Is marijuana from a dispensary safer than the street drug?

There's no way to tell. Although many pot dispensaries do their best to provide pure products, some do contain harmful contaminants. Unfortunately, the marijuana (cannabis) industry is not regulated well enough to guarantee a safe product.

You also can't be sure how much THC (the active ingredient in pot) there is in a particular product. Although most dispensaries provide potency test results for the products they sell, we don't know how accurate those tests are because no testing standards have been established. 

It's not uncommon for a dispensary to recommend a certain type of marijuana to treat a specific condition, but these recommendations are not based on valid data.

Marijuana hasn't gone through the traditional drug development process that's typically required before bringing a medication to market. No controlled clinical trials have been done to evaluate how effectively cannabis relieves symptoms of conditions it's purported to treat, including depression and anxiety. Although anecdotal success stories shouldn't be discounted, these don't mean that most people will experience the same benefits.

We do know something about the effects of THC and another component called cannabidiol (CBD). Current studies suggest that THC can relieve pain and reduce nausea in people who have AIDS or are undergoing chemotherapy. CBD reduces seizures in some people with epilepsy. One or both compounds also appear to relieve symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS).

But we don't know much about side effects or the optimal dose or formulation to use. And good scientific data supporting use of cannabis for most other health conditions is sparse at best.

Show sources

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. The health effects of cannabis and cannabinoids: The current state of evidence and recommendations for research (2017). Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. [Accessed May 2017]

Ryan Vandrey is an associate professor and experimental psychologist in the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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