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The number of emergency visits related to cannabis in a US state hospital to completely legalize its consumption has tripled in a few years, according to a study that highlights the dangers of ingesting this drug.
Colorado legalized marijuana for recreational purposes in 2014, the first state to do so, making the study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine particularly noteworthy. Nine other states have legalized cannabis for recreational purposes, while 34 out of 50 authorize its medical use.
The researchers badyzed half a million visits to the Colorado hospital emergency in Aurora between 2012 and 2016, of which about 2,500 were at least partly attributable to marijuana use.
The number of these visits has increased each year, from less than 250 in 2012 to more than 750 in 2016.
Although more than 90% of the visits were related to the inhalation of the drug, the others were to edible cannabis, whether it was cookies, sweets or any other food form used to ingest THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). psychoactive ingredient.
Andrew Monte, professor of emergency medicine and senior author of the study, said that the tripling of the total number of emergency room visits was not totally surprising.
"Whenever there is a new medicine in a community, it means that there will be more visits to the emergency," Monte told AFP.
This is true even for conventional drugs, he says, such as high blood pressure medications.
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But the proportion of emergency visits related to cannabis ingestion is much higher than suggested rates of use. In Colorado, edible cannabis accounted for only 0.3% of the total weight of THC sold, but accounted for 10% of emergency visits related to cannabis use.
"I think it's partly part of a naivety around the use of food products," Monte said.
"Emergency doctors have noticed the phenomenon of food consumption, but no data has ever saved, and these data allow," he said.
"The effects of cannabis-based edibles are much more unpredictable and unfortunately they last much longer, so people end up going to the emergency department."
"They do not expect to have anxious effects or psychoses, and these effects last a long time."
Inhaled cannabis works in less than 10 minutes, reaches its maximum blood concentration in 30 to 90 minutes and leaves the body in four hours.
Ingested cannabis, on the other hand, reaches its peak in three hours and the THC remains in the body up to 12 hours.
This delayed action can cause new consumers to eat too much and too quickly, leading to intoxication and sometimes acute psychiatric symptoms.
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