Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001 when Health Canada put out rules for access. Among Colorado resident emergency-room patients, 106 per 10,000 visits complained of marijuana-related ailments in 2013 and 112 per 10,000 visits complained of marijuana-related ailments in 2014.
Advertisement
Some tourists who have visited Colorado to sample the state’s legal marijuana haven’t been able to handle their high, prompting a steep increase in pot-related trips to the emergency room, new research indicates.
California was the first state in the U.S.to allow the medical use of marijuana in 1996, and now a total of 23 states, the District of Columbia and Guam allow for comprehensive public medical marijuana and cannabis programs.
For the study, they compared data on visits to their ER for causes related to use of various drugs by Colorado residents and people from out of state.
“Anecdotally, we noticed that most out-of-towners were in Colorado for other reasons, such as visiting friends or on business”, says Dr. Howard Kim of Northwestern.
The same isn’t true of Colorado residents, however. Monte said marijuana use can exacerbate an existing medical condition, and that explains numerous cases.
The number of out-of-state residents who ended up in the emergency room for cannabis-related reasons almost doubled from 2012 to 2014, according to an analysis of emergency department visits in 100 Colorado hospitals. But he questioned whether some symptoms reported by patients, such as nausea, could be attributed to altitude sickness or alcohol consumption.
Primarily these are psychiatric problems like schizophrenia, anxiety or depression, but people also have come in because pot smoke has triggered their asthma or sped up their heart rate, he said.
In his decision, Federal Court Judge Michael Phelan said restrictions imposed by the Marihuana for Medical Purposes law were arbitrary. “These results underscore the importance of educating the public and especially any visitors to marijuana-legal states on safe and appropriate use of cannabis products”. Based on his clinical observations, Kim said inexperienced users are unaware of the delayed effect of edibles.
In addition, the content of edible products is highly variable, so users don’t know the potency of what they are eating.
Tourists are more apt to make mistakes such as consuming too much edible marijuana because they don’t feel the effects immediately.
“Marijuana has helped me 110 per cent”, said Davey, who suffered a severe brain injury after being hit by a truck while riding his motorcycle.
“There’s no doubt education is effective at preventing overconsumption”. I think that is the most targeted point of intervention that you can do.
Advertisement
“We think that’s inappropriate in a free and democratic society”. Beemish suffers from type one diabetes and gastroparesis, and smokes or vaporizes two to 10 grams of marijuana a day to relieve nausea, pain, lack of appetite and insomnia.
