Selected Podcast
Marijuana is Now Legal: But is it Safe?
Marijuana is now legal in the state of California, but is it safe? Darrin Privett, MD, helps listeners learn about the risks and dangers of marijuana so you can make informed decisions regarding the use of marijuana.
Featured Speaker:
Darrin Privett, MD
Dr. Darrin Privett is an emergency room physician at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Transcription:
Marijuana is Now Legal: But is it Safe?
Melanie Cole: Marijuana recently became legal in many states. There are different kinds of marijuana products on the market now including edible products, but are they safe and are there some risks that you should be aware of? My guest is Dr. Darrin Privett. He’s an emergency room physician at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Dr. Privett, what are some of the health risks of smoking marijuana.
Darrin Privett, MD: Well, first of all, I appreciate that I'm on this podcast today. I actually am highly involved in the drug awareness and the community outreach in the Santa Clarita Valley for Henry Mayo. It’s something that I'm extremely passionate about. So, I'm glad that I'm on this podcast today to talk to you about this. Obviously, we have seen, this is such a hot top whether or not marijuana should be legal. There’s obviously those who are pro and those who are against it. It’s a very hot topic to talk about. Especially among adolescents and teenagers. As parents out there, what kind of information do we talk to our children about? The perception is out there obviously that if the government and states want to legalize it, then it must not be that dangerous.
You can look online and you hear stories. No one ever really overdoses on marijuana. So, the perception is that this is not a dangerous drug. That cannot be further from the truth. There’s a reason why marijuana from the very beginning was labeled and illicit drug. Certainly, it could be criminalized for using or abusing or even having possession of it. What really is it? As we know, marijuana is the most abused drug in the United States despite the government trying to legalize it. There’s a specific chemical in marijuana called THC. That particular chemical is a psychoactive ingredient.
There’s different ways that people can use it. People can smoke it and now one of the most favorite things is there are edible marijuana out there where the drug is actually in different types of candies, bakery products, and even in a chemical liquid that they can put in the new hot thing is vaping it as well. When marijuana is ingested or smoked or inhaled, the THC rapidly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream. It’s then carried to the brain and other organs throughout the body and is rapidly metabolized. The THC acts specifically on receptors in the brain called cannabinoid receptors. That essentially once it gets stimulated can set off a chain or several reactions that essentially the end product is that it leads to a euphoria or that high that people take it and experience.
Some people can have this relaxed state, kind of enhanced sensory perception. Some people can also feel very anxious, paranoid, and very panicky. So, the concern for us on the medical side is that the areas in the brain such as the hippocampus, the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and some areas in the cerebral cortex where there’s a high concentration of these cannabinoid receptors where the drug gets metabolized. These specific areas influence memory, concentration, areas that give us pleasure, coordination, sensory, and time perception. So, when you take this drug, it can physiologically and chemically alter those specific areas of the brain. Which it’s obviously very important for us to function in society.
That’s the main message that I give the parents to give to adolescents and teenagers is that the brain doesn’t stop developing until around the age of 25 and 26. So despite the perception that marijuana is not dangerous, it effects those portions of the brain because the brain is still developing. That can highly affect our overall development.
Melanie: As I mentioned in the intro, there are many different ways. You even mentioned bakery products and candies. Are edibles any different? I mean smoking anything is going to be bad for your lungs and for your heart. Are edibles or vape pens—and you mentioned those as well—are those any safer?
Dr. Privett: No, they're not because a drug is a drug whether you smoke it, inhale it, inject it, or eat it. The main thing that we worry about with edibles is that everybody’s ability to metabolize food is different. So, one of the things that we have seen in the emergency room and why people come in in the emergency room. Sometimes you can smoke it and because it gets rapidly absorbed in the bloodstream, you feel the effect a lot faster. When you eat and metabolize, because that can be variable amongst those who do it, sometimes the effect of the drug can be delayed. So, you see people who take edibles and they don’t feel anything. So, what do they do? They just keep eating, they keep eating, they keep eating, and all of a sudden bam. Once that drug gets metabolized, they can really feel the effects on a high level.
Melanie: Well, there are also some hidden dangers of it as far as risk of Alzheimer’s. We’re hearing a little bit more about that and verbal memory or osteoporosis risk even. So, what are some of those ones people might not think about?
