New Study Links Cannabis Abuse to Schizophrenia in Young Men
As if marijuana’s own chemical profile isn’t potentially harmful enough, local doctor seeing cases of teens consuming pot laced with fentanyl.
During the push to legalize the use of marijuana, arguments were made that this would be an excellent revenue-generating opportunity that allows for the regulation of a “safe” drug with no increase in potential negative consequences.
Unfortunately, the “experts” were wrong. And, once again, the nation’s young men are poised to be the biggest victims of their blunder.
Young men who regularly smoke marijuana may have an increased risk of developing schizophrenia, according to a new study.
Schizophrenia cases in men ages 21 to 30 could have been prevented by up to 30% without persistent use of marijuana, medically coined “cannabis use disorder” (CUD), according to findings published May 4 in the journal Psychological Medicine. The study, based on data from nearly 6 million people in Denmark ages 16 to 49, concluded 15% of schizophrenia cases in males may be preventable if CUD was avoided.
“Although CUD is not responsible for most schizophrenia cases in Denmark, it appears to contribute to a non-negligible and steadily increasing proportion over the past five decades,” the researchers concluded.
The authors of the study note that increasing use of legalized pot has contributed to the mistake notion that pot is “safe”.
Crucially, said Carsten Hjorthøj, the study’s lead author, “Increases in the legalization of cannabis over the past few decades have made it one of the most frequently used psychoactive substances in the world, while also decreasing the public’s perception of its harm. This study adds to our growing understanding that cannabis use is not harmless.”
Schizophrenia is far from the only danger from what pop culture treats as harmless fun. Cannabis also has been definitively associated with “depression, anxiety, and suicidality” among adolescents. Its increasing public acceptance also coincided with a doubling in fatal car crashes between 2000 and 2018. Instances of pediatric marijuana poisoning have grown severalfold.
In states that legalized it, crime, including from armed crime syndicates, has increased, not decreased.
The report, which was shared by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and published in Psychological Medicine, sounds the alarm about “Cannabis Use Disorder” (CUD) and the rapidly expanding market for this drug.
Cannabis use disorder(link is external) and schizophrenia are serious, but treatable, mental disorders that can profoundly impact people’s lives. People with cannabis use disorder are unable to stop using cannabis despite it causing negative consequences in their lives. Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality, and the symptoms of schizophrenia can make it difficult to participate in usual, everyday activities. However, effective treatments are available for both cannabis use disorder and schizophrenia.
“The entanglement of substance use disorders and mental illnesses is a major public health issue, requiring urgent action and support for people who need it,” said NIDA Director and study coauthor Nora Volkow, M.D. “As access to potent cannabis products continues to expand, it is crucial that we also expand prevention, screening, and treatment for people who may experience mental illnesses associated with cannabis use. The findings from this study are one step in that direction and can help inform decisions that health care providers may make in caring for patients, as well as decisions that individuals may make about their own cannabis use.”
Contributing to this disturbing trend is advances in cultivation that has led to even more potent marijuana. For example, one study that analyzed over 38,000 illicit marijuana samples provided by the DEA from 1995 to 2014 determined that its potency had approximately tripled in that period.
The average concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) was about 4% in 1995. However, in 2014 it had grown to 12%. THC is the substance that induces euphoria and relaxation by stimulating neurons in the brain to release very high amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Another factor that will likely add to the havoc on our society by this “safe” drug is that it is now being mixed with the deadly opioid, fentanyl.
Dr. Michael Wenzinger, a staff psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine, has seen a few cases where teenagers have inadvertently consumed the combination. He doesn’t want to alarm people about this, but says parents need to have it on their radar.
Wenzinger says among his practice and his peers, he’s seeing more kids who thought they were just smoking marijuana when drug screens showed fentanyl.
The marijuana-fentanyl mixture cases are very recent. Overall, marijuana use among teens is up. Doctors say the general feeling is that since it’s sold in dispensaries, it’s safe to consume. But those people are not taking into consideration what others are doing with the drug after buying it from legal businesses.
