What Do Oncologists Say About Cannabinoids & Cancer?
Published in July 2021 in the Journal Cancer Communications, this was a study that focused on what administration methods of medical cannabis (MC) were recommended by those oncologists that recommended cannabis to their patients.
Data from a nationally‐representative sample of medical oncologists indicate that 80% discuss medical cannabis with their patients and nearly half recommend cannabis clinically. That's 40% of all oncologists surveyed that recommend cannabis in some form. The oncologists were surveyed in 2016-2017, so we might expect even more to be discussing cannabis with their patients now.
Almost 50% of oncologists favored an oral route of medical cannabis administration, while only 18% supported vaporization and 10% combustion; 24% indicated no preference. Almost 20% recommended two routes of administration.
This is important because ingested cannabinoids are metabolized into different cannabinoids in the liver, whereas vapor or smoke inhaled into the lungs does not pass through the liver. These different administration routes are actually delivering different cannabinoids to the bloodstream.