Overview of the Research on Cannabis for COVID-19March 26th 2024
Given the fast and furious mobilization of the global healthcare community to understand the nature of the coronavirus, how to treat it, and, eventually, how to prevent it, the sheer volume of research on COVID-19 is not at all surprising. What is, perhaps, surprising, especially given how recently it’s been since the COVID-19 breakout, is that there are so many research publications on the potential for cannabis to be used to treat the virus. On the other hand, perhaps the abundance of research on cannabis for COVID-19 is not so surprising. After all, it is a virus that causes an immune response, which may escalate into a virulent inflammatory reaction. And an enormous body of research on cannabis—and cannabidiol (CBD) in particular—has shown cannabis to induce strong anti-viral and anti-inflammatory effects. It is still early days, so no clinical studies establishing the efficacy of cannabis for COVID-19 have yet been conducted, but studies have established several clear mechanisms of action for using cannabis to treat COVID-19.
