. The weakest one carries more than twice the legal ceiling for an entire container.

None of the 36 would survive it.

That date is still moving. The Senate has passed a stopgap that would push most of the new restrictions to December 11, and the House hasn’t taken it up. Until it does, November 12 is the law. We’ve been tracking the whole fight here.

Some brands have already made their bet. Cann pulled the THC out of part of its lineup, while B-Real and Rachel Wolfson launched into the same market with full-dose product. One side is reformulating for the rule on the books. The other is betting Congress changes it first. NielsenIQ data cited by MoreBetter puts the category at $239 million in tracked retail sales over the 52 weeks ending June 27, up 135% year over year, which is what the 0.4 milligram number is aimed at and why the fight has pulled in everyone from trade groups to Rosario Dawson.

Every figure in this article, and the several dozen measures that didn’t make it in, are free at rwdexchange.com/community. Verify a phone number or email, enter the code, then open Community Insights and the Infused Beverage Performance Data dashboard. No cost, no trial period, no card. Everything is filterable by seltzer, soda, sparkling beverage, functional tonic, and spirits, shots and mixers, and MoreBetter asks that anyone using the figures credit the source.

The data arrived after the vote.

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Drinking cannabis infused tea before bed can significantly boost happiness levels, according to new research.

The quasi-experimental study, conducted by Rajamangala University of Technology Isan in Sakon Nakhon, tested three different formulations of cannabis drip tea on 30 volunteers over a seven-day period. Participants were divided into three groups, each receiving tea infused with 3%, 5% or 7% weight/weight cannabis.

The results, published in the Journal of Health Science and Medical Research, demonstrated significant increases in happiness levels across all three concentrations. The 7% formulation produced the highest happiness scores and was identified as the most suitable option for improving well-being.

“The findings from this study support the potential application of cannabis-infused tea in improving happiness levels,” the researchers wrote, noting that the tea was prepared using traditional Thai medicinal approaches.

Researchers evaluated happiness using the Thai Mental Health Index (TMHI), which measures four key areas: mental state, mental capacity, mental quality and supporting factors. Participants who consumed the 7% cannabis tea showed improvements across all four areas, including enhanced life satisfaction, self-esteem, emotional regulation and confidence.

The lower concentrations of 3% and 5% also produced positive effects, particularly in mental state and supporting factors, with participants reporting increased life satisfaction and self-respect.

Notably, none of the 30 participants reported any side effects during the trial period. Volunteers were instructed to prepare the tea at home by steeping one tea bag in 250ml of hot water for 10 minutes and consuming it 30 minutes before bedtime.

The tea formulations also contained peppermint and stevia alongside cannabis leaves, which the researchers noted could have also contributed to the overall effects. They also emphasised that their findings align with traditional Thai medicine practices, which have long used herbal teas for health promotion and treatment. However, they recommended further studies to explore the long-term effects of cannabis-infused tea consumption to determine its efficacy and safety over extended periods.

In May 2026, a cross-clinic study of over 6,000 medical cannabis patients in the UK found that 98% of respondents reported improvements in mental health following treatment with medical cannabis.

According to NHS England, 22.6% of 16 to 64-year-olds had a common mental health condition in 2024 – up from 18.9% in 2014. An estimated 1.7m people were waiting for NHS mental health treatment in England in 2025.

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A new study that aimed to assess how people living with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could benefit from medical cannabis has discovered positive results, with improvements observed across multiple measures over an 18-month period.

Published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology Reports, the research highlights how treatment with cannabis flowers, cannabis oils, or a combination of both was associated with meaningful and beneficial outcomes across multiple metrics.

Scientists from the Medical Cannabis Research Group at Imperial College, London, conducted the trial. The data was supplied by 130 patients who had been diagnosed with ASD, were already being treated with cannabis medicine, and who were registered on the UK Medical Cannabis Register (UKMCR).

Patients were assessed at the beginning of the study and at regular intervals over an 18-month period. The results showed that they experienced significant improvements in areas including quality of life, anxiety, and sleep.

ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is marked by challenges in social communication and interaction, alongside restricted and repeated behaviours. Patients can experience different symptoms, including but not limited to social communication and interaction difficulties, oversensitivity, being fixated on specific subjects and repeated behaviour patterns.

There are currently no recognised pharmaceutical treatments for ASD, although people living with the condition are often prescribed drugs such as antidepressants and stimulants for co-occurring conditions including ADHD and depression.

The treatments available for ASD are usually focused on the individual patient’s needs and rely heavily on therapy-based interventions that include behavioural, speech and language, and occupational therapies.

