Marijuana has been studied for use as a treatment for patients with Glaucoma. For those who don’t know Glaucoma is a sickness where the optic nerve inside of your eye gets damaged, causing your vision to slowly become clouded. This loss of vision is irreversible. Often times the sickness is associated with increased fluid buildup and pressure inside of the eye. The reason Marijuana has been approved as a medical treatment for patients who have Glaucoma is because Cannabis causes the pressure within the eye and other blood cells in the brain to drop, a decrease that tends to last several hours – no matter the extent of the Glaucoma of the patient. This result is not related to pain medications in general, or even sedation. This particular outcome of medication seems only to result by use of Marijuana.

To be clear, Cannabis is not a cure for Glaucoma, it simply lessens the symptoms and discomfort of patients, while also retarding (or slowing down) the loss of sight for patients whom normal medications have failed, and surgery is no longer an option. While eye-drops containing THC have been developed as of yet they have not proven to have any results even comparable to smoking the Cannabis. Because of this the eye-drops were discontinued for research purposes back in 1981. Smoking it seems to be (for now) the quickest way for ingestion and the easiest for getting enough of the THC into the system to have an effect. The current downside is that many elderly patients dislike the side effects of THC, or rather, they’re uncomfortable with the feeling of being high.