Abstract
Background
One in 3 Mainers experiences chronic pain. Maine legalized medical and recreational cannabis usage in 2009 and 2016, respectively. To assess marijuana usage in Mainers with chronic pain, we obtained data from Maine’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), an annual anonymous survey, from 2017 to 2020. Maine’s BRFSS began asking frequency of marijuana usage in 2017, followed by ways of use and reasons for use starting in 2020.
Methods
We identified individuals with chronic pain as those that reported having a rheumatoid condition diagnosis, and controls as those who reported no such conditions. To focus on non-cancer chronic pain, we excluded individuals that had previous cancer diagnoses. For each of the three separate marijuana questions, we eliminated those that answered “don’t know/unsure” or “refused” for the question of interest or their sex. This resulted in 11,360 individuals in the pain group vs. 19,798 individuals in the control group. Data were stratified by sex and analyzed in Microsoft Excel and SigmaPlot.
Results
We observed an increase of high users (21–30/last 30 days) and reduction of non-users for both sexes from 2017 to 2020, which was significant in controls (p < 0.05). The average age of marijuana users was lower regardless of sex or pain status compared to non-users (p < 0.05). Regardless of pain status, although smoking was the most used consumption method, more males tended to smoke marijuana while more females tended to eat it (p < 0.01). Individuals with pain, regardless of sex, were more likely to respond, “use it some other way” (p < 0.01). Respondents of both sexes with chronic pain and females, regardless of pain status, reported more medicinal usage (p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Since the legalization of marijuana, Mainers have started to use it more frequently. High users are generally younger than non-users. Females and chronic pain sufferers are more likely to use marijuana for medicinal reasons, and in non-traditional ways. Further characterization is warranted as cannabis usage becomes more prevalent in individuals both with and without chronic pain.