The scientific team acknowledges that CBD has attracted much interest as a possible addiction treatment — including for cocaine use disorder, which develops in about one in every five regular users in North America — but add the current findings don’t bear that out.

“In our study, the use of CBD was not more effective than a placebo in treating cocaine use disorder,” says Violaine Mongeau-Pérusse, the study’s first author and a Ph.D. student in the Didier Jutras-Aswad Research Laboratory.

“Cocaine use disorder is a significant public health concern for which no efficacious pharmacological interventions are available.” / PHOTO BY GENIUSKP / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

“Although it is safe and produces only mild side effects [the treatment was associated mainly with diarrhea], it reduces neither the craving to use nor the risk of relapse after detoxification,” Mongeau-Pérusse adds.

“Cocaine use disorder is a significant public health concern for which no efficacious pharmacological interventions are available,” the study notes.

With existing scientific evidence related to using cannabis to treat the disorder being very limited, the CHUM statement adds that the most recent “conclusive results provide guidelines on the therapeutic use of CBD, which has seen growing popularity in Canada and elsewhere in the world.”

The most recent “conclusive results provide guidelines on the therapeutic use of CBD.” / PHOTO BY ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

However, a review of related studies published last fall in Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior was more optimistic about CBD’s potential role in treating cocaine use disorder.

Evidence from the review — none of the studies involved human — “indicates that CBD is a promising adjunct therapy for the treatment of cocaine dependence due to its effect on: cocaine reward effects, cocaine consumption, behavioural responses, anxiety, neuronal proliferation, hepatic protection and safety.”

Researchers did note, though, that “clinical trials are strongly required to determine whether the findings in animal models occur in humans diagnosed for cocaine or crack cocaine use disorder.”

According to Science Advances, using dopamine agonists looks to be “the most promising pharmacological strategies for cocaine use disorder treatment thus far.” Combination drugs, the article adds, “may be especially promising.”