Two recent studies offer positive news about medical cannabis, suggesting thatmarijuanaproducts improve physical and cognitive symptoms, boost quality of life, and rarely produce signs of problematic use.

In one study, patients withepilepsywho used medical cannabis were nearly half as likely to have needed an emergency department visit within the last 30 days as was a control group. In the other study, 3 of 54 subjects who used medical cannabis showed signs of possible cannabis use disorder (CUD) over 12 months.

The findings show that “there is improvement in a range of outcome variables, and the adverse effects seem to be minimal, compared to what we might have hypothesized based on the bulk of the literature on the negative effects of cannabis on health outcomes,” cannabis researcherZiva Cooper, PhD, of the University of California at Los Angeles, said in an interview. Dr. Cooper moderated a session about the studies at the…