Pubdate: Thu, 10 Nov 2016
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2016 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Gordon Clark
Page: A14

WE NEED MORE STUDY ON LINK BETWEEN POT, PSYCHOSIS

Canadians, especially lawmakers, gleefully rushing headlong to
legalize marijuana should pause to consider the heartbreaking stabbing
death of 13-year-old Letisha Reimer, as innocent a crime victim as one
can imagine.

Gabriel Brandon Klein, the 21-year-old homeless man from Alberta
charged with second-degree murder in the death of the Abbotsford
Senior Secondary School student, and aggravated assault in the
non-fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old girl in the Nov. 1 attack, was a
heavy pot smoker who recently "became manic, paranoid and frightened,"
some of his friends told CBC.

Nathaniel Spidell, 23, told a CBC reporter that Klein believed "he'd
smoked pot that had been tampered with acid, and began acting very
strange, talking about leaving Canada, and trusting no one."

"Everything went downhill after that. He wasn't the same person,"
Spidell told the reporter, expressing shock that his "best friend,"
who he couldn't imagine being violent, had been charged with murdering
a young girl. "He never carried weapons at all. He was just a stoner.
He loved his mom."

"People are labelling him as some monster now and that's just not the
person I knew," another friend, Jordan Reid, 23, told CBC.

There is an implication in the comments of Spidell, Reid and other
people Klein knew who spoke to other media outlets, that the accused
was just another happy hempster - "just a stoner" - as if that made
the act he is accused of committing even more surprising.

No one seems to be noticing or discussing what to me seems obvious -
that Klein's heavy use of marijuana, well known to induce psychosis,
especially in young people, may have led directly to Reimer's
unspeakably tragic death.

Klein's mental state, according to the last reports, has not yet been
examined by a psychiatrist and so we don't know if his heavy marijuana
use is a factor in the crime for which he is accused. But
marijuana-linked psychosis is now commonly noted by forensic
psychiatrists in reports written for the courts involving accused with
mental illness. And every time governments move to liberalize
marijuana laws, doctors and other health experts warn about the
dangers, especially to the health of young people and their developing
brains, of making pot more freely available.

The Schizophrenia Society of Canada notes an "accumulating body of
evidence has suggested that there is an association between some youth
who use cannabis regularly and enduring psychosis. Several recent
studies suggest that frequent cannabis use during adolescence is
associated with a clinically significant increased risk of developing
schizophrenia and other mental illnesses which feature psychosis."

While the society noted that more research is needed to better
understand the link, why are we risking the health of children - and
potentially future violent acts linked to psychosis, even if they are
rare - by removing the prohibitions on marijuana? Surely we should be
asking those questions before legalizing pot. Certainly those who like
to get stoned or who make a lot of money off the sale of pot - the
ones pushing the pro-marijuana agenda - are not.

The experience of liberalized marijuana laws and access in Colorado
show that the proportion of young people using pot and the subsequent
adverse affects in terms of hospitalizations, impaired driving and
school attendance all rise, not drop, after prohibition ends.

In an interview with 60 Minutes aired Oct. 30, Dr. Steven Simerville,
medical director of the newborn intensive-care unit at St. Mary-Corwin
Medical Centre in Pueblo, Colo., noted the rise in babies being born
with THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, in their blood.
Babies exposed to marijuana in utero are at risk of developing verbal,
memory and behavioural problems in childhood, reported 60 Minutes
correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.

"This drug has been shown to cause harm in developing brains," said
Simerville, who opposes legalized recreational pot. "You need to be
able to protect babies and you're going to need to protect teenagers,
and by teenagers, or developing brains, you have to take in mind that
marijuana potentially permanently affects brain growth until people
are 25 or 30."

Politicians jumping on the feel-good, aren't-we-hip, "no one should
ever say anything is wrong or tell others what to do" bandwagon of
self-indulgence around marijuana use should reconsider whether having
an increasingly stoned populace is great policy. The friends and
family of Letisha Reimer likely are.
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