Young people are especially vulnerable to cannabis’s effects because their brains are still developing. But a study from Denmark last summer found that schizophrenia cases associated with pot addiction have increased three- to fourfold over the past 20 years as marijuana potency rose 200%. Some legalization proponents claim that other countries where marijuana is widely available have fewer mental-health problems than the U.S. Researchers have yet to prove a causal relationship, but the weight of evidence is hard to dismiss. A meta-analysis in January examining 591 studies concluded that early marijuana use among adolescents was associated with a significant increase in the risk of developing schizophrenia. Some patients spend weeks in the emergency room waiting for placement in mental-health clinics.Ĭountless studies have also linked chronic cannabis use to schizophrenia. Some patients she treated experienced cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome from long-term use, which causes “scromiting”-screaming and vomiting. Cannabis-induced psychosis, she said, is fairly common. Daily marijuana emergency-room visits in San Diego nearly quadrupled between 20. Roneet Lev, an addiction specialist who previously led the Emergency Department at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, said in a recent interview with the American Council on Science and Health that California cannabis emergency-room visits climbed 53% in the three years after the state legalized recreational marijuana in 2016. “People who have taken large doses of the drug may experience an acute psychosis, which includes hallucinations, delusions, and a loss of the sense of personal identity,” the National Institutes of Health notes.
Delusional, he jumped off a six-story building and killed himself. Substance-abuse treatment and a stay at a mental hospital failed to cure him because chronic marijuana use permanently rewired his brain. He gradually withdrew from social activities and developed psychosis. He started smoking weed at 14, after Colorado legalized it, and progressed to using more-potent products such as dabs. His mother, Laura, wrote a harrowing book chronicling his descent into cannabis addiction. That’s what happened to Colorado teenager Johnny Stack. One in six people who start using pot while under 18 will develop an addiction, which doctors call “cannabis use disorder.” As they use the drug more frequently to satisfy cravings, they develop psychological and social problems. It’s much easier for young people to get hooked. But dabs-portions of concentrated cannabis-can include 20 times as much THC as joints did in the 1960s. Marijuana nowadays on average is about four times as potent as in 1995. THC, the chemical that causes a euphoric high, interacts with the brain’s neuron receptors involved with pleasure. This is leading to increased addiction and antisocial behavior. But youth nowadays are consuming marijuana more frequently and in higher doses than their elders did when they were young. Isn’t pot supposed to make you mellow? Maybe if you smoke only a joint on occasion. It could be a coincidence, but increasing evidence suggests a connection. (2018), were reported to be marijuana users. (2016), the First Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (2017), and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
(2012), the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Gabby Giffords’s constituent meeting in Tucson, Ariz. The Times didn’t append a correction to the story as it might be expected to do when fixing a factual inaccuracy.Īssuming the elided detail was accurate, it would fit a pattern. Asked during the 2020 presidential campaign about her pot use in college, Kamala Harris giggled and said marijuana “gives a lot of people joy” and “we need more joy in the world.” But the public needs an honest discussion of its social and public-health risks, which include violence and mental illness.Īlex Berenson, author of Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, pointed out that the New York Times had curiously removed from an article about the Uvalde school shooter a former coworker’s recollection that he complained about his grandmother not letting him smoke weed. Nineteen states have legalized cannabis for recreational use, and politicians of both parties increasingly treat it as harmless. The stigma once attached to marijuana has vanished.
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