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Daily Marijuana Use And Highly Potent Weed Linked To Psychosis
Weed use is taking off as more states move to legalize it. And with all the buzz over medical marijuana, it's starting to gain an aura of healthfulness. But there are some serious health risks associated with frequent use. One of the more troubling ones is the risk of having a psychotic episode.
Several past studies have found that more frequent use of pot is associated with a higher risk of psychosis, that is, when someone loses touch with reality. Now a new study published Tuesday [open, DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30048-3] [DX] in the The Lancet Psychiatry shows that consuming pot on a daily basis and especially using high potency cannabis increases the odds of having a psychotic episode later.
[...] The study also shows that three European cities — London, Paris and Amsterdam — where high potency weed is most commonly available actually have higher rates of new cases of psychosis than the other cities in the study. [...] The researchers identified 901 people aged 18 to 64 who were diagnosed with their first episode of psychosis between May 2010 and April 2015, at a mental health facility anywhere in 11 cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, other cities across Europe, and one site in Brazil.
The researchers then asked these individuals and a control group of 1,200-plus other healthy people about their habits, including their use of weed. "We asked people if they used cannabis, when did they start using it and what kind of cannabis," explains study author Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist and clinician scientist at King's College London. People reported the names of weed strains they used, like skunk in the U.K., or the Dutch Nederwiet, which allowed the researchers to identify the THC content in each product through data gathered by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction and national data from the different countries.
The study found that those who used pot daily were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared to someone who never used the drug.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Wednesday March 20 2019, @06:02PM
We started off with Mexican ditch weed. We demonized that. It was made illegal. Once it was illegal, it made a whole lot more sense for people to traffic in the highest potency stuff. Higher potency, same fines per pound meant the same pound could reach even more people. Until weed was legalized the strength of weed only got stronger. Only since it has been regulated can one find marijuana that isn't as strong as possible in dispensaries. Now they even grow and sell some weed that has little or no THC, and sometimes even CBD only strains. People haven't stopped smoking marijuana because of the potency.
We started off with people taking handfuls of opiate pills from their doctor. We cracked down on that source extremely efficiently and made it almost impossible for those same people to get their pills. Enter the black market. Because Fentanyl is cheaper and can be transported as grains of sand per dose, it is now the biggest driver of Opiate deaths. People haven't stopped taking opiates because of the potency.
Drug laws are not saving anyone from themselves. Drug laws only succeed in creating an empty space for people to get lost and even die in. Drug laws are not saving the economy. Drug laws are not stopping thefts and muggings. Every time these zero tolerance laws are applied it makes the lives of regular folks more dangerous. People using drugs is not some sort of outlying case. The majority of people use some sort of drug or another.
All these laws have accomplished is creating market pressure for more and more potent drugs. It would be positive if the policies didn't kill them or send them into a state of psychosis.