Dr. Privett: That’s the key is that this is such a new and debatable topic that there’s a huge argument of whether or not marijuana should be legal because of its medical purposes. It still hasn’t been confirmed exactly what specific ailments or diseases that marijuana should be used. Once it’s become legal, everybody now has a medical marijuana card. We’re kind of surprised to see how many 20-year-olds who now have chronic backpain who need a medical marijuana card to treat that. So, I think the chart should specifically say what marijuana can potentially lead to down the road. I think in the immediate effect, we see marijuana cause a lot of side effects. It is variable from person to person depending on whether that person uses it occasionally or they are a chronic user. Also depending upon I guess the strength of the marijuana.
In the short term we most commonly see in the emergency room, people can have increased heart rate, they can be hypertensive, they can have from a lack of muscle use, muscle coordination because of the muscle relaxation. We see people have problems with their GI systems—nausea, vomiting, slow digestion. They’re neurologic symptoms can be lightheadedness, dizziness, kind of this distorted perceptions to site, sounds, time, and touch. You have difficulty in thinking, memory and problem solving. There’s loss of coordination and motor skills. Agitation, anxiety, confusion, paranoid, and feeling of panic. Increased appetite, dry mouth, dry eyes. So, it can just lead you to have further risk of behavior.
It is true, you can overdose on it but certainly because it can increase your risk of risky behavior. It can lead you to have a severe injury or trauma. Trauma is the number one cause of death from the population from the age of 1 to 26. We see it a lot with people who might be impaired while driving because it can affect your reaction time and obviously your ability to make proper judgements and responding to certain stimuli such as sounds, and signals and it can lead to serious injury. As far as what it can affect long term, I think the research is still out there because it’s been difficult to get approval from the FDA to do specific researches out there.
Melanie: Well, tell us as parents when we want to tell our children about these dangers. They hear things in the media, certainly about the opioid epidemic that’s going on in this country that’s killing millions of people. Even alcohol and drunk driving and they say, “Well this doesn’t seem that bad.” What as a parent do we tell them when it doesn’t seem quite as bad as opioids and drunk driving and those kinds of things. How is a parent supposed to rationalize that to their children?
Dr. Privett: Well, you’re right because that’s the perception out there, especially among adolescents and teenagers. Really, it’s between 14 and 25 is that there is a perception that it’s not a dangerous drug. That you can't become addicted to marijuana. So that’s the challenge that we face. Like I mentioned earlier, because the drug is metabolized in that area of the brain that effects memory concentration, our ability to feel happiness and pleasure. Areas that control coordination, sensory, and our time perception. Because their brain does not stop developing until they’re the age of 25 or 26, when they use this drug, it will physiologically change that area of the brain. You’ve seen people. We all have friends that have abused marijuana during the early stages of their brain development. They have difficulty with those main areas and have challenges in their life.
More importantly, like I mentioned just previously, that it can lead them to risky behavior. We see—now there isn’t any direct studies that have correlated those people who use marijuana will use harder drugs. We've always talked about marijuana being a gateway drug. To be honest with you, almost every single heroin abuser I have come across, all of them use marijuana. So, we have seen that there is a correlation between marijuana and using stronger and more dangerous drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroine. A lot of it has to do because this drug changes or effects those areas that causes people to feel pleasure.
When I go outside with my children, I just play with them. I play baseball with my son. I play tag with my girls. Those are those things that bring me great joy, great pleasure because the area of my brain is being stimulated and it secretes a neurochemical that allows me to feel that natural euphoria. Well, when you change that in your brain, those things that you naturally would do that would give you happiness, that would give you pleasure, they no longer give you that feeling. That area in the brain has been distorted and been physically altered. So, you have to do other things that potentially can give you that euphoria, that can give you that feeling of happiness. That leads you to do more riskier behavior, to take chances because your ability to make good judgements and decisions are changed and altered. So that increases your risk, your susceptibility for trauma, for injury. So, it is extremely dangerous. I think parents really need to understand that.
Melanie: Then wrap it up for us Dr. Privett. As an emergency room physician, and as you say you’ve seen heroin and methamphetamines and all kinds of things people coming through your emergency room. And invariably, they did smoke pot to begin with. What do you want listeners to think about as you weigh the pros and cons of legal marijuana use at this time?
