Exploratory analysis of United States-based cannabis product health benefit claims on online marketplaces.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Cannabis-derived products (CDPs), including cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products, are widely diverse and readily available through physical and online retail channels in the United States (US) marketplace and may also include claims of treating or providing benefit for health issues. This study aimed to systematically classify the various types of health benefit claim(s) present on CDP listings based on publicly available online marketplace data.

DESIGN

Exploratory analysis to identify health benefit claims.

SETTING AND CASES: A total of 624 805 unique CDPs sold in the US on Leafly and Weedmaps, cannabis online marketplace service platforms.

MEASUREMENTS: This exploratory study was conducted in four phases: (1) data mining of cannabis e-commerce websites Weedmaps and Leafly for product listings in the US; (2) data filtering, text matching and content coding to identify types of advertised health benefit(s) made; (3) analysis on consumer-generated product reviews for sentiment toward advertised health benefit(s); and (4) ANOVA was used to test differences in mean number of health benefit claims based on product characteristic of route-of-administration (RoA).

FINDINGS: A total of 624 805 unique US CDP sales listings from Leafly (n = 50 951) and Weedmaps (n = 573 854) were analyzed. CDP listings with a specific health benefit claim(s) were detected in 998 (1.9%) Leafly and 25 671 (4.47%) Weedmaps CDP listings. The top 5 advertised health benefits were treatment of mood disorders, general discomfort, general wellness, sleep disorders and chronic conditions. Among consumer reviews, 295 (4.6% of consumer reviews from products that advertised health benefit(s)) expressed sentiment toward CDP addressing their health issue with 82.4% being positive, 14.6% negative and 3.1% neutral. We also observed statistically significant differences between RoA and frequency of health benefit claims among those with at least one health benefit claim, with multisystem products (>1RoA) generally having a higher number of average health benefit claims compared with other RoAs.

CONCLUSIONS

Over 26 000 cannabis-derived products listed on two popular US cannabis online marketplaces have at least one health benefit claim.