Midlife women’s health is having a moment. After decades of being skipped over in medical training and mainstream media, perimenopause and menopause are now being discussed openly in journals, on podcasts, and between friends. One thread in that broader conversation: a handful of published surveys looking at whether medical cannabis has any role to play in how women navigate this stage.
What follows is not a recommendation. It is a look at the legal framework for women in the US who might want to explore the option with a doctor, what the published surveys show, and what leading menopause specialists are saying.
The Legal Framework in the US
Qualifying Conditions Vary by State
Forty US states plus Washington, D.C. currently run medical cannabis programmes. Menopause itself is not typically listed as a qualifying condition in any state programme. However, related conditions that some women experience in midlife, such as chronic pain, anxiety disorders, or insomnia linked to a diagnosed medical condition, do qualify in some states. Because the rules vary by state, the same diagnosis that qualifies a patient in one programme may not qualify one in another, and fee structures, possession limits, and caregiver provisions differ widely.
How Certification Works
Certification is a physician-led process. A patient consults with a licensed physician, in most states now via telemedicine, who reviews her medical history and issues a written recommendation. The recommendation then goes to the state registry and the patient receives a medical card. Women in a qualifying US state can learn how to get a medical card online and consult with a licensed MMJ physician about their options as part of that process.
What the Surveys Say Women Are Doing
The 2022 Harvard Survey
A 2022 survey led by researchers at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and published in the journal Menopause looked at 258 perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. Of the respondents, 86.1% reported current cannabis use and 78.7% said they used it in connection with menopause-related symptoms. The most commonly cited reasons were sleep disturbance and mood or anxiety symptoms.
The 2023 Alberta Study
A larger study followed in 2023, published in BMJ Open by researchers at the University of Alberta. That survey of nearly 1,500 women aged 35 and over in Alberta, Canada, found that 34% were current cannabis users, with over 75% of them reporting medical rather than recreational reasons.
The top reasons respondents gave were sleep, anxiety, and joint or muscle discomfort. One finding from the Alberta study is worth flagging: most of the women who reported using cannabis for menopause symptoms had not discussed that use with their healthcare providers. That silence between patient behaviour and clinical conversation is part of what has driven calls for more rigorous trials.
These are surveys of what women report they are doing. They are not clinical trials, and they do not establish whether cannabis is effective for any of the symptoms respondents described. That distinction matters, and the researchers themselves were explicit about it.
What the Medical Community Is Saying
The Menopause Society Position
The Menopause Society (formerly the North American Menopause Society, or NAMS), one of the leading professional bodies in midlife women’s health, has acknowledged the trend without endorsing it. Dr. Stephanie Faubion, the society’s medical director, has stated publicly that more research is needed before medical cannabis can be recommended in clinical practice for menopause symptoms.
The Evidence Base
A 2021 systematic review screened 564 studies on cannabis use in menopause and found only three that met its inclusion criteria. None of the three assessed quality of life as an outcome. The scientific evidence base, in other words, is genuinely thin. Dr. Heather Hirsch, who founded the Menopause and Midlife Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has pointed out that cannabis is widely legal, acts quickly, and doesn’t require a prescription in many places.
That accessibility is part of the appeal, but it also means women are making decisions without the long-term safety data that accompanies more established treatments.
What This Is Not
This is not a suggestion that cannabis is a replacement for hormone replacement therapy, lifestyle changes, or any other standard medical care. It is not a claim that cannabis treats or cures menopause symptoms. The clinical research simply has not been done at the scale or rigour needed to support any such claim.
Hormone replacement therapy, non-hormonal medications, and lifestyle interventions all have decades of clinical evidence behind them for menopause symptoms. Medical cannabis does not, yet. That may change as clinical trials catch up with the survey data, but for now it sits in a different evidentiary category.
What the surveys do show is that a meaningful share of women are already exploring cannabis as part of how they navigate midlife, often without telling their doctors, and that the medical establishment is beginning to take the trend seriously enough to study it properly. Anyone considering anything in this space should have the conversation with a physician who knows their full medical history.
Cannabis is one of the topics this widened conversation has made space for. Whether it has a real clinical role for menopause symptoms is a question that more rigorous research, already underway, will eventually answer.
