The number of Americans who smoke cannabis on a daily or near-daily basis now exceeds those who drink alcohol as often, a study has found.
The research, published in the journal Addiction, is based on data collected by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health over four decades.
In 2022, the survey recorded an estimated 17.7 million daily cannabis users, higher for the first time than the estimate of 14.7 million daily drinkers.
In Canada, cannabis poisonings rose sharply among people 65 and older after the country legalized the drug, a new study found.
As more places legalize marijuana, policymakers and health officials have worried about the health risks that the drug may pose to adolescents. But a new study suggests that an additional demographic is at risk: seniors.
The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that after Canada legalized marijuana, the number of emergency room visits for cannabis poisoning rose sharply among people ages 65 and older. Poisonings doubled after Canada legalized sale of the cannabis flower, and then tripled just 15 months later, when Canada legalized the sale of edibles.
I enjoyed this tweet by the English journalist, Peter Hitchens, who has been sounding the alarm about cannabis for years.
Tegan Rose’s job involves going into the community to support people aged 14 to 35 who have been in a state of psychosis for what’s believed to be the first time.
The registered nurse and support worker is in the early intervention psychosis program under the umbrella of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Windsor, Ont., branch.
Rose said they’ve seen a “large increase” in cannabis-induced psychosis cases the past several years — “especially in young people.”
This is pot legalization’s dirty secret.
Cannabis use — whether smoked, eaten or vaporized — is associated with a higher number of adverse cardiovascular outcomes, according to a new study.
Published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the research found that risk of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke increased with any kind of cannabis use, with heavier use associated with higher odds of negative outcomes.
For daily cannabis users, for example, odds of a heart attack were 25% higher compared to non-users and 42% higher for stroke, the study found.
h/t DS
When Kalpit Sharma started smoking cannabis, he thought it was just part of “living his life” as a university student. After all, he had been told that the drug was relatively harmless.
That all changed in the summer of 2021, when he started hearing voices in his head.
“I would bike around, and the chain of the bike, it came off. And I thought that I could speak to birds, and birds were telling me how to put the chain back on,” said Sharma, who was studying at York University in Toronto at the time.
This is pot legalization’s dirty little secret.
A California woman who stabbed a man she was dating 100 times and killed him, before turning the knife on herself and her dog, has been handed 100 hours of community service.
Bryn Spejcher, 32, was given the astonishingly low sentence following psychiatrists’ ruling that the tragedy was ‘100 percent’ caused by cannabis-induced psychosis, which she suffered after taking two hits of the victim’s bong.
The judge ruled that Spejcher ‘experienced a psychotic break from reality’ and ‘had no control over her actions’ when she killed Chad O’Melia, then 26, on Memorial Day weekend 2018.
When Mike Babins opened his legal cannabis shop on Jan. 5, 2019, he had a vision of where he’d be in five years — even if it was admittedly pie in the sky.
“I kind of thought I’d be on my private island in the Caribbean with people feeding me grapes, but that was a bit of a pipe dream,” he told CBC News from his Evergreen Cannabis shop in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood.
Evergreen Cannabis was one of Vancouver’s first two legal pot shops to open that day. There was a lineup around the block and no shortage of enthusiasm from customers.
A few weeks after Canada’s fifth anniversary of cannabis legalization, industry executives gathered in the Crystal Ballroom of the Omni King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto.
They had travelled from across the country to attend the two-day, invite-only event, with tickets going for $1,800. Now in its third iteration, the room was humming a much different tune than it was in 2021, its inaugural year.
It is an unimaginably gruesome crime: an example of human violence at its most extreme.
In May 2018, Bryn Spejcher of Thousand Oaks, California, picked up a bread knife and stabbed her new boyfriend 108 times — killing him — before turning the blade on her dog.
The 32-year-old, who worked as an audiologist, then proceeded to stab herself — only stopping when police hit her nine times with a baton.
At least 290 American children have suffered brutal, preventable deaths linked to marijuana over the last decade, according to an analysis seen exclusively by DailyMail.com.
The highest proportion of deaths – 95 – involved extreme violence, the dossier of reports show.
This includes the case of a Texan man who murdered his girlfriend and nine-month baby with a pocket-knife while suffering what was believed to be a cannabis-induced psychotic episode.
This is the issue no one wants to discuss.
Gen Z is also turning away from the drug
Last Friday, the rapper Snoop Dogg made a grave announcement. “After much consideration and conversation with my family, I’ve decided to give up smoke,” the rapper posted on social media. “Please respect my privacy at this time.” The terse seriousness of the statement could well be tongue-in-cheek: perhaps Snoop, already a serial entrepreneur in all things weed-related, is about to launch a smoke-free product, like a marijuana vape or edible.
More Ohioans voted for abortion than for marijuana this Tuesday. Discourse about the election focused mainly on Issue 1, which enshrined the right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” — or, stated honestly, to kill your unborn child. But Issue 2, which legalized recreational marijuana, received decidedly less attention on the national stage.
Canada remains one of the only countries in the world that allows legal and regulated access to recreational marijuana. But five years after the drug’s legalisation, the country’s cannabis industry is struggling for survival.
George Smitherman remembers buying his first legal gram of cannabis in October 2018 from a Tweed shop in Newfoundland.
The cannabis company had made headlines two years prior for signing a marketing deal with US rapper Snoop Dogg, which was hailed at the time as a sign of a new dawn in the marijuana industry.
The shop,Mr Smitherman recalls, was “beautiful”.
This sounds more like an appeal to government to make the Oligopoly even more exclusive. Anything spelled “Smitherman” stinks like shit.
… Cannabis-induced psychosis had the largest relative increase for hospitalizations, the study said.
Both genes and environmental factors predispose some people to using cannabis and to developing schizophrenia. Myron said more research is needed to understand the risk, calling it an area that is under-discussed.
