United States: Scientific findings show that excessive cannabis product use will cause a significant surge in schizophrenia patients across Canada, which requires researchers to study lasting cannabis effects.
More about the news
Medical literature published in JAMA Network Open reports that after cannabis legalization in Ontario, the rates of schizophrenia patients with Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) grew from 4 percent to 10 percent.
A study analyzed both the medical cannabis decriminalization in 2015 and the non-medical cannabis legalization in 2018 to understand their effect on newly diagnosed schizophrenia among people with CUD.
The symptoms of schizophrenia interrupt reality perception for patients, according to independent.co.uk, because they contain hallucinations along with delusions and thought impairments.
Several past analyses indicate that cannabis abuse has the potential to enhance mental deterioration among psychosis-vulnerable young adults, which might result in schizophrenia.
About the recently held study
This latest research reinforces the previously discovered relationship between Canadian cannabis legislation and increased schizophrenia numbers.
According to the study co-author Daniel Myran, an associate scientist at The Ottawa Hospital, “We found that there have been concerning increases over time in the percentage of people with a new schizophrenia diagnosis who had received care for a cannabis use disorder before their diagnosis,” independent.co.uk reported.
Moreover, “Regular cannabis use is strongly associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia, and one of the main areas of uncertainty surrounding cannabis legalization is whether there would be changes in the number of new cases of schizophrenia,” he added.
The research analyzed medical records of all eligible Ontario residents who are between 14 to 65 years of age (13.5 million people) over three policy durations spanning from 2006 to 2022, including a period before medical cannabis decriminalization, then medical cannabis liberalization, and non-medical cannabis legalization.
What more have the researchers determined?
Research determined that at least 118,650 people received medical care in emergency facilities or hospitals for CUD, which affected approximately 1 percent of individuals in Ontario.
A total of 10 percent of the individuals with CUD received diagnoses of schizophrenia, yet only 0.6 percent among those without CUD received this schizophrenia diagnosis during the research period.