Perhaps we should consider another “Just Say No” campaign in this country, and make sure that this time everyone is fully informed of the hazards associated with long-term marijuana use….especially on our young men who represent our future protectors and contributors.
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Comments
Hopefully one day society can land somewhere between Reefer Madness and “pot is harmless.”
Either legalization and allow folks to exercise adult choices and have adult consequences or make the penalty so high as to deter it. The govt wants the tax revenue and that means they create a black market opportunity for trafficking.
Maybe set up govt operated stores selling weed with x level of THC in a bottle with a tax stamp and expiration date; put it on a QR code. A search turns up that stuff they run the code and you walk. Same thing but no bottle with tax stamp and you go to jail one year minimum first time offense. Sell it to a minor and get five -ten mandatory minimum. Legalization is for adults not minor children. Use kids to run it? Kid goes to juvenile hall till age 19.
They just keep refilling the government bottle
The expiration on the bottle works to mitigate that angle. One weeks worth at a time and a QR code valid 7 days by name of purchaser. Just like an RX. Simple possession without valid QR code = 1 year mandatory minimum for 1st offense.
And more bureaucrats to administer this?
Griz,
Nah, just cops on the street to scan the QR code on the bottle. It either is legit or not; simple, clear and effective. Normal inventory control at the pharmacy and putting a QR code on the weed bottle on the backside. No big bureaucracy needed.
This is the middle path. If we don’t want something in the middle that has bright lines and easy compliance and easy enforcement then there are two other choices.
1. Total decriminalization at times, for all people, independent of age, in all places.
2. Totally illegal for everyone with draconian penalties imposed for mere possession to defeat the problem from the demand side.
Personally I could care less if folks want to shoot heroin 3x a day for ten years but having made the decision it’s up to them and if willing their family to deal with consequences of that decision. No crying about ‘but Johnny is an addict and can’t be held responsible for his criminal acts to feed his addiction’. No crying about ‘the govt should set up treatment facilities’.
Eff that, those facilities are called prisons and the treatment regimen is cold turkey withdrawal and the person can choose to live or die on their own. No one is forced to shoot up or take the first hit. Those are incredibly selfish and self destructive choices. The consequences that flow from that decision should fall on the individual not anyone else.
They’ll figure that one out pretty quick
gonzotx,
Maybe. Make the penalty high enough to deter tampering or falsified QR code. In any event your argument that criminals will seek to evade laws doesn’t exactly help provide a solution nor is it uniquely applicable to my proposal.
Sure. Let’s grow the government some more. They don’t intrude on our lives enough already, and surely there won’t be any private under-the-table sellers who can beat the price on government’s heavily taxed products. This genie, like so many others, is out of the bottle and won’t be put back.
The way to undermine black market is by lower prices at the ‘State Store’. Hell sell it at local pharmacies for all I care. Get the govt tax hand out of the till and just charge sales tax. That should make it price competitive with black market which combined with straight forward mandatory criminal penalties works to push incentives to comply with the legal regime.
Either something that or really only two other options. First totally legal for all of any age to possess, sell, gift, grow, process. Second is the opposite make it 100% illegal for everyone for any aspect with draconian penalties.
in other words, you want to add another layer of bureaucracy to administer and enforce it. You’re going in the wrong direction.
No not at all. We already have LEO and pharmacies. There is already plenty of oversight and adding a QR code isn’t extremely burdensome. That’s a straw man.
I am just spit balling ideas of how society could create a functional middle path as an intellectual exercise and to create a discussion. Of course no one seems to like figuring out a middle path anymore than society does outside a discussion in the real world.
Unless we figure out a workable middle path we have two options; 100% legal for everyone, everywhere, anytime or 100% illegal for everyone, everywhere, anytime.
It’s always interesting to me how much the debate surrounding weed is similar to the debate about Social Security. Everyone acknowledges what we are doing now doesn’t work but most people won’t offer practical solutions. Instead they poopoo the solutions offered by others with full knowledge the current system is failing.
