CANNABIS IS NOT HARMLESS!
Marijuana is not harmless. It can cause severe, life-changing psychiatric illnesses and it is addictive. Marijuana (cannabis) may help pain, insomnia, anxiety, glaucoma, seizures and other diseases or symptoms. Nevertheless, as it is currently available cannabis exposes the user to well over 500 different chemicals (see the “Constituents of Marijuana” section below). Little is known about most of them.
While not everyone who uses cannabis will experience harmful side effects the risk of developing an enduring psychotic illness clearly outweighs any social or emotional benefit of “recreational” use!
Cannabis can both cause and worsen symptoms of mental illness. Of most concern is the relationship between cannabis use and the thought disorder Schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients experience psychosis — they hallucinate (hear voices and see things that don’t exist) can become paranoid and delusional (a delusion is a false belief that has no basis in reality).
Persons with a personal or family history of psychotic illness should not use cannabis.
Despite the availability of treatments for Schizophrenia up to 34% of these patients can fail to respond to antipsychotic medications.
Cannabis is addicting (see our entry from the ICD-10 “Cannabis related disorders”). Like all addictions cannabis use can become the principal activity and relationship in your life. You may end up seeking stronger and stronger strains and it may be the gateway to using stronger and more addicting drugs!
Please read the information here at www.SchizoPot.com.
The collective silence of the medical community regarding this issue is unfortunate. While “medical” marijuana may be of some benefit for those who have not responded to (Marinol)Dronabinol or other pharmacological or surgical treatments, the unjustifiably hasty introduction of “recreational” marijuana will eventually be seen as an enormous error.
www.SchizoPot.com presents only a small fraction of the published medical literature describing the dangers of cannabis. Not only is cannabis harmful for those using it there is evidence of “epigenetic” modifications causing abnormalities in offspring of cannabis users; this means that marijuana can affect your kid’s genes.
Cannabis is absolutely not harmless. It is addictive just like tobacco, caffeine, and prescription drugs. To claim that it is harmless is to overlook the great collection of the research describing cannabis’ harmful effects.
There is evidence that cannabis may cause up to a 300% increase in the incidence of psychotic illnesses such as Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Delusional Disorder, Bipolar Disorder with psychotic features, and others.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3927252/