Dr. Privett: Well, one of the big problems with the marijuana today is it’s not the same marijuana that maybe our parents used in the 70s. In general, the THC in marijuana in the 70s only really contained about 10% of THC. Today, the different type of marijuana strains contain about 30%. So, it’s a lot stronger. Because it can come in different forms too, it can really affect us a lot differently than it did back then. In the 70s, you can only smoke it. Now, because of the vaping and the different concentrated strains that people can have access to and then these edibles, we have seen that the effects have been amplified.
Really the message is that the high is a lie. You can't really believe everything that you read online or what your friends are telling you. The reason why the drug was illegal, and you could be criminalized because of it is because it is dangerous. Medicine is always rapidly changing. Studies are done. We are seeing that there are some medical purposes for it. It’s still really early as far as telling us what the research and how we can apply it. There’s a lot of chemicals in marijuana. We have found that one specific chemical, CBD, has been really good for children with autism, for those who have intractable seizures, and for those who have chronic pain.
I'm not a big proponent of medical marijuana, but I have seen where I think the CBD is a great alternative for people who suffer from chronic pain or who have depression or anxiety where they have benefited from it because it doesn’t have the addictive effects that opioids or narcotics do. It’s a great alternative to that. So, I would just say to parents that they need to be very active in their child’s life. And realize that you're they're parent. You're not their friend. It’s our job to make sure that our kids are protected and have the proper knowledge to help them.
Because unfortunately in a recent study that was done in 2016, marijuana is used among the highest age group between 18 and 25. In fact, 22% of 12th graders use marijuana. 14% of 10th use marijuana. Almost 6% of 8th grade students use marijuana. So, this is in elementary, this is in junior high, this is in high school. We have to be vigilant to make sure that our kids are aware. Don’t be naïve. Your friends are using it. Between 6 to 22% of 8th to 12th graders of the population in the United States are using marijuana, chances are that your child or your child’s friend is using marijuana. Just make sure that you're very aware, you're very involved, and it’s our job to make sure that our kids are protected and that our teenagers are safe.
Melanie: Thank you so much Dr. Privett for sharing your expertise on this topic. Many people are confused about it and they're not quite sure as they weigh those pros and cons. So, thank you for clearing it up as an emergency room physician all of the risks and dangers that people might not realize come along with smoking or eating or using marijuana to begin with. Thank you again for joining us. You're listening to It’s Your Health radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, please visit henrymayo.com. That’s henrymayo.com. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for tuning in.
Marijuana is Now Legal: But is it Safe?
Melanie Cole: Marijuana recently became legal in many states. There are different kinds of marijuana products on the market now including edible products, but are they safe and are there some risks that you should be aware of? My guest is Dr. Darrin Privett. He’s an emergency room physician at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Dr. Privett, what are some of the health risks of smoking marijuana.
Darrin Privett, MD: Well, first of all, I appreciate that I'm on this podcast today. I actually am highly involved in the drug awareness and the community outreach in the Santa Clarita Valley for Henry Mayo. It’s something that I'm extremely passionate about. So, I'm glad that I'm on this podcast today to talk to you about this. Obviously, we have seen, this is such a hot top whether or not marijuana should be legal. There’s obviously those who are pro and those who are against it. It’s a very hot topic to talk about. Especially among adolescents and teenagers. As parents out there, what kind of information do we talk to our children about? The perception is out there obviously that if the government and states want to legalize it, then it must not be that dangerous.
You can look online and you hear stories. No one ever really overdoses on marijuana. So, the perception is that this is not a dangerous drug. That cannot be further from the truth. There’s a reason why marijuana from the very beginning was labeled and illicit drug. Certainly, it could be criminalized for using or abusing or even having possession of it. What really is it? As we know, marijuana is the most abused drug in the United States despite the government trying to legalize it. There’s a specific chemical in marijuana called THC. That particular chemical is a psychoactive ingredient.
There’s different ways that people can use it. People can smoke it and now one of the most favorite things is there are edible marijuana out there where the drug is actually in different types of candies, bakery products, and even in a chemical liquid that they can put in the new hot thing is vaping it as well. When marijuana is ingested or smoked or inhaled, the THC rapidly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream. It’s then carried to the brain and other organs throughout the body and is rapidly metabolized. The THC acts specifically on receptors in the brain called cannabinoid receptors. That essentially once it gets stimulated can set off a chain or several reactions that essentially the end product is that it leads to a euphoria or that high that people take it and experience.
