The Patriot Post® · Mental Health Goes to Pot

Set aside for a moment whether legalizing marijuana is a federal or federalism issue. Forget for a minute about those pandering pot pardons Joe Biden issued after his sidekick Kamala Harris spent her career in California locking up offenders.

Instead, let’s focus on one question: Just how bad for you is this drug?

Last year, our Michael Swartz explained that pot is like, bad, man. He looked at various studies conducted in recent years exploring the mental health consequences of smoking dope — including reduced memory, difficulty with concentration, and overall cognitive impairment.

Part of the reason for these effects is that your typical doobie is more potent today than 50 years ago.

This week’s news is a study showing that heavy use of weed is linked to as many as 30% of schizophrenia cases in men in their 20s. “The researchers also found a tripled overall risk of schizophrenia linked to cannabis use in young men compared to women,” says U.S. News & World Report. “Around 15% of cases of schizophrenia in men aged 16 to 49 might have been avoided in 2021 by preventing cannabis use, in contrast to just 4% among women in that age range.”

This wasn’t a small or limited study, either. U.S. News says, “The new study, published May 4 in the journal Psychological Medicine, involved data from more than 6.9 million people in Denmark who were aged 16 to 49 at some point between 1972 and 2021.”

There are skeptics, of course, and if we’ve learned anything since 2020 it’s that science like this is rarely settled.

One critic and advocate of cannabis reform, Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, argues that the study proves only that people with a predisposition to schizophrenia tend to medicate with marijuana. He said it’s “premature at best and sensational at worst to claim that a definitive causal relationship exists between cannabis use and the onset of psychiatric disorders.”

This author isn’t a scientist and didn’t even stay at a Holliday Inn Express last night, but it seems obvious that “heavy use” is operative here. The researchers certainly thought so, pointing to addiction and cannabis use disorder.

If one heavily uses alcohol, liver and other problems tend to follow. If one heavily uses ice cream, diabetes and weight problems may ensue. If one heavily uses cigarettes, lung cancer could be around the corner.

Why would pot be different?

Then again, heavy use of masks probably indicates a predisposition to voting Democrat, so maybe Armentano isn’t entirely off base.

Anecdotally, some stories are tragic. National Review last month featured the story of Catherine Mayberry. She was an honor student and high school athlete who became addicted to marijuana, descended into debilitating mental illness, and eventually died of a fentanyl overdose.

Her parents testified to the Minnesota legislature about their heartbreaking experience and warned of the dangers of legalized weed, but likely to no avail. Both chambers of the state legislature passed bills to legalize the drug and are working out minor differences before becoming perhaps the 23rd state to eliminate bans on recreational pot. Others are sure to follow.

There’s an argument to be made that banning stuff like pot and alcohol isn’t effective. Democrats might learn that lesson on guns.

But Americans ought to at least be aware of the addictive and detrimental effects of a supposedly “safe” drug like marijuana. There is, after all, a societal cost, as well as a fiscal one in a nation where taxpayers cover so much of the healthcare tab.

(Updated)