Opinion: Migraine sufferers should be able to get medical marijuana in Mississippi

In passing Initiative Measure No. 65, Mississippi became the thirty-sixth state to legalize cannabis for medical use. Yet Mississippi hasn’t been quite as forward-thinking when it comes to which patients can access medical marijuana.

Despite listing 22 “debilitating medical conditions” that medical cannabis can be prescribed for, migraines — a chronic and disabling neurological disease that affects 39 million Americans — is not one of them.

Although migraine is the sixth-most disabling illness in the world and is more common than asthma, diabetes, and epilepsy combined, migraine patients are often marginalized. To both reduce the stigma and provide easier access to effective treatment options to patients of this debilitating disease, Mississippi should explicitly allow medical cannabis to be prescribed to treat migraines.

Often dismissed as “just a headache,” migraines are a serious, neurological disease that affects people differently. Individual triggers include stress, inadequate sleep, hormonal variations, changes in weather, certain foods, or all of the above. To identify their personal triggers, neurologists recommend patients log information about their attacks via a journal or mobile tracking app. This data can inform doctors’ treatment decisions and helps patients make lifestyle changes to prevent headaches or render them less severe.

Studies have shown that cannabis is an effective migraine treatment if taken before an attack and can reduce pain and intensity during a headache. A recent survey by migraine tracking app Migraine Buddy found that while only 30% of migraine patients had tried cannabis as a treatment, 82% said it helped ease their suffering.

If cannabis is so effective at preventing and treating migraine headaches, why have so few patients tried it?

The simple answer is access. Of the 36 states and the District of Columbia that have legalized cannabis for medicinal use, only six have expressly approved its use to treat migraines. Mississippi is not one of them.

Initiative Measure 65 lists 22 medical conditions that cannabis can be prescribed for, including cancer, glaucoma, PTSD and epilepsy. Mississippi regulations will allow doctors to prescribe medical cannabis for “other conditions where a physician believes the benefits of marijuana would outweigh risks,” but migraine is not explicitly listed in the way that similar chronic and debilitating diseases are.

This ambiguity only stigmatizes and dismisses migraine users by not expressly acknowledging the severe and debilitating nature of the disease, especially when you consider that nine in 10 migraine sufferers report they can’t work or function normally during an attack, and migraines are responsible for more than 157 million lost workdays and more than 1.2 million emergency room visits annually.

Migraines are difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to understand, but that shouldn’t prevent patients from having access to effective treatments. Mississippi health officials should explicitly include migraine as a qualifying condition for medical cannabis use to both give patients a safe and effective migraine treatment option and help remove the stigma from one of the worlds’ most debilitating yet misunderstood afflictions.

Francois Cadiou is a migraine sufferer and the founder and CEO of Healint, a leading provider of healthcare technology and developer of migraine tracking app Migraine Buddy.

This story was originally published December 6, 2020 at 12:00 AM.