It is estimated that around 0.6% of the global population lives with ASD, and with the recent advancements in diagnosis techniques, such as the use of AI to scan facial expressions, this figure is rising.

People living with ASD are highly likely to experience other conditions alongside autism. Between 50 – 83% of people with ASD are thought to have to learn to cope with symptoms that often exacerbate their condition, including anxiety, sleep disorders, and depression.

Researchers on the study were not looking at cannabis as a cure or treatment for ASD itself, but rather an alternative treatment for the co-morbid conditions which often accompany it. Currently, many patients are prescribed drugs such as SSRIs and antipsychotics, which can cause unwanted side effects and are often poorly tolerated.

“ASD treatment does not seek to change the core features of the condition, but rather treat associated distressed behaviours or psychiatric conditions. There is a paucity of high-quality evidence on the efficacy of these therapies in ASD. Conventional pharmaceutical treatments may include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and atypical antipsychotics, such as risperidone and aripiprazole, which have shown to reduce some dimensions of symptoms associated with ASD,” the authors said.

To test the efficacy of cannabis for the treatment of co-occurring ASD symptoms, researchers assessed 130 patients who were living with ASD and who were registered on the UKMCR.

Participants completed an initial assessment at the beginning of the study in which they supplied details about their tobacco and alcohol use, cannabis status (if they used, didn’t use, or used to use it), amount of grey-market cannabis used and details about their current cannabis prescription. They were also asked to complete patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), which would evaluate their general anxiety level, sleep, and quality of life score, and asked to provide details on how their condition has changed (PGIC).

Across all recorded measures, patients’ scores were observed to increase from baseline all the way through to 18 months, apart from the PGIC score, which showed improvements from 1 month through to 18 months.

From the cohort, 25 participants reported adverse events (AEs), with most being classified as either mild or moderate. The most common adverse events were insomnia, dry mouth and lethargy.

Notably, the median daily THC dose increased nearly tenfold during the study period, from 20mg/day at baseline to 192.25mg/day at 18 months, suggesting dose escalation was required to maintain effects.

Researchers noted that cannabis medicine had a positive effect on the co-occurring symptoms experienced by participants in this study, but acknowledged the study’s limitations due to the lack of a control group.

“This case series explored the outcomes of autistic adults treated with CBMPs. The findings indicate that CBMPs were associated with improvements in anxiety, sleep quality, and health-related quality of life,” the authors said in their conclusion. “While a proportion (19.23%) of the cohort reported adverse events, the majority were mild or moderate. As an uncontrolled observational analysis, the study cannot establish causation; reported changes should be interpreted as temporal associations and not as evidence of a treatment effect.”

The findings add weight to those of other studies investigating how cannabis medicines can be used to assist those living with ASD, with results suggesting that it can be used for short-term relief and advising against long-term reliance on cannabis.

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New research published in the journal Veterinary Sciences has found that adding hempseed to the diet of healthy dogs improves gut microbiome health compared with a diet without hempseed.

Veterinary scientists from Kasetsart University in Thailand randomly assigned 24 mixed-breed dogs into three groups for a 90-day study. All groups were fed the same basic nutritious diet, but one group’s food was coated with hempseed oil at 2% inclusion, and another group’s food was supplemented with a hempseed by-product known as hempseed cake at 11% inclusion.

The gut microbiome is an important part of a dog’s overall health and is thought to contribute to digestion, metabolism, immune function and overall health.

“All dogs, including the controls, showed a natural increase in bacterial diversity over time. However, dogs fed hempseed oil showed a distinctly larger increase in bacterial species richness,” the researchers said.

At the beginning of the 90-day study, the dogs were all aged between three and six years and weighed between 15 and 20 kg. Tests were carried out to determine their health, including a Body Condition Score test (BCS), blood profiles, and feed intake monitoring.

Scientists also used faecal sampling tests and gene sequencing at the beginning of the study, at three weeks, and again at the end, enabling them to closely monitor changes in the dogs’ digestive health.

The results showed that the gut health of all three dogs improved over the course of the study, but the dogs fed the diets including hemp improved the most. Researchers also found different benefits were provided by each of the hemp additives.

The hempseed oil coating was associated with a greater increase in gut bacteria species diversity, although this isn’t always seen as contributing to gut health.

The hempseed cake addition was shown to increase specific bacteria, including Ligilactobacillus, Lactobacillaceae, Actinobacteriota, and Collinsella, which are all associated with a healthier gut.

“This longitudinal investigation of canine fecal microbiota over a 90-day dietary intervention with hempseed formulations revealed a complex ecological maturation process. Our findings demonstrate that while the fecal microbiome of healthy dogs exhibits significant temporal shifts under standardized conditions, the introduction of hempseed by-product (FB) and hempseed oil (FO) exerts distinct selective pressures that enhance microbial diversity without disrupting the ecological stability of the host animal,” the researchers said.

