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As America's Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms

www.nytimes.com As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms

The drug, legal in much of the country, is widely seen as nonaddictive and safe. For some users, these assumptions are dangerously wrong.

As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms

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  • From Washington State to West Virginia, psychiatrists treat rising numbers of people whose use of the drug has brought on delusions, paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis.

    And in the emergency departments of small community hospitals and large academic medical centers alike, physicians encounter patients with severe vomiting induced by the drug — a potentially devastating condition that once was rare but now, they say, is common. “Those patients look so sick,” said a doctor in Ohio, who described them “writhing around in pain.”

    [...]

    But with more people consuming more potent cannabis more often, a growing number, mostly chronic users, are enduring serious health consequences.

    This article makes a lot of claims but provides no actual statistical data, official statements from medical staff, or references to any studies. Do we actually know that the "symptoms of psychosis", "severe vomiting" or "writhing around in pain" are not presentations of co-morbidities?

    The only data source quoted is a national survey on rate of marijuana use, nothing about any health impacts.

    There's nothing more substantial here than word-of-mouth. It's basically an opinion piece. Always use the razor.

    • Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome is a real thing. But it’s rarely life threatening and easily treated with haldol, which is likely where they got the idea of it causing psychosis.

    • I mean, marijuana induced psychosis is a thing, and has been known about for decades at least. It's relatively rare as a percentage of use, and it's dependent on a combination of dose, genetics, and frequency of use. Same with schizophrenia triggered by marijuana use. Both are well documented; enough so that I can't complain about an a article taking it as granted.

      This is an expected outcome of wider usage, especially with access to higher doses in edibles among inexperienced users.

      Hyperemesis and other symptoms are a known, expected dose dependent result of marijuana use. Again, well documented to the point of it being common knowledge among regular users. You can take too much weed into your system. That has effects. The important part is that none of those effects are even close to effects of taking a similarly "too high" a dose of other recreational drugs.

      Yeah, the article should have included links to sources for readers looking for more info. But anyone that's worked in an ER long enough has run into marijuana side effects. It really is something known, not just assumed or hypothesized. Used to be it was only the long term ER staff that would be able to immediately recognize it because weed was smoked, or edibles were made by the user. So the stupid high doses weren't common.

      The ER I worked at sporadically, I think I maybe saw marijuana psychosis twice over a decade of what amounted to temp work. The hyperemesis I never personally saw. Now? My friends that still work in emergency care joke about it being a relief because weed related issues are finally outnumbering problems from meth, opiates, and crack. And my state hasn't legalized yet. Mind you, it doesn't literally outnumber the other drugs, the joking is about how common it's becoming compared to just a decade ago.

      Seriously, it's a thing, and it has been for as long as I was in the field.