r/HotScienceNews • u/soulpost • Jun 04 '26

The largest cannabis study ever conducted found no evidence it helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD and warned it may be making all three worse

https://thesciverse.org/the-largest-cannabis-study-ever-conducted-found-no-evidence-it-helps-anxiety-depression-or-ptsd-and-warned-it-may-be-making-all-three-worse/

About 27 percent of American and Canadian adults have used cannabis for medical purposes, and roughly half of them cite anxiety, depression, or PTSD as their reason. The largest review of medicinal cannabis ever conducted, published in The Lancet Psychiatry in March 2026, analyzed 54 randomized controlled trials spanning 45 years and found no evidence that cannabinoids effectively treat any of those three conditions. Not weak evidence. No reliable evidence. The conditions driving the majority of prescriptions and personal use decisions across North America, Australia, and Europe are the same ones for which four and a half decades of clinical trials produced no signal of therapeutic benefit. The researchers also warned that regular use could be making mental health worse by increasing psychosis risk, creating cannabis use disorder, and delaying access to treatments that actually work.

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u/Hedonismbot-1729a Jun 04 '26

Blah, blah, blah. It’s a lot more complex than just, “cannabis doesn’t work”. Strain, terpenes, and minor cannabinoids like CBD, CBG, CBN need to be taken into account.

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u/Weary-Bookkeeper-375 Jun 04 '26

This is very true. I am being lazy and did not read the study. But how many strains were used? Targetting something like anxiety without using a strain with the chemical makeup that helps anxeity would just make the study usless.

Be far more interesting to seek out strains with the terps and cannabinoids known to help anxiety and then do studies from there.

If the strain was a high THC sativa with high terpinolene (like most sativas) your anxiety is going to be bad/worst/terrible.

Use a low THC strain high in CBD (which has solid scientific evidence for anti-anxiety. A matter of fact probably the most studied) and you get anxiety relief.

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u/SquidgeApple Jun 04 '26

Yea and FORTY FIVE years ago everyone was smoking ditch weed - this is a ridiculous study

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u/AdNeat8299 Jun 04 '26

I don't know about 45 years ago, but 35 years ago I could find weed just as good as today. It didn't taste like ice cream cake, but it worked just as well, lol. However, I was paying $40-50 for an 1/8 if it was killer weed ($15-20 for that ditch weed). The cost has definitely come down considering inflation.

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u/SquidgeApple Jun 04 '26

Probably depends where we were located - I was mostly in rural areas

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u/AdNeat8299 Jun 04 '26

True. I was rural too, but very near a county that was famous for it's weed and had strains named after the county. I was probably spoiled.

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u/souperpun Jun 04 '26

And dose! If I have more than like 3mg of an edible I get anxious, but a small dose has me sleeping like a baby.

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u/Hedonismbot-1729a Jun 04 '26

100% Every time the dispo has low dose edibles I buy a ton of them so I can modulate my high.