The majority of the empirical literature supports the argument that cannabis produces more harm than benefits insofar as psychiatric illness severity and progression (Table 1). Despite the current gaps that exist in research surrounding this topic, there seems to be a discrepancy that remains between evidence for cannabis’ therapeutic potential and self-reported motivation underlying cannabis use. For example, in a cross-sectional study across 1,429 participants from 18 different countries, individuals reported using cannabis “medically” rather than “recreationally”, and users described pain (61.2%), anxiety (58.1%) and depression (50.3%) as top reasons for using cannabis [133]. Other studies have found similar results, with sleep, pain and anxiety among the most common reasons for use [11, 50, 122, 151]. Individuals are also directly reporting the use of cannabis to self-medicate specific mental illnesses, such as anxiety and PTSD [26, 50, 142]. Additionally, some clinicians are directly prescribing cannabis for anxiety and depression [110, 122]. However, it is clear that there is limited evidence to make any strong conclusions about therapeutic effects of cannabis [109]. Due to the anticipated increase in cannabis availability with
