Huestis MA and Smith ML

(2018) Trends Mol Med, 24: 156-172.

Link to abstract

Understanding cannabis and synthetic cannabinoid intake history is vital for treating drug dependence, investigating cannabinoid effects, and providing information to healthcare personnel, medical examiners, and public health officials; this is particularly relevant today with cannabis medicalization and legalization. Required information includes identifying exposure, time of use, frequency of use, relapse, withdrawal, and predicting cannabinoid effects. Recent controlled cannabinoid administration studies enable the development of models and markers to better identify patterns of intake and exposure. Future challenges include developing behavioral markers of cannabis impairment, bringing to market breathalyzers for cannabinoid detection, and identifying markers of recent cannabis intake in diverse biological matrices. We posit that biological monitoring of cannabinoids and metabolites will improve the characterization of cannabis and synthetic cannabinoid intake history.