Last year you might have read The Wall Street Journal article stating that legalization and cannabis use among teenagers was causing a wave of psychosis including illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
But according to a hard-hitting rebuttal piece published by Leafly and written by Dr. Emily Earlenbaugh, a cannabis expert who serves as director at the Education for Mindful Cannabis Consulting in California, the actual data paints a different picture — that genetic factors rather than cannabis use are to blame for the correlation between cannabis and psychosis in teens.
The WSJ story and the Leafly rebuttal are a good case study about how coverage of the cannabis topic is often distorted to the point of straight-out lies most likely coming from propaganda pushed out by the pharmaceutical, alcohol and tobacco industries who are in a full-blown panic at weed’s growing popularity. Just the decrease in alcohol consumption alone has been huge. One of our readers reported that once he gave up the two martinis after work and switched to a couple of puffs from a joint, the fights with his partner stopped, he was laughing a lot more and even started having fun helping his kids with their homework. Everyone at home was happy – the gin company not so much.
“Can cannabis really induce life-long psychotic conditions or is this yet another example of confusing correlation with causation, a common source of “reefer madness?” – Dr. Emily Earlenbaugh