14 DAY TRIAL // A team of researchers writing in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology argue that, all things considered, people suffering with various medical conditions would be better off were they to take a so-called marijuana pill rather than resort to smoking said medicine.
The pill these researchers are referring to is known to the scientific community as dronabinol. The pill is efficient in terms of providing pain relief because of its containing the active ingredient in marijuana.
Experiments carried out with the help of several volunteers have shown that, unlike the practice of smoking marijuana, this pill offers pain relief for a longer period of time.
Thus, the volunteers who were administered dronabinol as part of this research admitted to having decreased pain sensitivity for a period of up to 4.5 hours.
Those who resorted to smoking the drug only experienced decreased pain sensitivity for about 2.5 hours.
According to Live Science, these so-called marijuana pills might provide pain relief for longer periods, yet the fact remains that it also takes a little longer for them to kick in.
More precisely, those on the pill had to wait for about one hour before the drug's analgesic effects finally became observable.
Those who smoked the drug experienced these analgesic effects in roughly 15 minutes.
The same source informs us that, as far as the researchers who compared these two means of offering pain relief are concerned, taking a marijuana pill instead of smoking the drug need be linked to several health benefits.
It is their belief that, unlike smoking, ingesting a pill does nothing to impact on a person's lung function.
Furthermore, the risks that someone might develop cancer as a result of their inhaling smoke are virtually absent when one chooses the pill over the cigarette.
The researchers also believe that those who choose dronabinol have fewer chances of abusing the drug at some point in their lives.