15-year-old driver high on pot paralyzes boy, rips truck into 3 parts near Seattle
When states legalize marijuana for adults, children are in danger, too. Here’s recent traffic accidents involving marijuana. Eight are dead, three of them children.
July, 2016: A Wisconsin teen admitted to using marijuana shortly before his vehicle missed a stop sign and collided with an SUV. The driver was a 17-year old. His 16-year-old passenger died, as did an adult in another vehicle. The driver was in intensive care.
June, 2016: Authorities in Arizona believe the woman who caused a deadly crash was driving under the influence of marijuana. Court documents reveal the woman was driving at least 75 mph in a 40 mph zone when she crossed the center line, plowing into an oncoming vehicle and killing a man and his daughter. A 2-year-old and 4-year-old were injured.
We wrote about bicyclists’ deaths recently. In Boulder County, three died in two accidents in May. Here’s a video from the report after Peyton Knowlton’s death, which occurred in Longmont:
Specialists in Washington and London Explain Links to Pot and Psychosis
More doctors and other specialists are going public to speak about the dangers of psychosis related to marijuana. An article published in My Northwest recently needs to be taken seriously. Paul Hunziker, a licensed chemical dependency specialist in Renton, Washington explained that researchers have known for years marijuana can lead to everything from paranoia to depression, but the problem is expanding significantly. Duane Stone, a mental health specialist in Seattle, said: “I get lots of first break kind where this person doesn’t have an experience with mental illness, they don’t have a diagnosis, they’re 30 or 40-years-old. And the only thing they’ve been doing has been smoking marijuana for the last year or two.” He goes onto say, “It’s a daily kind of thing.”
In Olympia, Washington, Providence St. Peter Hospital attributes this increase in psychosis to the practice of “dabbing.” “That sudden blast of cannabis can trigger extreme paranoia, hallucinations or delusions — often a few days or even weeks after consumption,” according to those seeking medical treatment, reports TJ LaRoque. In Washington, marijuana was legalized in December, 2012, and marijuana stores opened in July, 2014.
Medications Don’t Work Well for Psychosis with Cannabis Users
Marijuana users need to know that if they end up in psychiatric hospitals, their chances of recovery are less than those who don’t use marijuana. First of all the marijuana users are more likely to have a relapse after the first episode of psychosis. Furthermore, anti-psychotic medications are less likely to be effective for the cannabis users. A new study out of Great Britain highlights these difficulties.
Psychosis plus pot is a bad mix. Rashmi Patel, lead researcher from the Department of Psychosis Studies at King’s College, London said: “We’re not entirely sure why that is, but it’s possible for whatever reason cannabis use makes it less likely that anti-psychotic treatment will work as well in people with psychotic disorders.” (It should be noted that antipsychotics are known to be ineffective in most cases of drug-induced psychosis including LSD, PCP, meth, etc.)
This finding is important since the marijuana industry wants to use marijuana to treat psychiatric problems. Marijuana makes the course of psychiatric illness worse. The finding is relevant since there has been an increased number of hospital admissions for psychosis and other mental health admissions in localities that have legalized marijuana.
Providence St. Peter Hospital reports there are one or two new psychosis emergency admissions each day. The standard treatment for marijuana induced psychosis is the anti-psychotic medication risperdone. Anti-psychotics are like band-aids; for long-term results, substance abuse or addiction treatment may be necessary. Unfortunately our current health care system treats acute symptoms rather than root causes. Unless the patients are rigid about staying off of marijuana, the problem may return. We hope this new information can bring about better treatment for marijuana-related mental health problems.
States considering medical marijuana or any form of legalization need to know about the increase of mental health care needs and be ready to pay for it. A psychosis from marijuana is not necessary a death sentence, as Vice recently reported the story of Devan Fuentes, who had a marvelous recovery.
The observations of doctors in the state of Washington are substantiated by numerous studies.
Government Accountability Office Takes on DOJ for Failure
Today the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report recommending the Department of Justice (DOJ) implement a specific plan for documenting the effects of marijuana legalization.
