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Editorial Methodology & Sources

How CannabisDependence.org content is researched, sourced, reviewed, and updated — and what we will not do under any circumstances.

Health information has consequences. A reader on this site might be deciding whether to seek professional treatment, attempt cold-turkey withdrawal, return to use after a relapse, or recommend a course of action to a family member. Because of that, we describe in detail where every claim on CannabisDependence.org comes from, how often we revisit it, and what we refuse to do.

Sources

CannabisDependence.org draws on six categories of primary sources, in order of weight:

  1. Peer-reviewed research and systematic reviews. Studies indexed in PubMed and published in recognized journals (JAMA, The Lancet, Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, NEJM, Annals of Internal Medicine, Neuropsychopharmacology). These are our primary sources for any claim about withdrawal severity, treatment efficacy, neurological effects, or epidemiology.
  2. National health authorities. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the FDA, and the CDC. Their position statements, treatment-improvement protocols, and surveillance data inform every clinical claim on the site.
  3. Diagnostic and clinical-guideline frameworks. The DSM-5 (and DSM-5-TR), ICD-10/ICD-11, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) criteria, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM 2017) cannabis evidence framework, and similar consensus documents.
  4. Government statistics and surveillance data. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), Monitoring the Future, the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS), and CDC mortality and morbidity data for prevalence and trend claims.
  5. Court rulings and federal regulation. Where we describe legal status (Schedule I, the federal rescheduling process, ADA implications, employment-testing law) we cite the underlying Federal Register publication, agency rule, or court opinion.
  6. Credible health journalism — outlets with institutional fact-checking processes (STAT News, Kaiser Health News, AP, Reuters, the major medical journals’ news sections) for current-events context. Where journalism reports on a primary source, we link to the primary source whenever available.

We do not treat anecdotal reports, social-media testimonials, dispensary marketing, treatment-center advertising, or industry-funded white papers as medical evidence. When we reference patient experiences (e.g., on the Stories of Change page), they are clearly identified as anecdotal and are never presented as proof of efficacy.

Currency — How Often Pages Are Reviewed

Cannabis research is moving quickly. New studies on withdrawal severity, CHS prevalence, treatment efficacy, and high-potency-product effects are published every month. Every page on CannabisDependence.org carries a “last verified” date that reflects when the lead editor most recently confirmed the content against current literature. The site honors a sitewide SITE_LAST_VERIFIED constant that flows through to JSON-LD dateModified and OpenGraph article:modified_time meta tags so search engines and AI crawlers can see content freshness.

Content is reviewed:

  • Annually as a backstop. Every page is reviewed at least once per year regardless of whether anything specific has changed.
  • Whenever a material change occurs in the evidence base. A major meta-analysis, an updated NIDA position, a DSM revision, a relevant FDA action, or new surveillance data triggers an immediate revision of the affected pages.
  • When readers report errors. Reader-reported corrections are investigated within a few business days; verified corrections are made promptly.

What We Do Not Do

  • We do not sell anything — not products, not supplements, not courses, not coaching, not memberships. Information about recovery should not cost money.
  • We do not recommend specific treatment centers, telehealth platforms, or therapists in exchange for compensation. Where we link to providers, the link is editorial.
  • We do not accept paid placements, sponsored content, or affiliate revenue from cannabis, treatment, supplement, or recovery-program businesses.
  • We do not partner with treatment operators. SAMHSA’s helpline (1-800-662-HELP) is the right starting point for treatment referrals; the SAMHSA Treatment Locator is the right database for verifying programs.
  • We do not reproduce treatment-center marketing copy. When we describe a treatment approach (CBT, MET, contingency management, naltrexone, gabapentin), the description is written editorially based on peer-reviewed evidence.
  • We do not generate AI content without editorial review. AI tools may be used as a research aid; the resulting content is then verified against primary medical literature, edited, and signed off by the lead editor before publication.
  • We do not provide diagnosis or medical advice. The self-assessment tools on this site are educational; only a qualified clinician can diagnose cannabis use disorder.
  • We do not exaggerate cannabis risks for shock value, and we do not minimize them to make readers comfortable. Either approach undermines trust.

Corrections Policy

Despite our review process, errors occur. When they do, we handle them publicly:

  • Minor corrections (typos, broken links, formatting) are fixed promptly without a formal notice.
  • Factual corrections (a misquoted statistic, an incorrectly attributed finding, a claim that overstates or understates the evidence) are acknowledged with a dated update note added to the affected page describing what was changed and when.
  • Significant corrections — errors that could meaningfully affect a reader’s health decisions — receive both an on-page note and an updated article:modified_time + lastReviewed JSON-LD field. We do not silently edit health content to cover mistakes.

Reader corrections are filed through the contact page. Every report is logged.

Citation Style

Where pages cite specific studies, agency publications, statutes, or guideline documents, citations appear inline using the site’s shared render_citation() helper, which standardizes citation formatting across the network and links directly to the underlying source whenever a stable URL exists. We prefer linking to primary sources (the actual published study, the actual NIDA publication, the actual DSM criterion text) over secondary coverage. For studies behind paywalls, we link to the open-access version (PubMed Central, preprint server, author archive) where one exists.