As drug legalization groups and the cannabis industry lobby to legalize cannabis across the United States, with initiatives to legalize marijuana on the November ballot in five more states, many experts warn this will only increase the physical and mental harm from the unregulated, high-potency cannabis.
President of the American Board of Pain Medicine and a vice president of the International Academy on the Science and Impacts of Cannabis, Dr. Ken Finn, said high potency cannabis use is being linked to poisonings in young children, as well as psychosis and schizophrenia in an increasing number of regular users.
“A lot of my colleagues that work in psychiatry and emergency medicine are seeing a sharp rise in marijuana-related psychosis,” Finn told NTD’s The Nation Speaks in an Oct. 1 interview.
Data from Europe ties these mental health problems to high levels of the THC chemical in cannabis that causes people to feel high, Finn said.
“The European data shows that there’s a fivefold increase risk of first-episode psychosis with what they described as high potency THC, which generally is about 10%. So we are really in uncharted waters here [in Colorado, with THC potencies of between 40 to 60 percent], with all these states going down this pathway.”
“The NIH came out with a paper last week showing that kids that are exposed [to cannabis] in utero tend to have…