Some people can have this relaxed state, kind of enhanced sensory perception. Some people can also feel very anxious, paranoid, and very panicky. So, the concern for us on the medical side is that the areas in the brain such as the hippocampus, the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and some areas in the cerebral cortex where there’s a high concentration of these cannabinoid receptors where the drug gets metabolized. These specific areas influence memory, concentration, areas that give us pleasure, coordination, sensory, and time perception. So, when you take this drug, it can physiologically and chemically alter those specific areas of the brain. Which it’s obviously very important for us to function in society.
That’s the main message that I give the parents to give to adolescents and teenagers is that the brain doesn’t stop developing until around the age of 25 and 26. So despite the perception that marijuana is not dangerous, it effects those portions of the brain because the brain is still developing. That can highly affect our overall development.
Melanie: As I mentioned in the intro, there are many different ways. You even mentioned bakery products and candies. Are edibles any different? I mean smoking anything is going to be bad for your lungs and for your heart. Are edibles or vape pens—and you mentioned those as well—are those any safer?
Dr. Privett: No, they're not because a drug is a drug whether you smoke it, inhale it, inject it, or eat it. The main thing that we worry about with edibles is that everybody’s ability to metabolize food is different. So, one of the things that we have seen in the emergency room and why people come in in the emergency room. Sometimes you can smoke it and because it gets rapidly absorbed in the bloodstream, you feel the effect a lot faster. When you eat and metabolize, because that can be variable amongst those who do it, sometimes the effect of the drug can be delayed. So, you see people who take edibles and they don’t feel anything. So, what do they do? They just keep eating, they keep eating, they keep eating, and all of a sudden bam. Once that drug gets metabolized, they can really feel the effects on a high level.
Melanie: Well, there are also some hidden dangers of it as far as risk of Alzheimer’s. We’re hearing a little bit more about that and verbal memory or osteoporosis risk even. So, what are some of those ones people might not think about?
Dr. Privett: That’s the key is that this is such a new and debatable topic that there’s a huge argument of whether or not marijuana should be legal because of its medical purposes. It still hasn’t been confirmed exactly what specific ailments or diseases that marijuana should be used. Once it’s become legal, everybody now has a medical marijuana card. We’re kind of surprised to see how many 20-year-olds who now have chronic backpain who need a medical marijuana card to treat that. So, I think the chart should specifically say what marijuana can potentially lead to down the road. I think in the immediate effect, we see marijuana cause a lot of side effects. It is variable from person to person depending on whether that person uses it occasionally or they are a chronic user. Also depending upon I guess the strength of the marijuana.
In the short term we most commonly see in the emergency room, people can have increased heart rate, they can be hypertensive, they can have from a lack of muscle use, muscle coordination because of the muscle relaxation. We see people have problems with their GI systems—nausea, vomiting, slow digestion. They’re neurologic symptoms can be lightheadedness, dizziness, kind of this distorted perceptions to site, sounds, time, and touch. You have difficulty in thinking, memory and problem solving. There’s loss of coordination and motor skills. Agitation, anxiety, confusion, paranoid, and feeling of panic. Increased appetite, dry mouth, dry eyes. So, it can just lead you to have further risk of behavior.
It is true, you can overdose on it but certainly because it can increase your risk of risky behavior. It can lead you to have a severe injury or trauma. Trauma is the number one cause of death from the population from the age of 1 to 26. We see it a lot with people who might be impaired while driving because it can affect your reaction time and obviously your ability to make proper judgements and responding to certain stimuli such as sounds, and signals and it can lead to serious injury. As far as what it can affect long term, I think the research is still out there because it’s been difficult to get approval from the FDA to do specific researches out there.
Melanie: Well, tell us as parents when we want to tell our children about these dangers. They hear things in the media, certainly about the opioid epidemic that’s going on in this country that’s killing millions of people. Even alcohol and drunk driving and they say, “Well this doesn’t seem that bad.” What as a parent do we tell them when it doesn’t seem quite as bad as opioids and drunk driving and those kinds of things. How is a parent supposed to rationalize that to their children?
