Colorado Raises Awareness About High-Potency Cannabis

12 July 2021
Parents claim teenagers are getting hooked on high potency cannabis extracts.
12 July 2021
2 min read
Colorado Raises Awareness About High-Potency Cannabis

Despite millions of consumers benefiting from medical cannabis products, Colorado has seen an increase in teenagers claiming to be hooked to high-potency cannabis extracts and researchers have linked THC-rich products to physical dependence, psychosis, and anxiety.

The Dangers Of High-Potency Cannabis

Doctors claim that despite the several medical benefits cannabis has, there’s been an increase in cannabis consumers coming into hospitals with repeated vomiting, acute psychosis and CHS. The parent of a teenager who presented these symptoms claims that her son started smoking cannabis at around 15 years of age and had his first psychotic breakdown at 18 years of age. Her son was diagnosed with schizophrenia recently, and she claims that the case was caused ( or at least aggravated) by daily cannabis use throughout the years.

New Laws Regarding Cannabis

The increase in cases like this has caused the governor of Colorado to sign a new law limiting the purchase of high-potency cannabis products. Right now, anyone 18 or older with a medical cannabis card can buy up to 40 grams of cannabis concentrate per day but, next year when the law comes into effect, the 40 grams drops to 2 grams a day for anyone aged 18 - 20 and just 8 grams for anyone over 20 which is not great, seeing that cannabis consumption can vary a lot, especially amongst medical patients. In order to control this, medical cannabis cards will be harder to get and dispensaries will have to implement digital tracking to monitor sales in the hope to reduce the amount of cannabis that gets resold illegally to kids.

Despite cannabis producers agreeing that kids should not consume cannabis and agreeing that the cannabis market should be regulated, they claim that limiting the amount of cannabis a certain individual can consume is too close to prohibition and is not the direction the cannabis market should take. Also, experts claim that cannabis is extremely popular in Colorado so if people cannot get what they need legally, they will end up buying it from the black market which is the opposite of what the legal cannabis market was supposed to do.