LINCOLN — An author and former New York Times journalist came to Nebraska this week with a warning: Cannabis is not medicine, and allowing it to be legalized to treat such conditions as anxiety and pain is a big mistake.
“It is not good for people with mental illness. It is not good for people with anxiety and depression. … It is a recreational intoxicant,” Alex Berenson said in a meeting with reporters Monday. “If we’re going to legalize it, we should legalize it on that basis.”
“Let’s be honest about it,” he said. “It’s a drug. People want to get high.”
Berenson was in Lincoln and Omaha at the invitation of a group opposed to a proposed ballot initiative that would allow Nebraskans in 2020 to vote on whether to legalize medical marijuana. He not only met with reporters in Lincoln, but also spoke at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He also spoke at two private events hosted by Gov. Pete Ricketts, an outspoken opponent of legalizing medical cannabis.
His book, “Tell Your Children,” has been cited by many anti-legalization forces as evidence that cannabis shouldn’t be legalized, as medicine or for recreational purposes, for public health reasons. It’s also been lambasted by critics for “cherry-picking” anti-pot studies while ignoring pro-cannabis reports and being unduly alarmist.
One critic called it “Reefer Madness 2.0,” a reference to a 1930s movie that showed people suddenly becoming insane after smoking marijuana.
Berenson didn’t push back on that criticism, telling reporters that his book — which borrowed the original title of the Reefer Madness movie — is based on dozens of studies that say there’s a link between daily marijuana use and the earlier onset of schizophrenia, a worsening of schizophrenia symptoms and temporary, violent psychosis.
“Reefer madness is a real thing,” he said.
Get the latest health headlines and inspiring stories straight to your inbox.
Berenson said there’s some proof that CBD, a non-hallucinogenic compound found in cannabis that is widely available in stores now, can help some maladies. But he said there’s no evidence that THC, the stuff in pot that makes you high, has any medical benefits.
“There may be people who enjoy smoking cannabis and say it relieves pain, but that’s not how we judge a medicine. A drug has to go through a clinical trial, and it has to be shown effective,” he said, which hasn’t happened.
One critic of the book, German Lopez, wrote on the Vox news website that Berenson has misinterpreted the conclusions of a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Rather than calling it “settled” that cannabis sparks psychosis, Lopez said the report was much more cautious, concluding that the link between the two “may be multi-directional and complex.” In other words, mental illness may drive people to use marijuana to self medicate, rather than pot causing psychosis.
State Sen. Anna Wishart of Lincoln, a co-sponsor of the medical marijuana ballot initiative, said Berenson presents evidence of a correlation between THC and mental illness, but no evidence that one causes the other. There needs to be more study, the senator said, about whether people who are predisposed to schizophrenia or psychosis might be harmed by cannabis.
Wishart said legalizing cannabis for medical use would force such users now getting the drug through the black market for medication to talk to a physician, who could advise them on what is the best treatment for them.
“That seems like the smart approach,” she said.
Berenson, who covered the pharmaceutical industry before leaving the Times in 2010, said he delved into studies about marijuana and mental illness after hearing stories about violent crimes committed by patients under the care of his wife, a forensic psychiatrist in New York State. Almost all the crimes were committed while under the influence of marijuana or some other drug, he said.
He said there are numerous studies that show that cannabis can induce “transient psychosis,” which prompts someone, without warning, to become violent.
Berenson said he can’t “prove” that the legalization of recreational marijuana has been the reason violent crimes has risen in Colorado and Washington, but statistics show such crime has increased in those two states after pot was legalized in 2014.
By contrast, one 2017 study said that violent crime dropped in U.S. states near the Mexican border after medical marijuana was approved.
Berenson said his visit to Nebraska was arranged by a political consulting firm, Axiom Strategies. That firm is working for SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) Nebraska, a group that is opposing the legalization push. Berenson said he was only accepting reimbursement for his travel expenses.
One rare disease left an Omaha doctor eating a shakelike formula to supplement her diet. A friend said it tasted like cat food. An Omaha man woke up after his family took him off life support. And a Lincoln teen is allergic to almost everything.
Check out the stories on their unusual ailments and sometimes equally unusual treatment plans.
Matthew Eledge and husband Elliot Dougherty plan to explain her out-of-the-ordinary birth to their daughter in terms she can understand: that her grandmother furnished the garden where she grew, and that her aunt, Lea Yribe, generously supplied the seeds.
One pothole did a passenger a favor when the ambulance he was in struck it, according to first responders. Gretna firefighters were taking a man suffering chest pain and a high heart rate to the hospital. While en route to Lakeside Hospital, the ambulance hit a pothole. The jolt returned the patient’s heart rate to normal.
Thought to be brain dead, doctors took former Creighton Bluejays play-by-play announcer T. Scott Marr off life support. Before his family settled on a funeral home, they decided to see their dad one more time. When they got there, he was awake and speaking.Â
Karla Perez was 22 weeks pregnant when she suffered a catastrophic brain bleed and was declared brain dead. Her unborn child was alive, but wouldn’t survive delivery. So family and doctors kept her on life support. Angel was born eight weeks later.
Darnisha Ladd never imagined Snapchat would help save her life after she suffered a stroke. But needing a precise timeline of events, doctors and family relied on a post on the phone app and were able to give her a needed medication in time.
Lindsey and Derek Teten’s triplets are one in a million. Literally. The Nebraska City couple’s three daughters, born in late June 2017, are identical and were conceived without fertility treatments. The girls were the second set of spontaneous triplets born at Methodist Women’s Hospital. The first set, also girls, was born in 2015.
Doctors diagnosed the paralysis that was creeping up Justin Chenier’s legs as Guillain-Barre syndrome. It would become so serious that the Omaha man would nearly lose consciousness while screaming because of the pain. The syndrome was triggered by West Nile virus.
Kenze Messman’s been diagnosed with several chronic illnesses. Sometimes her heart rate climbs, seizures send her to the floor and migraines leave her in the dark. And one of the ailments causes the 17-year-old to have allergic reactions to almost everything.
The skin on Sharan Bryson’s leg was black from lack of circulation. She felt nothing but a sharp, stabbing pain. The leg was dead, and her best option was amputation. Bryson bounced back and put her hard work to the test by running a 5K.
Chase Tiemann has had numerous surgeries in his young life, including the amputation of his left arm. The Omaha boy has a condition that causes tumors — sometimes benign, sometimes cancerous — to form on his body. To boost his spirits after amputation, the Papillion Fire Department named Chase an honorary firefighter.
Wesley Woods battled heart disease for 20 years. He’d racked up nine heart attacks, multiple surgeries and one heart transplant. He was tired of hospitals. Tired of chest pain. Tired of feeling tired. Woods was lucky — he received a second transplant.
Amber Kudrna wasn’t sure she’d be able to have a child of her own. After two kidney transplants, doctors gave the Omaha woman a laundry list of potential pregnancy complications. Kudrna and husband Adam weighed their options and, in September 2018, welcomed a baby boy.
Joe Nolan couldn’t take his son James’ pain away. But he could find a way to share it. Nolan got a tattoo that arched across his head, just like his son’s scar. James was born with a handful of ailments, including one that regularly requires his skull to be reshaped.
