Canada patients can grow their own medical marijuana

Twice as many out-of-state visitors wound up in the emergency room for marijuana-related symptoms in 2014 – the year Colorado legalized retail sales of the drug – compared to two years earlier, said the report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Some tourists who have visited Colorado to sample the state’s legal marijuana haven’t been able to handle their high, prompting a steep increase in pot-related trips to the emergency room, new research indicates.

The study also analyzed numbers from the Colorado Hospital Association for visits to emergency rooms statewide.

The study did not go into detail on whether the ER visits were the result of smoking marijuana, or consuming edibles, according to lead investigator Dr. Howard Kim, a postdoctoral fellow in emergency medicine at Northwestern.

Researchers recorded 163 marijuana cases per 10,000 visits by people from out-of-state in 2014, up from 78 per 10,000 visits in 2012. Over the same time, marijuana-related ER visits by Colorado residents saw a 44 percent increase, from 70 per 10,000 in 2012 to 101 per 10,000 in 2014.

“I think reaching visitors is a much harder task”, said Kim, who worked on the study while at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora.

“A lot of people do different things when they’re home versus when they’re on vacation”, said Mike Van Dyke with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “I don’t think most doctors would be comfortable with that”. “Point-of-sale education is critical”.

The finding has implications for other states in which recreational marijuana is legal, such as Alaska, Oregon and Washington.

“Their lives have been adversely impacted by the imposition of the relatively new regime to control the use of marijuana for medical purposes”, Phelan wrote.

“People eating marijuana products often don’t feel any effect immediately, leading them to eat another edible”, Kim explained. These efforts aim to decrease adverse effects for all users, including those with less knowledge and experience.

More honest reporting from patients could also factor into the increase, said Ali Nagib, assistant director of the IL chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The reason for that gap, Kim and his colleagues suspect, is that educational media campaigns about safe use of marijuana have been targeted at Colorado residents.

State health and agriculture officials issued a health and safety advisory on pesticide-laced marijuana cultivated by a Colorado company.

“Obviously, it’s going to be incredibly hard for patients that have been protected by the injunction to be criminalized overnight”, adds Tousaw.

“Basically, we won, and it was a complete victory”, said Kirk Tousaw, attorney for British Columbia resident Neil Allard, who introduced the court challenge along with three other B.C residents.