California may require labels on pot products to warn of mental health risks

Liz Kirkaldie’s grandson was in the top of his class in high school and a talented jazz bassist when he started smoking pot. The more serious he got about music, the more serious he got about pot.

And the more serious he got about pot, the more he became paranoid, even psychotic. He started hearing voices.

“They were going to kill him and there were people coming to eat his brain. Weird, weird stuff,” Kirkaldie says. “I woke up one morning, and no Kory anywhere. Well, it turns out, he’d been running down Villa Lane here totally naked.”

Kory came to live with his grandmother for a couple of years in Napa, Calif. She thought maybe she could help. Now, she says that was naïve.

Kory was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Kirkaldie blames the pot.

“The drug use activated the psychosis, is what I really think,” she says.

Indeed, many scientific studies have linked marijuana use to an increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. The risk is more than four times greater for people who use high-potency marijuana on a daily basis, compared with those who have never used, according to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry in 2019. One study found eliminating marijuana use in adolescents would reduce global rates of schizophrenia by 10%.

Doctors and lawmakers in California want cannabis producers to warn consumers of this and other health risks on their packaging labels and in advertising, similar to requirements for cigarettes. [Read More @NPR]