Dr. Privett: Well, you’re right because that’s the perception out there, especially among adolescents and teenagers. Really, it’s between 14 and 25 is that there is a perception that it’s not a dangerous drug. That you can't become addicted to marijuana. So that’s the challenge that we face. Like I mentioned earlier, because the drug is metabolized in that area of the brain that effects memory concentration, our ability to feel happiness and pleasure. Areas that control coordination, sensory, and our time perception. Because their brain does not stop developing until they’re the age of 25 or 26, when they use this drug, it will physiologically change that area of the brain. You’ve seen people. We all have friends that have abused marijuana during the early stages of their brain development. They have difficulty with those main areas and have challenges in their life.
More importantly, like I mentioned just previously, that it can lead them to risky behavior. We see—now there isn’t any direct studies that have correlated those people who use marijuana will use harder drugs. We've always talked about marijuana being a gateway drug. To be honest with you, almost every single heroin abuser I have come across, all of them use marijuana. So, we have seen that there is a correlation between marijuana and using stronger and more dangerous drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroine. A lot of it has to do because this drug changes or effects those areas that causes people to feel pleasure.
When I go outside with my children, I just play with them. I play baseball with my son. I play tag with my girls. Those are those things that bring me great joy, great pleasure because the area of my brain is being stimulated and it secretes a neurochemical that allows me to feel that natural euphoria. Well, when you change that in your brain, those things that you naturally would do that would give you happiness, that would give you pleasure, they no longer give you that feeling. That area in the brain has been distorted and been physically altered. So, you have to do other things that potentially can give you that euphoria, that can give you that feeling of happiness. That leads you to do more riskier behavior, to take chances because your ability to make good judgements and decisions are changed and altered. So that increases your risk, your susceptibility for trauma, for injury. So, it is extremely dangerous. I think parents really need to understand that.
Melanie: Then wrap it up for us Dr. Privett. As an emergency room physician, and as you say you’ve seen heroin and methamphetamines and all kinds of things people coming through your emergency room. And invariably, they did smoke pot to begin with. What do you want listeners to think about as you weigh the pros and cons of legal marijuana use at this time?
Dr. Privett: Well, one of the big problems with the marijuana today is it’s not the same marijuana that maybe our parents used in the 70s. In general, the THC in marijuana in the 70s only really contained about 10% of THC. Today, the different type of marijuana strains contain about 30%. So, it’s a lot stronger. Because it can come in different forms too, it can really affect us a lot differently than it did back then. In the 70s, you can only smoke it. Now, because of the vaping and the different concentrated strains that people can have access to and then these edibles, we have seen that the effects have been amplified.
Really the message is that the high is a lie. You can't really believe everything that you read online or what your friends are telling you. The reason why the drug was illegal, and you could be criminalized because of it is because it is dangerous. Medicine is always rapidly changing. Studies are done. We are seeing that there are some medical purposes for it. It’s still really early as far as telling us what the research and how we can apply it. There’s a lot of chemicals in marijuana. We have found that one specific chemical, CBD, has been really good for children with autism, for those who have intractable seizures, and for those who have chronic pain.
I'm not a big proponent of medical marijuana, but I have seen where I think the CBD is a great alternative for people who suffer from chronic pain or who have depression or anxiety where they have benefited from it because it doesn’t have the addictive effects that opioids or narcotics do. It’s a great alternative to that. So, I would just say to parents that they need to be very active in their child’s life. And realize that you're they're parent. You're not their friend. It’s our job to make sure that our kids are protected and have the proper knowledge to help them.
Because unfortunately in a recent study that was done in 2016, marijuana is used among the highest age group between 18 and 25. In fact, 22% of 12th graders use marijuana. 14% of 10th use marijuana. Almost 6% of 8th grade students use marijuana. So, this is in elementary, this is in junior high, this is in high school. We have to be vigilant to make sure that our kids are aware. Don’t be naïve. Your friends are using it. Between 6 to 22% of 8th to 12th graders of the population in the United States are using marijuana, chances are that your child or your child’s friend is using marijuana. Just make sure that you're very aware, you're very involved, and it’s our job to make sure that our kids are protected and that our teenagers are safe.
Melanie: Thank you so much Dr. Privett for sharing your expertise on this topic. Many people are confused about it and they're not quite sure as they weigh those pros and cons. So, thank you for clearing it up as an emergency room physician all of the risks and dangers that people might not realize come along with smoking or eating or using marijuana to begin with. Thank you again for joining us. You're listening to It’s Your Health radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information, please visit henrymayo.com. That’s henrymayo.com. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for tuning in.