The report, which Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) requested, states that DOJ has not “documented their monitoring process or provided specificity about key aspects of it[.]” This lack of specificity includes missing information about “potential limitations of the data [DOJ officials] report using and how they will use the data to identify states that are not effectively protecting federal enforcement priorities.”
Each drug has at least one quality that makes worse than all other drugs, and for marijuana it is what it does to the teen-aged brain and motivation, according to Ed Gogek, author of Marijuana Debunked.
Problems on the San Juan Islands
Kathleen Bartholomew, a nurse and a grandmother in the San Juan Islands of Washington, explains what it’s like living in an area with long-time marijuana users: “Of the 7th grade pot users, 80% received the pot from their stoner parents.”
“My own granddaughter went from being a straight-A student skipping her sophomore year in a private school to a pot-smoking 15-year-old in the public school system. Her story started in 7th grade when a few seniors taught her how to smoke marijuana at lunch,” Bartholomew explained.
Washington’s San Juan Islands are in the Puget Sound, near Seattle and British Columbia
“After having a drug coalition for 10 years, we have made zero progress in convincing teens that pot is harmful – because so many parents smoke it in the home. Of 12th graders, there was no change in their belief system after a decade of education.” Here’s a link to the drug coalition’s marijuana education page.
Also in the San Juan Islands, a young man with mental illness issues died tragically from dehydration in jail last year. Keaton Farris suffered from bipolar disorder; a history of marijuana use would be consistent with the tragic ending. The risks for mental illness from early marijuana use cannot be adequately addressed in an environment that glorifies pot use. (His mom sold t-shirts in his honor at Seattle Hemp Fest, which doesn’t prove that Keaton used marijuana, but suggests his family had a peculiar fondness for the weed. The family has reached a settlement in the case.)
Multi-Generational Pot use in California
California has a large medical marijuana program — full of problems. One mother was shocked to find her son first received medical marijuana at age 11 — three years before she knew about it. A doctor didn’t prescribe it; he got it from someone in school whose mother had a medical marijuana card. So clearly parents pass it to children, with or without their knowledge.
Parents who use marijuana go to lengths to rationalize their use of pot. Some say they have more patience and can play better with their children while stoned. These parents are at risk for addiction and building so much tolerance that they will have more anxiety and anger when not using.
With many parents and grandparents using pot, we seem to be creating a multi-generational society of drug addiction. Drug addiction today is multi-substance addiction, making the treatment more complicated and the prognosis worse than it was in the past.
One member of AA and Narcotics Anonymous in Chico, California, explained what happens to multi-generational drug users when they try to get clean. “I need to teach them to dress, bathe and feed the baby, brush their teeth and floss, all skills they did not learn growing up. They must start life anew.” Sobriety gives them hope.
A medical pot shop in Colorado advertised using Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. Parents and Sesame Street objected and it was removed.
People laud the success of anti-smoking campaigns but what has changed youth smoking rates is the lack of adults who still smoke cigarettes. It has become socially unacceptable. How can an anti-pot campaign for kids can’t work when more adults are eating pot candy, or smoking it, and it’s advertised everywhere?
Recently a father from Washington who drove recklessly and was stoned forced his 12-year-old daughter to walk home. Some of these parents don’t seem to be aware of the trauma they may be forcing their children to experience. Traumatized children will be more inclined to abuse marijuana, alcohol and other drugs.
We need to break cycles of addiction if we are to have healthier adults who don’t follow their parents’ dysfunctional cycles. Compared to 40 or 50 years ago when alcohol was the primary problem, we now have multi-substance addiction. If we stopped substance abuse we could end about 70% of child abuse. We will have more success in rooting out problems by getting to their roots in substance abuse, not possible when we are normalizing drug use.
Finally, we need to comply with international treaties, especially The Rights of the Child Treaty, and as long as we allow marijuana legalization, we are out of compliance with the treaties. For more information, read On Marijuana, edited by Pamela McColl, and Marijuana Debunked, by Ed Gogek, MD.
