{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Marijuana and Psychosis","description":"The pitfalls and perils of marijuana legalization are well-documented, but whenever we discuss that research here on BreakPoint, we are accused of not having the right research. Of course, what that typically means is we\u2019ve used studies that contradict the very vocal advocates of weed. Well, let\u2019s see what happens when we cite The British journal The Lancet which, along with the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, is considered the \u201cgold standard\u201d for peer-reviewed medical research. It doesn\u2019t get more \u201creal\u201d than being published in The Lancet. A just-published study in the Lancet involving, among others, researchers at King\u2019s College London, compared 900 people who had been treated for psychosis with 1,200 people who had not. Sample participants were drawn from across Europe and Brazil. Both groups were surveyed on a host of factors, including their use of marijuana and other drugs. The study\u2019s authors concluded that \u201cpeople who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times.\u201d By \u201chigh-potency\u201d the researchers meant marijuana with a THC content of more than ten percent. Today, it\u2019s not uncommon to read of marijuana that\u2019s legally-sold in places like Colorado with THC content above 20 percent and, occasionally even 30 percent! Legalization advocates minimize the exponential growth in potency by saying that twenty or more years ago, Americans didn\u2019t have access to the more potent strains, a.k.a, \u201cthe good stuff.\u201d That misses the point by several astronomical units. The point is that those people who daily use \u201cthe good stuff\u201d are five times more like to find themselves in a hospital suffering from delusions and hallucinations, to name only two symptoms of psychosis. Now, critics will respond, \u201cThat\u2019s correlation, not causation.\u201d And that\u2019s the criticism leveled at journalist Alex Berenson, author of \u201cTell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence,\u201d a book I recommend highly. But as I heard Berenson say just last week in Denver, \u201cof course it\u2019s correlation and not causation.\u201d The only way to prove causation would be to ask half a sample group to experiment with something that may harm them. That\u2019s not ethically possible. By the way, all the studies that made us believe that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer were correlated studies too, but that was enough to convince us all. Even so, writer Ron Powers doesn\u2019t need a peer-reviewed study to convince him of the link between marijuana use and psychosis. In his 2017 book, \u201cNobody Cares About Crazy People,\u201d he tells the moving story of his two sons, Dean and Kevin, who were diagnosed with schizophrenia in their late teens. As Powers tells readers, while there is a strong genetic component to schizophrenia, there is no \u201cschizophrenia gene.\u201d Instead, a constellation of genetic and environmental factors make people susceptible to schizophrenia. One of these, as Powers painfully learned, is heavy marijuana use, especially in your teenage years. Of course, some people will tell you that they and most people aren\u2019t mentally ill, so there\u2019s little if any risk. But, for a host of reasons, no one can know that with certainty. In fact, all pronouncements about how safe marijuana legalization is, overstates the case. That\u2019s exactly what happened here in Colorado. The possible pitfalls were denied or downplayed. And since legalization, Colorado has seen a spike in marijuana-related emergency room visits by people between the ages of 13 and 20. Given the well-documented mental health risks, especially to not-fully-formed adolescent brains, the rush to legalization is the height of irresponsibility. An irresponsibility that can shatter lives. And don\u2019t just take our word for it. ","author_name":"Breakpoint","author_url":"https:\/\/breakpoint.org","html":"