Can Cannabis Cure Cancer?

Given that 39.6% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, cancers affects nearly everyone. Chances are, someone close to you has battled cancer.
Oncologists, more than doctors in any other discipline within medicine, support the option of recommending cannabis as part of a treatment program for patients suffering from cancer. However, while the positive effects of using cannabis to alleviate cancer symptoms have been well documented, the U.S. government continues to classify cannabis as a Schedule I drug — high potential for abuse and no known medical use. Consequently, the federal government’s position on cannabis stifles much-needed research on cannabis as a “cure” for cancer.
Moreover, the federal government’s position has fueled massive misinformation about cannabis as a potential cure for cancer. On the one hand, the federal government officially claims cannabis has no medicinal value. On the other hand, many pseudoscience “cancer quacks” unethically exaggerate claims of cannabis as the ultimate cure for cancer providing unsubstantiated help to thousands of cancer patients.
So what is the truth?
What is a Cancer “Cure?”
On the question of cannabis as a cure, Dr. Abrams, a cannabis advocate and one of the leading oncologists and cancer researchers in the world, cautions on the use of the term “cure”:
“Cure is a huge word in oncology. It usually implies that the patient has survived 5 years without evidence of their cancer. We are able to cure more cancers today than we were when I began my career as an oncologist. That has been through advances in diagnosis and treatment with conventional therapies.”
As a cancer and integrative medicine specialist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Mount Zion in San Francisco and an oncologist for more than three decades, Dr. Abrams observes:
“[After] 33 years of being an oncologist in San Francisco, I would guess that a large proportion of the patients I have treated have used cannabis. If cannabis definitively cured cancer, I would have expected that I would have a lot more survivors. That being said, what we do know is that cannabis is truly an amazing medicine for many cancer and treatment-related side effects — nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, pain, depression, anxiety, insomnia.”
Dr. Abrams’ opinion reflects a consensus within the credible oncologist and cancer scientific community: there is no doubt that cannabis is effective at treating cancer-related symptoms and treatment-related side effects, but the jury is still out on whether cannabis can actually “cure” cancer.