Main description:

Inform and improve your practice with this comprehensive resource on cannabis use and abuse

A Practitioner's Guide to Cannabis expertly cuts through the political and cultural noise surrounding cannabis use and provides a relevant, timely, and agnostic analysis of cannabis use and abuse.

Incisive and insightful, this book assists behavioral health practitioners to increase their skills in screening, assessment, and intervention while helping them to adopt evidence-based practices. Health care providers will come to rely on this comprehensive resource to understand the risks of cannabis use and to provide a set of intervention strategies effective in a variety of settings.

The book covers topics crucial for understanding the work of behavioral health and health practitioners dealing with cannabis issues, including:

the complexities of cannabis science
our cultural interpretations of the use of cannabis
the risks involved with cannabis use
effective interventions
patients' expressions of their own "biopsychosocial" experience

The book is perfect for social workers, psychologists, professional counselors, alcohol/drug counselors, and providers of health care, including physicians, nurses, and physician's assistants.

Contents:

Chapter 1: Overview

In the overview we describe our changing culture and the need for re-examining our current understandings, approach and developing new, more effective means of addressing cannabis use with patients.

Chapter 2: What is Cannabis?

For most of human history, cannabis has been viewed as a medicinal, spiritual, and recreational substance. Cultures have long recognized both the benefits of cannabis use and the risks of overuse.
Cannabis co-evolved with human society, and cannabis use has been affected by changes in attitude and policy.
Cannabis was recognized and used by Western medicine from the 1860s until the 1930s, when public perception changed, and it was deemed harmful.
Today, laws on cannabis and public attitudes toward its use have evolved; the current trend is toward legalization for medical and recreational purposes.

Chapter 3: Cannabis: What it's Made of and How it Works

A summary of cannabis plant makeup and chemistry
Understanding The two most studied cannabinoids are delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) and terpenes, the psychoactive chemicals in cannabis
How cannabis works on the body: CB1 and CB2 receptor sites
Cannabis effects on the brain

Chapter 4: Prevalence and Methods of Cannabis Use

Current Usage: Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the U.S. with approximately 24 million Americans over 12 years old reporting having used marijuana in the past month. More than half of all Americans say they have tried marijuana (Marist Institute for Public Opinion, 2017).
Methods of use: smoking, vaping, consuming edibles, applying salves and dabbing.
Due to changes in growing and production, cannabis is more potent and more readily available in multiple strains

Chapter 5: Cannabis its Recreational Use and its Effects

People are motivated to use cannabis for a variety of desired recreational, medicinal, or psychosocial effects.
Cannabis users describe why they use.
Approximately 85% of cannabis users describe few if any negative impacts of cannabis use
Evidence for the negative psychological, emotional, social and occupational impacts of cannabis use are reviewed

Chapter 6: Medical Cannabis Patients Describe Their Experiences

* Using basic ethnographic research strategies including patient and provider interviews, review of literature and case illustrations: this chapter seeks to represent cannabis use from the point of view of medicinal cannabis users to step outside of narrowly defined assumptions and to better understand the psychosocial experience of medicinal users

Chapter 7: A New Approach to Cannabis Screening

Introducing the Cannabis Intervention Screener (CIS)
The CIS validation study is summarized
The CIS clinical utility for cannabis screening, risk stratification and supporting motivational interventions is described.

Chapter 8: Cannabis Brief Motivational Intervention

A step by step explanation for the Cannabis Brief Motivational Intervention
Patient and clinician scripts illustrated the intervention.
Tips and tools support engaging, focusing, motivating and planning for change

Chapter 9: Effective Treatment for Cannabis Use Disorder: Integrated Motivational Interviewing & Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MET/CBT)

The Rationale and Context for MET/CBT
Structured MET/CBT clinical interventions for the treatment of Cannabis Use Disorder
Behavioral Activation as a core element of the model