A new study shows teens who use cannabis are 11 times likelier to develop a psychiatric disorder
A new large-scale study suggests that teens who use cannabis are eleven times more like to develop a psychiatric disorder than teens who don’t.
The researchers used data for 10,000 young people aged 12-24 in Ontario, Canada, including survey answers and hospital records, to see if there was a relationship between recent use of cannabis and mental illness. As well as finding that teens who’d used cannabis in the last year had a massively elevated risk of developing a psychiatric disorder, they also found, conversely, that the vast majority of teens diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder had a history of cannabis use: five out of every six teens who were hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder.
What’s particularly interesting about the study is this: the association between cannabis use and psychosis was not in evidence for subjects aged 20-24. This clearly suggests that there is some developmental process taking place in teenage bodies—and specifically the brain—that is altered by the use of cannabis. The precise nature of those processes remains to be explored—through animal testing, of course—but it’s not hard to imagine, in general terms, why this must be so.
There’s little debate that cannabis consumption during adolescence is probably a bad thing—previous studies have suggested an association with mental illness—but none have provided such alarming figures as this one. In part, this is probably because, with each passing year, cannabis strains become more potent.
In the 1980s, the average tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of cannabis strains was around 1%, but now your average jack-of-all-strains has 20% THC content and some even contain as much as 90% or more. The truth is, we simply don’t know what exposure to psychoactive compounds at these concentrations is likely to do to a person’s mind, let alone a mind that is still as plastic as a 13- or 14-year-old’s.
We don’t: but we’re going to find out.
We’re in the process of narcotic self-experimentation on a massive scale. It’s now far more normal to smoke weed than tobacco, and it’s seen as an overwhelmingly good thing. According to Gallup polling, 16% of Americans say they smoke weed, as opposed to 11% who still, doggedly, cling to tobacco. The vast majority of Americans now see cigarette-smoking as “very harmful,” with 83% of adults choosing that response in a 2019 survey. By contrast, in another survey, from 2022, half of all respondents said they believed weed is a “positive force for good” in society.
These statistics barely capture the nature of the transition from nicotine to THC and CBD (the other psychoactive substance in cannabis). As no doubt you’re aware, people don’t just consume the active ingredients in cannabis by smoking the leaf. They use oil and gummies and vape juices and brownies and other edibles as well, and they’re using them in quantities and in situations that are totally novel.
For example, 11% of 12 graders claim to have used delta-8-THC vapes and gummies in the last year. Delta-8-THC is a variant of delta-9-THC, the main psychoactive form of THC. Delta-8 has only been available in the US since 2018 and, as a result, there are no federal regulations restricting its sale to minors. Delta-8-THC vapes and gummies are now a fixture at gas stations and they’re readily available online. There are no reliable safety data on delta-8-THC either.
That’s pretty bad. Just as bad, if not worse, is the fact that pregnant women are using cannabis like never before. Since the legalisation of cannabis in Canada, cannabis-use disorder has grown by 20% among pregnant women. Women are also being recommended CBD oil to ease the symptoms of morning sickness.
Two studies from last year suggest that consumption of CBD oil and THC in any form while pregnant could have serious developmental effects on babies. In the first, a mouse study, the offspring of female mice given CBD oil while pregnant displayed significantly impaired problem-solving abilities and reduced responses to stimuli in key regions of the brain’s prefrontal cortex. In the second, testicular cells from human fetuses were exposed to CBD and THC and the effects on hormonal production were measured. The cannabis extracts altered the expression of nearly 200 genes within the testicular cells, disrupting the production of vital developmental hormones, especially testosterone. So cannabis is an endocrine disruptor too. Gynecomastia—the development of female breast tissue—has been observed in male cannabis users by physicians for decades.
All this cannabis use seems to be helping push us in one direction, towards a society of… well, profound retardation. A society where individual development, both physical and mental, is squelched, quite literally. Where our brains and bodies don’t form as they should.
So why isn’t anything meaningful being done about it?
The natural reaction in such situations, or so I find, is to reach for the old cui bono.
Who benefits?
In one of his final monologues at Fox, Tucker Carlson blasted a proposed move by the FDA to ban menthol cigarettes.
“[Our rulers] hate nicotine,” Tucker said.
“They love THC. They’re promoting weed to your children, but they’re not letting you use tobacco, or even non-tobacco nicotine-delivery devices which don’t cause cancer. Why do they hate nicotine? Because nicotine frees your mind, and THC makes you compliant and passive—that’s why! They hate it. It’s a real threat to them.”
Show me a better answer than that.
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