Psychosis Is the Last Marijuana Side Effect You Should Be Worried About
It’s far from reefer madness
By Kat Eschner
Reefer madness — the idea that marijuana drives most of its users to commit crimes and descend into sin — is an ableist morality fable. But for a specific population of marijuana users, there is a link between pot use and mental health. A study published yesterday in The Lancet Psychiatry underlines that link as well as providing some new detail on who is at risk. But overemphasizing the connection poses its own problems.
“Our study shows that daily cannabis use, especially of high potency cannabis, is strongly linked to the risk of developing psychosis,” lead author Marta Di Forti of King’s College London wrote in an email sent to Popular Science.
The researchers define this as the risk of developing a psychotic disorder (it’s a technical term) such as schizophrenia and having symptoms such as hearing voices and experiencing delusions or paranoia.
They studied 901 patients who experienced their first episode of psychosis and a further 1237 patients who had never had such an episode. The subjects came from 11 different sites across Europe and Brazil. They found that daily cannabis use and the use of highly potent strains were both correlated with a higher rate…
