I testified last week to the New Hampshire House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee on Bill HB639 which would legalize the commercial sale of marijuana and other cannabis products in the state. This is my testimony.
Related: Marijuana Legalization; What the Public Deserves to Know
I am testifying today because marijuana has devastated my family. My brother started smoking marijuana at a young age and as a teenager, he became a paranoid schizophrenic. He has been homeless for most of the last 40 years of his life. This happened back in the 70s when marijuana had a very low level of THC. With the new, dangerous high-THC products many more families are suffering the same devastation that we have.
I recently read the following very scary statistics in Tablet magazine in an article “How Weed Became the New Oxycontin.”
If you’ve ever smoked a bowl and become irrationally anxious that everyone is staring at you and knows you’re high, what you experienced was a mild symptom of cannabis-induced psychosis. According to one study, about 40% of people react this way.
If you experience that paranoia and keep smoking on a regular basis nonetheless—especially with today’s high-potency THC products, and especially if you’re young—there’s a good chance you’ll eventually suffer a full psychotic break; 35% of young people who experience psychotic symptoms, according to another study, eventually have such an episode.
If you keep using after that, you run a decent risk of ending up permanently schizophrenic or bipolar. Cannabis has by far the highest conversion rate to schizophrenia of any substance—higher than meth, higher than opioids, higher than LSD. Two Danish studies, as well as a massive study from Finland, put your chances at close to 50%.
“One out of every 20 daily users can expect to develop schizophrenia if they don’t quit,” Dr. Christine Miller, an expert on psychotic disorders, told me.
Please vote Inexpedient to Legislate on HB639 to spare other families from the same tragedy.
