A recent New Yorker article has connected marijuana use with schizophrenia and some marijuana researchers are not happy with it.
The article not only talked about the connection of marijuana use with the disease, but also connected it to violent crimes in the state of Washington.
Entitled “Is Marijuana as Safe as We Think?”, and written by Malcolm Gladwell, the article received plenty of backlash. Gladwell had focused on a 2017 report by the National Academy of Medicine that examined the scientific evidence of the health effects and therapeutic purposes of cannabis and cannabinoids.
Beatriz Carlini, a senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute (ADAI), said she was “disheartened” by the article.
Ziva Cooper, an author of the National Academy of Medicine report, took to Twitter and wrote, “In response to the recent @NYTimes editorial on cannabis and as a committee member on the @theNASEM #cannabis and #cannabinoids report we did NOT conclude that cannabis causes schizophrenia.
She also added, “We found 1) an #association between cannabis use and schizophrenia and 2) an #association between cannabis use and IMPROVED cognitive outcomes in individuals with psychotic disorders (not mentioned in the editorial).”
She continued, “Since the report, we now know that genetic risk for schizophrenia predicts cannabis use, shedding some light on the potential direction of the association between cannabis use and schizophrenia.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30150663”
“We also now know that under placebo-controlled conditions, #cannabidiol (#CBD) improves outcomes in patients with schizophrenia when given as an adjunct med, showing that cannabinoids (not necessarily cannabis) improve symptoms.”
