THE EDITOR, Sir:I HAVE been keenly following the debate about the positive and negative effects of marijuana.
The letter written by Mr. Ed McCoy on April 1, 2005 was quite comprehensive in summarising the various issues. However he made an inaccurate statement suggesting that researchers finding the link between marijuana and mental health problems was nonsense.
Several studies have been undertaken with the above hypotheses in mind. While a cannabis psychosis cannot be identified i.e. a psychotic disorder that would not have occurred in the absence of cannabis use and which can be recognised by a pattern of symptoms and their relationship to cannabis use; numerous prospective studies have linked cannabis as a precipitate to disorders such as schizophrenia in persons who are vulnerable to developing a psychosis.
This is not very difficult to fathom as delta 9 transtetrahydrocannabinol (the active ingredient in marijuana) releases dopamine, one of the many proposed causes of schizophrenia.
My point is that there is some truth to the saying that once some patients desist from smoking marijuana an acute psychosis will not be precipitated.
I am, etc.,
Dr. ROMAYNE EDWARDS
glamarous00@yahoo.com
Barbican, Kingston 8
Via Go-Jamaica
