I started out, you know, like a normal kid in high school.
I used to just smoke regular flower weed with my buddies.
And then one of my friends introduced me to a dab rig.
And it would get to the point where I was having to smoke that pen
like every 30 minutes in order to keep the high up.
Concerns about marijuana used to be the stuff of Reefer Madness.
But in Colorado, already a decade into legalization, high-potency
products are birthing new critics.
We've had legalization here now for a long time
and it has just wreaked havoc on a generation of our kids.
Despite the millions in marijuana tax revenue,
some residents feel there have been unintended consequences.
The youngest kid I've seen that's addicted to pot is seven. It doesn't matter
what kind of parent you are, cannabis in our community is everywhere.
For a child, it's as simple as going on to Snapchat,
finding out where they're dealing and going and getting it.
Karen Randall is a doctor
at a large hospital in Pueblo, Colorado.
Sometimes touted as the Napa Valley of pot, the former steel town
invited the marijuana industry in to try and boost the city.
But according to some residents, it hasn't worked out quite like that.
Here it is. Like in all its glory.
The Napa Valley of cannabis.
Yeah, that's what the Napa Valley looks like.
A study in Colorado
found marijuana related calls to poison control centers more than doubled
around the time recreational products hit the market in 2014.
A separate study showed vomiting related cases in the state also rose
29% from 2013 to 2018.
One of the big ones that we see every single day is what we call scromiting.
And it's a combination of screaming and vomiting
that is really kind of peculiar to cannabis alone.
I would be vomiting like often.
I used to weigh like 150 pounds.
I got to the point where as weighing 117 pounds.
So I went to my psychiatrist.
He actually did a scope
to see
if I had like gallbladder cancer or something, which I didn't,
and there was nothing wrong with my GI tract.
He asked me, do you use substances?
And I said, yeah, I use marijuana.
He told me that you can use too much to the point
where it's called cannabis hyperemesis disorder, which is where I was at.
Dr. Jesse Hinckley of the University of Colorado first became concerned
about cannabis after seeing some youth admitted to in-patient psychiatry.
These were youth typically without any sort of previous
psychiatric history who were presenting acutely psychotic.
So hearing voices, seeing things, paranoid, delusional.
And pretty abrupt onset typically after a period of heavy cannabis use.
Of more than 4,000 marijuana related visits to emergency rooms or urgent care
in Colorado, 5% were diagnosed with schizophrenia or psychosis.
That's compared to less than 1% among the general US population.
Most people don't even know what's for sale in dispensaries.
Like do you know what dabbing is or shatter?
And they make them in flavors that are appealing to kids,
Scooby Snacks flavored, Girl Scout Cookie, Birthday Cake flavored.
Dawn Reinfeld helped form the group Blue Rising to advocate for gun control.
But they've turned their attention toward reforming marijuana laws,
the very same laws that some of them voted for.
Look, if we want to say that you need to follow the science on climate,
on fracking, on Covid vaccinations,
then we should be following the science on high-potency THC.
But following the science isn't as easy as it seems.
There's no consensus on what level of THC makes the product high potency.
The market is also flooded with synthetic variations confusing matters further.
Raw flower
usually starts at 20% THC or higher, up steeply
from the 4% levels of yesteryear.
Concentrated products like vape rarely start below 60%.
Many extracts like dab, wax, and shatter go above 90.
It was my birthday party actually ,
so I took a dab and that was about 75% THC
the first time.
And then eventually I found out that I could just get to dab
pen which would last me longer and in turn, be cheaper. So two years of
just daily use at 98% THC.
Recreational marijuana is legal in 23
states, but remains illegal under federal law.
The US
government is gathering data towards
a pledge to reconsider legalizing by the end of 2023.
While Germany is also drafting regulations to start recreational use.
I asked our hospital how much it would cost
just to see a patient get IV fluids and some medicines.
It would be about 5 - 6,000 dollars for a ER visit.
We see at least one a day.
So if you go, okay, that's $5,000 times 365 days.
That's $1.8 million.
And then if you times it by 25 ERs in Colorado,
that's millions of
dollars. Spent on just the scromiting- Just on scromiting alone.
Treatment
for America's drug habit often comes down to mental health care,
which sometimes isn't covered by private insurance.
Many such patients rely on Medicaid. We're just cost shifting right? They’re
taking money in
and we're cost shifting their medical care to the general public.
If you look at the trends in the numbers, not only did cannabis go up, and the
industry will say, well, of course it went up
because now it's legal and everybody's using.
But methamphetamines went up.
Cocaine went up. Opiates went up.
And my test doesn't test for fentanyl and of course
fenranyl has gone up. We're reaching the record number of deaths.
January 2022 Colorado started using a tracking system
that limited daily THC concentrates per customer.
The compromise reached by legislators, Blue Rising, doctors,
and the local cannabis industry had immediate impact.
Medical marijuana sales fell about $7 million. Overall marijuana sales
also contracted, falling about 44% below their peak of $226
million in 2020. You know, it's legal here.
It's going to stay legal.
But how can we have a regulatory framework that protects
public health. For the legal marijuana industry, the stakes are high.
This year in the US, more than a third of the $34 billion in expected
cannabis sales will come from products with high levels of THC.
The US
Cannabis Council says millions of Americans regularly
consume marijuana products without any issues.
Confusingly, some studies have shown that marijuana can have both beneficial
and detrimental effects on some mental health conditions.
But the industry can't deny that the legal market has created
a new breed of supercharged products.
I honestly believe that if we had left cannabis at the previous potency,
if they had left it at 2 to 3%, we probably wouldn't be talking.