Even Moderate Cannabis Use May Bring Negative Consequences

Even Moderate Cannabis Use May Bring Negative Consequences

Timmen L. Cermak MD 

• Multiple studies link adolescent Cannabis Use Disorder with a variety of adverse consequences.
  
  
• New research finds moderate use by adolescents is associated with more adverse events than non-use.
  
  
• Even if only an association, moderate cannabis use is a valuable clinical marker for at risk youth.
  

The study has one major limitation. It can’t say anything about cannabis causing the greater prevalence of adverse events. Perhaps there are underlying factors that independently lead to both an increased prevalence in cannabis use and an increased prevalence of negative events. Three comments occur to me regarding this limitation....

Neurobiologist Margaret Haney, director of Columbia’s Cannabis Research Laboratory, lays out the perils and promise of pot.

David Craig

But what does the science say? Is marijuana truly a wonder drug, or is the 30-billion US cannabis industry blowing hot air? Are weed-based wellness products even safe?  
 
“The first thing that consumers need to understand is that there are only a few clinical uses of cannabis that are backed up by solid science,” says Margaret Haney, the director of Columbia’s Cannabis Research Laboratory. “The main psychoactive chemical in cannabis, THC, has been shown to alleviate chemotherapy-induced nausea in cancer patients and to treat chronic pain. There’s also good evidence that it makes people with multiple sclerosis feel more comfortable,” says Haney, who is a professor of neurobiology in the Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry. She also notes that CBD, a non-psychoactive component of cannabis, has been found to prevent seizures in children with some forms of treatment-resistant epilepsy.