There is a proven relationship between marijuana usage and psychosis that leads to violence. People who are schizophrenic are only moderately likely to become more violent than healthy people when they are taking antipsychotic medicine and avoiding recreational drugs.

But when they use drugs, the risk of violence skyrockets.

That is one point made by author Alex Berenson in a recent article in Imprimis, the publication put out by Hillsdale College, perhaps the most conservative university in America.

Berenson has degrees in history and economics from Yale University. He formerly worked as an investigative reporter for the New York Times. He has written a number of critically acclaimed books, including, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.

His wife, Dr. Jacqueline Berenson, formerly was a senior psychiatrist at Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Institute near New York City. The institute is one of only three places where the State of New York sends the criminally mental ill (those judged not guilty by reason of insanity).

According to the article, the institute’s 300 patients are killers, arsonist and at least one cannibal. Most have a violent history.

She says all those patients smoked marijuana.

Her husband, a bit of a Libertarian, was taken aback by that statement. She challenged him to read the major studies on the impact of marijuana on violence.

He read the studies and interviewed psychiatrists and brain doctors. He had never seen such a gap between insider knowledge and outside knowledge.

He wondered why he “had never heard the truth about marijuana, mental illness, and violence.”

For 30 years, psychiatrists and epidemiologists have studied the science behind potential dangers in marijuana. That is countered by a public campaign that paints marijuana as good medicine and that recreational usage is harmless. That campaign has worked very well, even here in Tulsa.

Supposedly, marijuana has many medical uses but THC, the active ingredient, only has a narrow medical application. Proponents claim that marijuana can slow down the opioid epidemic because it is a painkiller. But studies show that marijuana, like alcohol, is took weak of a painkiller to be an adequate substitute for opiates.

The reality is that the medical marijuana argument is meant mostly to protect recreational users from legal problems.

America is the Western country that uses the most marijuana and has the worst problem with opioids.

And here’s a really big misconception. Medical marijuana advocates claim it is a treatment for depression and other psychiatric problems.

According to the article, “…a mountain of peer-reviewed research in top medical journals shows that marijuana can cause or worsen severe mental illness, especially psychosis, the medical term for a break from reality. Teenagers who smoke marijuana regularly are about three times as likely to develop schizophrenia, the most devastating psychotic disorder.”

According to an article in January 2018 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, people who smoked or ingested marijuana in 2001 were three times as likely to use opiates.

In 2017, the National Academy of Medicine concluded that “cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.”

Marijuana usage is skyrocketing. About 15 percent of Americans used cannabis in 2017 while only 10 percent did in 2006, when about three million reported using at least 300 times a year. In 2017, that soared to eight million and it may have reached 12 million.

One in every 15 alcohol drinkers  drink every day while one in every five marijuana users do so daily.

And the marijuana being sold today has higher levels of TCH. In the 1970s, it was about 2 percent on average and now it ranges from 20-25 percent. And the public is demanding higher percentages for quicker and stronger impacts.

In 2014, 1.5 of Americans suffered from “cannabis use disorder” – the medical term for pot addiction. They made up 11 percent of the psychosis cases in the nation’s emergency rooms. In 2014, there were 90,000 cases – triple the number recorded in 2006.

According to the article, “Hard data on the relationship between marijuana and madness dates back 150 years, to British asylum registers in India. Yet 20 years ago, the United States moved to encourage wider use of cannabis and opiates.

“In both cases, we decided we could outsmart these drugs – that we could have their benefits without their costs. And in both cases we were wrong. Opiates are riskier, and the overdose deaths they cause a more imminent crisis, so we have focused on those. But soon enough the mental illness and violence that follow cannabis use will also be too widespread to ignore.”

He concludes that America needs a well-funded advertising campaign to inform the public about the dangers of marijuana. Unlike cigarettes, there are not adequate warning labels on marijuana. The “elite media” has decided not to challenge the claims of marijuana advocates. We need to focus on the science of the dangers of marijuana usage.

I couldn’t agree more. We have been sold a bill of goods on medical marijuana in Oklahoma and the results are not going to be good.