There’s nothing funny about today’s highly potent marijuana. It killed my son.
Sally Schindel, Opinion contributor April 28, 2019
Modern medical marijuana is much more potent than your father’s pot brownies of the 1970s, and that potency is taking a toll on mental health.
As attorneys argued over a section of an Arizona law that differentiates between marijuana and cannabis, the state’s Supreme Court justices joked about baking pot brownies in their kitchens.
They clearly do not understand how the marijuana industry has irresponsibly manipulated pot into dangerously high levels of potency.
My son could explain it to them. Or he could if he were still with us.
“I want to die,” he wrote before hanging himself at the age of 31. “My soul is already dead. Marijuana killed my soul + ruined my brain.”
Andy wanted to quit. He couldn’t
Andy had been the class clown. He made parties come alive. He helped friends through tough times and served with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq.
Then he became addicted to pot, using a medical marijuana card that enabled him to buy enough pot for up to 10 joints a day. That would keep anyone baked all day. He was hospitalized in five mental health hospitals and did two stints of court-ordered mental health treatment.
He told me that to live, he needed to quit marijuana. He just couldn’t do it.
The marijuana industry doesn’t like to acknowledge people like my son, dismissing his case as an aberration. But he is not alone, and new research shows the toll marijuana takes.
A new study shows he’s not alone
The peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet last month published a major study that found people who use high-potency marijuana daily are five times more likely to develop psychosis than those who never partake. The researchers compared data for more than 2,100 people in multiple countries.
Read more commentary:
Marijuana needs warning labels like tobacco for associated mental, physical health risks
Mental illness in the family raises marijuana risks. Parents, please talk to your teens.
Cannabis industry shouldn’t expand until we fix marijuana’s racial inequities, injustices
Today’s marijuana has as much similarity to the pot brownies of the 1970s as a smartphone does to a Texas Instruments calculator. Today’s marijuana is incredibly potent, powerful enough to destroy lives.
….It’s not something to laugh about.
Sally Schindel lives in Prescott. She is co-founder of MomsStrong.org and a member of the Marijuana Victims Alliance. This column originally appeared in The Arizona Republic.
For complete story go to https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/28/medical-marijuana-arizona-supreme-court-thc-potency-column/3587406002/