As soon as the Federales figure out a way to tax it, it will be every bit as harmless as distilled spirits.
It’s all part of the plan: keep ’em sexualized and stoned and poor, then conquer.
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I think it’s safe to say he’s an intermediate
It isn’t the pot. There’s more going on to make young men schitzo.
Yeah. That’s what the left has been telling us for years. It isn’t our pot, it must be some other thing, studies be damned.
It just unmasks the disease earlier… or in some… pushed them over the edge.for those marginally compensated.
I had to stop smoking it late 20’s , it hot my paranoia center and that’s was that, after 14 years. I heard of it but didn’t think it would happen to me
It did and it was SO disturbing
Tried again, nope
Pot always made me laugh hysterically, eat and just was pure fun
Till it wasn’t
Long term this has been the goal: “especially on our young men who represent our future protectors and contributors.”
Young men marginalized means a culture falls..
Isn’t this “harmful marijuana” argument a very dead horse? I’m surprised more effort is being wasted on it.
Wow … you mean that burning plants and inhaling the fumes isn’t good for you? I SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you…
The old STUDIES saying the same thing for decades weren’t good enough?
It isn’t CUD that causes the problem, it is the IDGAF in those that are also full of quit.
Lazy Amplifier.
Stereotypically the stoner is a slobbish white male. Snoop had to move out.
That’s interesting. Another study found a connection between the Oval Office and Alzheimer’s.
We should consider another “Just Say No” campaign concerning mentally impaired people running for office, and make sure that everyone is fully informed of the hazards associated with having a sitting president with Alzheimer’s.
No surprise this —
I spent a lot of time smoking weed from 1970-1984. I got married in 1983 and in 1984, when my wife got pregnant, she couldn’t drink alcohol or smoke dope. I stopped drinking and smoking during that time as well. When our son was born, we resumed our consumption of alcohol, but decided not to go back to dope. It is way too easy to be stoned all the time with minor physical after-effects. At least when you drink too much, you punish your body, and it makes you pay.
In my experience, heavy and habitual weed use has a detrimental psychological affect, not to mention what holding that smoke in does to your lungs. One becomes more introverted and less social … and dependent on the stuff for relaxing and/or having a good time.
Maybe allow it by prescription, but keep the restrictions tight. Look what happened with prescription opiods; file that under notgood.com.
It distresses me to see the trend toward marijuana legalization. Of course it’s bad for you. Duh!
Word of caution.
I haven’t yet read the study myself but these things aren’t always what they are cracked up to be, wait for other scientists to review the study before forming conclusions (I will be reading myself).
This isn’t news. Pot use and schizophrenia have been linked in several studies; in 2019 Hillsdale’s publication “Imprimis” had a detailed breakdown of the problems that front-line medical personnel were witnessing. https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/marijuana-mental-illness-violence/
Children are one problem, adults another.
If you are not free to make mistakes, you are not free.
The government can’t even publish a proper food pyramid.
They poisoned people with useless vaxxes and boosters.
I’ll rely on my own judgment and not theirs, thank you so much.
For the record, I’ve never done drugs OR the C-19 cocktails.
I’ll rely on my own judgment … I’ve never done drugs.”
So your judgment told you not to do drugs, Henry?
Yes. Why? Is it that strange?
It’s the same judgment that told me not to do mRNA, so I think we can rule out peer pressure in either direction as a deciding factor.
I smoked on and off for many years. Sometimes for job requirements I would abstain for years. When I quit I would be grumpy and unmotivated for about a week. The most dramatic change upon quitting would be my dreams would be every night. When I would smoke I would never dream. I have heard this from other smokers as well.
In my experience, heavy and habitual weed use has a detrimental psychological affect, not to mention what holding that smoke in does to your lungs. One becomes more introverted and less social … and dependent on the stuff for relaxing and/or having a good time.
Dang, bad tripping!
My experience was just the opposite, it was a blast, we had parties all the time, absolutely loved it till I got paranoid. Much better than liquor on your body, but like all things, people are different and I definitely would t want to make pot with someone mentally unstable already