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WisconsinChristianNews.com
Volume 26, Issue 8
It’s Just Weed! And You Can’t Kill It!
By Dr. David Lange, Genesis Primary Care January 2026 Dear readers, sorry to bring this back up but just like your yard, this weed doesn’t want to die. It seems to be timely, yet again, as the president has just re- classified marijuana as a Schedule 3 drug. At
mental health diagnoses due to use of marijuana does drop if one starts using marijuana as an adult, it is still considerably higher than baseline. It was argued in the past, that marijuana was not a gateway drug. Well, guess what? That is not true ei- ther. Maybe this ties into the mental health issues
push to have everyone vaccinated against HPV. HPV is associated with several cancers, especially head and neck and oral cancers, but maybe the issue is made worse by marijuana. Heart disease rates are higher in marijuana smok- ers than in nonsmokers. One study found that there was a 34% increased risk of developing congestive heart failure. Stroke risk is also higher. This is across all age brackets but is clearly worse in the older adult. Cannabinoids of all sorts have been shown to inter- act with numerous medications. This may increase the levels of the medication in the blood, or may in- crease the amount of the cannabinoids in the blood stream. It increases the effects of warfarin, making that person more prone to bleeding. Of course, this isn’t unique to THC; many pharmaceuticals and OTC natural products are known to interact with each other to increase or decrease the effects of one an- other, but to tell someone marijuana is harmless is criminal. Car accidents are on the rise with marijuana use. A review of emergency room use in Ontario showed that from pre-legalization to post legalization the rate of motor vehicle accidents related to marijuana use rose from 0.18/1000 to 1.01/1000 visits. Having just traveled through a state where marijuana is “legal,” I can attest that motorist behavior has deteriorated significantly. I am sure that over time, more bad than good will be discovered from the use of marijuana. I am hope- ful that history won’t repeat itself before sanity returns to this discussion. Medical textbooks clearly showed the relationship of disease to tobacco, yet it took more than 60 years for the surgeon general to issue the first statement warning about the dangers of to- bacco. Sixty years on, we are still plagued by this scourge. As I read the articles on marijuana with the dramatic headlines about its dangers, the authors always hedge their way through the conclusions about need- ing more research, how small the studies are and any number of excuses as to why they cannot make a more definitive statement about the dangers of this product. All of that is probably true, but are we going to get the answers that government and industry want or are we going to get the truth? Hopefully the reclassification makes doing research easier so we can arrive at the answer we deserve. GenesisPrimaryCare.com Please see the display ad on Page 20 of this issue of Wisconsin Christian News).
2 classes of chemicals that can stimulate these re- ceptors, but there are likely many more that have yet to be characterized. Stimulation of the receptors causes a reduction in neurotransmitters, the chemi- cals that move from one nerve to the next one to cause the next one to do whatever it is that it does. The brain has most of the CB 1 receptors and the
the State level, I chalk this up to a desire for tax rev- enue. Likely plenty of lobbyist money was/will be spent to try to bring this back up for a vote. But some- thing like this, coming the President, who should have good advisers, is confusing. I suspect this is not a simple revenue issue. So what does it mean that this is now a Schedule 3 drug? What was it before this? Marijuana was a Schedule 1 drug. Basically Schedule 1 drugs have a high abuse potential and little or no medical value. They are highly regulated and access is supposed to be tightly controlled. Schedule 2 drugs still have high abuse potential, but have more medical value. Medications like mor- phine, oxycodone and methylphenidate are Sched- ule 2 drugs. As you may have guessed, Schedule 3, 4 and 5 are less abusable, in that order, not neces- sarily more medically useful. Medications like antibi- otics, blood pressure pills and diabetes medications are not scheduled. While I can only guess at why the change, down regulating marijuana will make it eas- ier to access for research. Research that I hope is accurate and unbiased (always the optimist). Since I wrote the original article a year ago, I have found several more articles about the dangers and health consequences of this weed. None support its use for anything legitimately beneficial. I do support research. If there are possible ways to exploit the en- docannabanoid receptors for our good, then we should figure out how to use them. It certainly does not seem that THC or it close cousins will be for our benefit. Since I am a physician, let me stick to something that I am more familiar with. Researchers have been very busy studying the biochemistry of the receptors that respond to THC and the other cannabinoids (also known as CBD). The biochemical pathways of what is happening when we use these substances is reasonably well worked out. Humans have two re- ceptors (CB 1 and CB 2) that can be affected by THC and the other cannabinoids. Humans have at least
above. If someone develops schizophrenia as a re- sult of their marijuana use, they commonly start to use more substances of any sort. I have seen its use encouraged for cancer patients who have chemotherapy-induced nausea. One of the more common complications of its use, though, is nausea and hyperemesis. Physicians have placed great hope in the use of marijuana to stop the opioid crisis that this country has been in for a couple of decades. Unfortunately that is not reality either. Both compounds have unique receptors and mechanisms of action. There is no similarity or crossover so I have no idea why anyone would have thought that. Inhaling burning vegetable matter, irrespective of the form, is not good for us. Asthma rates are higher among users. Cancer rates are also higher among users. Lung cancer is just one of at least four types of cancer that are higher in marijuana users. The list also includes head and neck cancers, oral cancers and testicular cancer. The amount of marijuana smoked that is needed to see these changes was just one marijuana cigarette per day for 10 years. While I have no love for tobacco, tobacco studies use something called “pack years,” which is defined as one pack a day for a year. There has been a big
body has most of the CB 2 receptors. THC stimu- lates CB 1. This explains a lot, when looking at all the bad things, neuropsychologically, that happen to people using marijuana. Alex Berenson wrote a book “Tell Your Children, The truth about Marijuana, mental illness and vio- lence,” copyright 2019. I would highly recommend it. Mr. Berenson does a good job explaining the re- search that was available to him at the time. He is pretty even handed and dispassionate about the subject. I have copies of the research papers that may be referenced in the remaining space I have, but since the bibliography is long, I cannot include it here for space considerations. So where do I start? One of the most concerning aspects of THC is its ability to induce psychosis. One paper noted that a single use is all it takes in some to send one down the path of schizophrenia. Young male users are more likely to have this happen than female users. The rates of anxiety, depression and bipolar disor- der are all rising at an alarming rate. THC raises the risk some 2-4 fold for the development of these di- agnoses. There is a teen mental health month and do we hear anything about this? The human brain is not mature until age 26, and while the risk of these
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