What is the evidence?

Researchers looked at children with a range of medical conditions who were treated with medical marijuana and compared them to children who were not treated with medical marijuana. They measured the benefits and harms of marijuana treatment. They found that:

• Cannabinoids may be more effective than other antiemetics to relief and prevent nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy
• Cannabinoids may have some benefit for children with seizures, including those not responding to other treatments
• Some very small studies have looked at cannabinoids for spasticity, neuropathic pain, post traumatic stress, and Tourette syndrome. These studies were too small to tell whether there was any real benefit of medical marijuana for these conditions
• The most common side effects of medical marijuana are dizziness and drowsiness.
• The most important weaknesses of most of the studies were the absence of a control group and the small number of patients.