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University of Colorado Researchers Find ‘High-Potency Marijuana is Associated With Psychosis’

University of Colorado Researchers Find ‘High-Potency Marijuana is Associated With Psychosis’

“In addition to uncontrollable vomiting and addiction, adolescents who frequently use high doses of cannabis may also experience psychosis that could possibly lead to a lifelong psychiatric disorder”

People who promote marijuana legalization will not be happy to hear this.

Colorado Politics reports:

High potency marijuana is associated with psychosis, Colorado university researchers conclude

Is high potency marijuana bad for individuals with preexisting mental health conditions?

The answer, according to university researchers, is yes.

But it depends on which mental health condition.

Researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus pointed to two studies showing that very potent marijuana is associated with psychosis. But it also offers some benefits, such as reducing anxiety and depression.

Colorado’s General Assembly had tasked the school to conduct a review of the scientific literature into the physical and mental health effects of high-potency THC or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the main psychoactive compound in marijuana.

The marijuana market has been shifting toward high-concentration products.

Critics, who view the trend as alarming, often say today’s marijuana is “not your parent’s pot.”

“The potency of THC, the high-inducing ingredient in the marijuana plant, is the strongest it has ever been,” the group One Chance to Grow Up says on its website, adding the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to the effects of THC, increasing the risk of addiction. “This is not the marijuana of the past. In fact, the potency has tripled since the 1990s. Dutch health experts concluded that THC potency above 15% classifies it as a hard drug.”

Dr. Elizabeth Stuyt, an addiction psychiatrist, said adolescents, in particular, face the risk of addiction to drugs or alcohol because they’re in a development period “with increased neurobiological based tendencies for risk taking with decreased suppressive and regulatory control, and this is a period of decreased parental monitoring and increase in peer affiliations.”

This period, she said, is a “perfect storm.”

The New York Times’ Christina Caron explored this new frontier last year, noting that, while marijuana isn’t as dangerous as a drug like fentanyl, it “can have potentially harmful effects — especially for young people, whose brains are still developing.”

“In addition to uncontrollable vomiting and addiction, adolescents who frequently use high doses of cannabis may also experience psychosis that could possibly lead to a lifelong psychiatric disorder, an increased likelihood of developing depression and suicidal ideation, changes in brain anatomy and connectivity and poor memory,” Caron wrote, adding, “But despite these dangers, the potency of the products currently on the market is largely unregulated.”

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Comments

Well,we already know that high potency marijuana causes people to vote for democrats.

    TJBX in reply to MajorWood. | May 15, 2023 at 3:39 pm

    I’m still astounded that MJ is causing problems. I mean we were inundated with reports that MJ just makes you mellow and it is not a gateway drug. We were told if we just make MJ legal, then drug dependencies will decrease and people will be happier.

      bullhubbard in reply to TJBX. | May 16, 2023 at 10:25 am

      It is not causing problems. People with pre-existing problems are making them worse by using psychedelics in some cases.

When your state highway patrol pull someone and discover a container of ‘natural” weed or a pot vaping device in a door pocket or center concel is it considered the equivalent of an open container of alcohol?

henrybowman | May 15, 2023 at 5:24 pm

“The dose makes the poison” — always has, and always will. It’s no different with alcohol, ibuprofen, aspirin, fluoride, salt, and even water.

I’m tired of having my effective medications (like Sudafed) banned and replaced with ersatz placebos, just because some bad guy somewhere figured out how to distill it down to poison. Hell, castor beans, taro root, and yuca/cassava have been around for tens of thousands of years.

healthguyfsu | May 15, 2023 at 10:07 pm

This actually explains a lot of the left’s voting bloc.

Every drug pushes its own resistance. Regular users who become dependent will have to up their dosage either through more often usage, or higher dosages, or both.

If we can’t kill children in the womb, then let’s mutilate them into trannies, and if they survive that then let’s dope them into psychoses. This is the “better world” that we are forever being promised.

bullhubbard | May 16, 2023 at 10:23 am

This again?

Pot is a mild psychedelic. We have known for decades that those with a family history of schizophrenia should avoid psychedelics. The stronger the pot, the more psychedelic, so . . . duh . . . caveat emptor.

High-THC strains are the result of an improvement in pot genetics following a few decades of relentless cross-breeding. Luther Burbank would be proud! All the hand-wringing over high potency marijuana also ignores the existence of hashish–which can contain up to 80% THC–a wonderful preparation used for nearly as long as human beings have been using the leaves and flowers of the plant–literally thousands of years.

“Risk of addiction” my ass. Most morons who should know better (professional psychiatrists and psychologists) consider the habitual consumption of chocolate chip cookies an “addiction.” They also believe that addiction is a “disease,” deliberately promoting, ignoring, or never having come to terms with what Thomas Szasz called “the medicalization of everyday life.” What Szasz called “the therapeutic state” ushered in the colossal lie/scam of “drug rehab” has produced things like the Methadone clinic because “Morphine clinic” was unpalatable, not marketable to the general population who were led to believe that the cure for an alcoholic who prefers gin is a switch to bourbon.

Enough of this paternalistic horseshit. We need a Libertarian third party, STAT!

Dean Robinson | May 16, 2023 at 8:45 pm

Given your ideological hyperbole, it doesn’t surprise me that you cite Szasz, who famously denied the validity of most mental disorders fifty years ago, which guaranteed him cult status among the misanthropic fringe. Most of us work to relieve suffering rather than glorify it, and there are a lot of families and young people out there nowadays who would sadly dispute your flippant dismissal of the risks posed by super potent cannabis derivatives. You might get it someday if you or a loved one develops a devastating psychosis, but even then your twisted version of libertarianism might prevail over reality. Hope not, but some folks make intransigence into an impermeable shield against empathy.