Medical Marijuana

The Consortium for Medical Marijuana (MMJ) Clinical Outcomes Research, a state-funded multi-university research collaboration, is housed at the University of Florida and led by Dr. Winterstein as the Consortium Director. The Consortium conducts, supports and disseminate research on the uses and outcomes of MMJ. It supports a grants program, hosts an annual conference, publishes a quarterly newsletter, publishes commentaries in its Evidence in Context Series, and is working on two research databases, Medical Marijuana & Me (M3) – a prospective survey of current and new MMJ users, and MEMORY – an electronic healthcare data research repository.

Current topics of research include:

  • Safety and Efficacy of Medical Cannabis
    • Impact of MMJ initiation on opioid use among patients with chronic non-cancer pain
    • Impact of MMJ use on driving safety
  • CannWatch – Cannabis Adverse Event Reporting- using data provided to the State of Florida as well as developing a patient-oriented survey
  • Patient and Provider Information Sheets- we are currently focusing on summarizing evidence available for the conditions approved in the State of Florida
  • MMJ utilization pattern including daily dose, differences in dosing across product types and patient characteristics, and trends in dosing over time
  • M3 –this project is in collaboration with Department of Epidemiology. We work to survey new and prevalent users of cannabis in Florida to collect information focusing on specific health outcomes
  • MEMORY – developing the Medical Marijuana Outcomes Research Repository via linkage of MMJ dispensing data to medical claims and vital records