Serious Warnings and Precautions (Health Canada Patient Information)

​

• Keep any fresh or dried marijuana and cannabis oil out of reach of children.

​

• Cannabis (marihuana, marijuana) contains hundreds of substances, some of which can affect the proper functioning of the brain and central nervous system.

​

• The use of this product involves risks to health, some of which may not be known or fully understood. Studies supporting the safety and efficacy of cannabis for therapeutic purposes are limited and do not meet the standard required by the Food and Drug Regulations for marketed drugs in Canada.

• Smoking cannabis is not recommended. Do not smoke or vapourize cannabis in the presence of children.

• Using cannabis or any cannabis product can impair your concentration, your ability to think and make decisions, and your reaction time and coordination. This can affect your motor skills, including your ability to drive. It can also increase anxiety and cause panic attacks, and in some cases cause paranoia and hallucinations.

• Cognitive impairment may be greatly increased when cannabis is consumed along with alcohol or other drugs which affect the activity of the nervous system (e.g. opioids, sleeping pills, other psychoactive drugs).

​

Is Medicinal Cannabis Safe?

​

Cannabis is a relatively safe medication when compared to many of the prescription drugs widely used for pain control, such as opiates (OxyContin, Percocet, etc). The main difference is that cannabis does NOT result in overdose death. This does not mean, however, that there are no risks.

 

Some of the risks include:

​

• You can get hooked (addicted) on marijuana: Marijuana is not as addictive as things like cigarettes or alcohol, but about 9% of the people who smoke marijuana for fun will become addicted to it. There is no information on how many people get addicted to cannabis when they use it only as a medicine. If you are afraid of getting hooked, talk to your doctor about ways you can prevent this.

 

• People with a personal or family history of psychiatric disorders who use cannabis are at higher risk to develop or aggravate an already present psychiatric disorder.

​

• Cannabis can be dangerous for people with cardiopulmonary disease, respiratory insufficiency, or liver or kidney disease.

​

• Cannabis may harm a developing fetus or infant, so should not be used by pregnant or nursing mothers.

 

Because of these issues, be sure to have an open conversation with your doctor about your health history – cannabis may help your pain but you want to be sure to consider potential risks carefully.

​

America’s Invisible Pot Addicts

 

More and more Americans are reporting near-constant cannabis use, as legalization forges ahead.

​

Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. “It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent.” They argue that state and local governments are setting up legal regimes without sufficient public-health protection, with some even warning that the country is replacing one form of reefer madness with another, careening from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha.

​

But cannabis is not benign, even if it is relatively benign, compared with alcohol, opiates, and cigarettes, among other substances. Thousands of Americans are finding their own use problematic in a climate where pot products are getting more potent, more socially acceptable to use, and yet easier to come by, not that it was particularly hard before.

​