YOUR AD HERE »

Report: Medical marijuana could poach more than $4B from pharma sales annually

The report is intended to show how cannabis could disrupt pharmaceutical sales in key treatment areas including chronic pain, PTSD, sleep disorders, anxiety, epilepsy, and chemotherapy side effects

By Alicia Wallace, The Cannabist Staff
This Feb. 19, 2013, file photo, shows OxyContin pills arranged for a photo at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt.
Toby Talbot, Associated Press file

If the United States legalized medical marijuana for conditions such as chronic pain, anxiety and seizures, cannabis could siphon more than $4 billion annually from the nation’s pharmaceutical industry, a new study hypothesizes.

The report expected to be released Wednesday by New Frontier Data, a provider of data and analytics to cannabis businesses, is intended to show how cannabis could disrupt pharmaceutical sales in nine key treatment areas.

“Any opportunity for alternatives that could result in reduced pharmaceutical drug use might present a compelling point of discussion from a public policy standpoint,” said John Kagia, executive vice president of industry analytics for the Washington, D.C.-based New Frontier.

With the backdrop of opioid use concerns and the simmering debates on health care reform and marijuana legalization, Kagia and fellow analysts sought to explore the idea of pharmaceutical substitution — people eschewing prescription drugs and using medical marijuana to treat certain ailments.

Read the full story on The Denver Post website.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.

Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.

Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.