“The principal findings revealed that both hempseed-based diets modulated the canine gut microbiota, with the most pronounced effects observed in the FO group. Specifically, FO supplementation led to the greatest increase in alpha diversity and induced distinct shifts in several bacterial taxa, whereas the FB group exhibited a more moderate response and greater stability in certain communities.”

“These results suggest that hempseed, particularly its oil fraction, exerts health effects in dogs, although the specific formulation dictates the nature and extent of microbial modulation”

Previous studies investigating the role cannabis can play in animal health have found CBD to slow down cancer growth in dogs, CBD to help relax tropical fish during transportation, and CBD to help save the bees.

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Legalizing marijuana for adult use is linked to gradual reductions in violent crime—while medical cannabis legalization is associated with lower rates of property crime—according to a new study.

As more states move to enact legalization, researchers at Jack Welch College of Business and Technology, Barnard College, National Chengchi University and Longwood University set out to investigate the relationship between different versions of the reform and crime trends.

The study, published in the journal Economic Modelling, identified a unique divide when looking at the impact of legalizing cannabis for recreational as compared to medical purposes, with analytic models revealing how different forms of regulated access seem to be associated with different patterns in criminal activity.

“Novel policies may generate unintended spillovers, particularly when legalizing one activity alters incentives for other forms of crime,” the study authors wrote. “Marijuana legalization provides a useful setting to examine such effects, given the staggered adoption of medical and recreational laws across all 50 U.S. states.”

“We find that medical legalization reduces property crime, while recreational legalization reduces violent crime.”

While initial analyses signaled that adult-use legalization might increase property crime, once state-specific time trends where incorporated into the researchers’ models with synthetic specification, “the effect becomes negative and statistically insignificant.”

“Overall, the findings indicate that estimated crime effects are highly sensitive to identification assumptions and do not provide robust evidence of an increase in property crime following legalization, underscoring the importance of careful empirical design in policy evaluation,” the study says.

Notably, the researchers found that the impact of cannabis reform on crime is gradual, with the effects manifesting “powerfully after several years.” For advocates pushing for legalization, the authors said, that means they should exercise caution in how they frame the issue, as crime rate declines don’t appear to happen overnight.

“What emerges from our multi-step analysis is a birds-eye view of legalization: medical and recreational legalization have different impacts and operate through diverse channels, with significant lag effects,” they said. “The overarching result from our main synthetic difference in differences model is that medical legalization reduces property crime, while recreational legalization reduces violent crime.”

“Such effects support the Becker hypothesis that legalization drives out crime. Building up to the synthetic difference in difference model, we discovered that there may also be important lag effects. The diverse and potentially time-varying impacts of medical and recreational legalization raise a cautionary note to policymakers: those considering legalization should wait a few years before pronouncing on the cost–benefit impact, focus on the specific type of legalization, and study closely the outcomes from similar states.”

It’s not immediately clear from the research why medical and recreational marijuana legalization would lead to diverging crime trends, but  the broader impact of the reform on crime has been studied before.

Last year, for example, a study looking at Atlanta’s move to decriminalize marijuana concluded that, contrary to warnings from some critics, the policy change in fact led to a decrease in violent crime as police turned their attention to more urgent matters.

A 2024 analysis of violence between intimate partners separately found that legalizing marijuana for adult use “results in a substantial decrease in rates of intimate partner violence.”

A 2021 study, meanwhile, found that reductions of crime generally after marijuana legalization was being significantly understated because the FBI data is inconsistent and comes from voluntary participation by local agencies.

In 2020, researchers looked at how adult-use marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado affected crime rates in neighboring states, and the resulting study determined that passage of recreational cannabis laws may have actually reduced certain major crimes in nearby jurisdictions.

The previous year, a federally funded study found that legalizing marijuana has little to no impact on rates of violent or property crime. The policy change did seem connected to a long-term decline in burglaries in one state, however.

A 2018 study from the think tank RAND said county-level data from California suggested that there was “no relationship between county laws that legally permit dispensaries and reported violent crime,” the researchers wrote. What’s more, there was a “negative and significant relationship between dispensary allowances and property crime rates,” though it’s possible that’s the product of “pre-existing trends.”

That same year, researchers at Victoria University of Wellington and Harvard University found that medical marijuana laws essentially have a null effect of crime rates, with one big exception: A nearly 20 percent reduction in violent and property crimes in California following the legalization of medical cannabis there.

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