Part of the push for legalization of marijuana have been rampant claims of how it cures just about everything under the sun. However, as any medical researcher will tell you, making out what’s true and what’s not when it comes to med is quite difficult, and it turns out marijuana is actually a little more difficult. NewScientist (4 August 2018) and Graham Lawton has the skinny:
Performing large and high-quality clinical trials of whole cannabis is possible, but difficult. The lack of standardisation is a problem, and the characteristic taste and odour makes finding a placebo tricky. A review by the World Health Organization found only 12 placebo-controlled trials of whole cannabis; most were small and inconclusive.
The same article notes there are risks to recreational usage:
The exact make-up of what is being ingested is often not clear. Different cannabis strains vary widely in their constituents, especially in their ratio of the two most abundant cannabinoids: delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is powerfully psychoactive, and cannabidiol (CBD), which is not. That’s true even for medical-grade cannabis grown under controlled conditions. The Canadian grower Tilray, for example, sells products with specified amounts of THC and CBD, but they all come with a disclaimer that THC and CBD levels may vary considerably. This is a serious problem, says [Deepak D’Souza of Yale School of Medicine]. “Patients will have to experiment with different strains and doses to achieve the desired effects.”
The use of whole cannabis also opens people up to some of the well-known risks that recreational users face. One is dependence, which despite cannabis’s reputation as a non-addictive drug is a real risk. According to [Robin Murray at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London], about 1 in 11 people who try cannabis become dependent on it. People also become tolerant to the drug and need to escalate doses to get the same effect.
Next on the checklist of concerns is psychosis. Cannabis consumption is a proven risk factor for short-term psychotic breaks as well as chronic psychoses including schizophrenia. “We can say with absolute certainty that cannabis carries severe risks,” says Adrian James, registrar of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists. A body of work by many research groups suggests that the average cannabis user is about twice as likely as a non-user to develop a psychotic disorder.
Something to keep in mind if advocating for the legalization of marijuana.
