Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried – a former cannabis lobbyist whose fiancee created a cannabis company with Fried’s father – recently tweeted that “Legalizing cannabis solves lots of problems and creates none.”
Fried’s comments come despite several reports that show increases in hospitalizations and suicides due to the legalization of marijuana. Also, in 2019 a top US government mental health official noted that it “is time for Americans to understand there are substantial risks with marijuana.”
Colorado
A NYT article from 2019 focused on the effects of legalization in Colorado. The article stated that while thousands “make uneventful stops at dispensaries every day” new problems have surfaced in Colorado. Since marijuana legalization in 2014, “more people here are visiting emergency rooms for marijuana-related problems, and hospitals report higher rates of mental-health cases tied to marijuana.”
The study cited by the NYT shows the rates of hospitalizations in Colorado with marijuana-related diagnosis codes increased from 274 per 100,000 hospitalizations in 2000 prior to any marijuana legalization to 593 per 100,000 hospitalizations in 2015 after two years of recreational marijuana legalization.
In addition, hospital data analyzed by Dr. Andrew Monte, an emergency and medical toxicology physician and researcher at the University of Colorado Hospital, also indicated that more people are arriving at emergency rooms for marijuana-related reasons. The NYT reported that some of these people “are heavy marijuana users with severe vomiting. Others are children who have eaten edibles, accidentally or not. They come to the E.R. disoriented, dehydrated or hallucinating after consuming too much marijuana.”
“There’s a disconnect between what was proposed as a completely safe drug,” Dr. Monte said. “Nothing is completely safe.”
And researchers have reported that patients in the E.R. with marijuana-related cases were five times as likely to have a mental-health issue as those with other cases.
Mental Health
“It is time for Americans to understand there are substantial risks with marijuana,” said Elinore McCance-Katz, the Department of Health and Human Services’ top mental health official. “This is not the government making up data.”
McCance-Katz taught at Yale and Brown universities and held senior posts for state substance abuse agencies before joining HHS under the Obama administration as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration chief medical officer.
She pointed out that hospitalizations more than doubled for serious mental health disorders among 18- to 25-year-olds nationally from 2012 to 2018. She cited a study in July that shows a 77% increase in suicide deaths from 2010 to 2015 among Colorado 10- to 19-year-olds with marijuana in their systems.
Nikki Fried: “Legalizing Cannabis Solves Lots of Problems and Creates None” added by Steve Stewart on
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Some ppl don’t care about price drop. They just want to grow there own…. Hence big price drop for him/her
And BTW, I will cast my vote for Nikki. She’s the one with brains.
I have read some really dumb comments, I use medical marijuana for pain and depression and it works for me. The alternative is the pills the Drs give me which have more side effects and make me feel worse. Maybe if legal marijuana goes away or thc caps put in place I could start becoming an alcoholic or a druggie on pills, maybe they bring back the opioids. Ridiculous debate about a natural plant. Oh, and I don’t have the urge to take pills drink or do opioids. Seems to me this is no gateway drug I have heard about all my life. All the weed haters make this stuff up for some reason. Well, when you yourself have medical problems maybe those pharmaceuticals will help you. Stay away from the weed.
My drug dealer over on Old Bainbridge agrees we should keep pot illegal. The price will drop to nothing if it ever gets legalized, and he would have to work for a living. He’s a bit of an iconoclast. ?
I believe you’re absolutely correct, Snidely. The entire two-party system is a ruse designed to divide the masses and assure maximum contribution potential to the singular “Establishment” system. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two dominant political parties. It’s not about Red or Blue… it’s always about “Green”, and how much of ours they can get into their hands.
The only real “bipartisan” acts going on within our two-party system are corruption, dysfunction, and hypocrisy… and if they’re “reaching across the aisle”, it’s just to exchange checks.
Term Limits at ALL levels of elected office are paramount if we are ever to recover and save the Constitutional Republic our Founders intended.
The only logical reason for elected Republican’s silence and looking the other way is that the elected Republicans are invested right along with Nikki Weed.
Think about it.
You know I’m correct.
Thank you, TR, for a truly honest and thoughtful report on the reefer madness debate. I used to buy into the argument that a little pot is safe. No longer. The pot today ain’t the pot you smoked or ate in the 60s, 70s or 80s. It is wildly more potent and can cause severe psychosis even if you take a small amount. This, of course, is all by design. Nicotine on the other hand, while bad, doesn’t even come close to the effects of this new age pot. Pot is a gateway drug to far worse, full stop. Maybe penalties can be lightened up but it should NEVER be legal. Fried and her ilk are trying to cash in on destroying lives.
Boca,
Spoken like a boy on drugs!
Have you paid your child support, are you even engaged to your baby mama?… but, buy them drugs that’s the most important thing.
Praising a nut job who makes proclamations that are dangerous to the Health, Welfare, and Safety of the citizens at large so potheads (like you) don’t get detained at traffic stops… and then so she can profit from the sale of it from those who make stupid decisions like you is moronic.
It’s morons like you that Ms Weed is profiting from and your idiocy keeps her laughing all the way to the bank.
Thank you Nikki for looking out for us and not listening to the crazies. The reality is that legal marijuana would stop the sheriffs of Florida from using it to detain and/or arrest people of color when they can’t “get them” on any other charge. Whatever downsides there may be with legalized marijuana, they are outweighed by the tens of thousands of lives that have been needlessly disrupted and destroyed by the legal system.
Legalization is as much a civil rights issue in addition to allowing a relatively innocuous substance to be available to the public, so consider this quote from Abraham Lincoln on prohibition because it’s still true today.
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
So when will I be able to buy an eight ball of Peruvian flake? She’s probably not invested in cocaine…not yet anyway. Wait for it, its the same argument.
I dont see any of Florida’s elected Republicans thinking it will be in their best interest to take on Nikki Weed.
If there are any then they are sure being quiet about it. Quiet like meek mild little church mice. I dont think meek mild Republicans deserve to be reelected.
So, the Commissioner of Agriculture made a statement that will cause harm to the public at large so that she, her family, and her living in sin significant other can profit financially? If this is not a crime against humanity I don’t know what is. The public should call for her immediate resignation!
The most recent research indicates a huge increase in birth defects in Colorado, associated with legalised Cannabis. Four times the US background birth defects. There is a similar pattern across other legalisation States and parts of Canada
Defects include, missing or small ears, autism, gastroschisis, Atrial septal defect etc.
Cannabis is teratogenic (affecting the unborn) and has cross generational epigenetic (gene changing) and carcinogenic effects (especially in respect of testicular cancer).
Bluntly it is a poison. No good can come of normalising use.
This is all apart from the mental health effects and Emergency Room issues like hyperemesis.
In fact hyperemisis (Violent continuous sickness) ought to tell us something about this nasty poison.
SHE should be Investigated.
Married fiance? Is that even legal?
She has 100s of thousands of dollars invested in Harvest Health and Recreation.
Her married fiance owns and operates Parallel, formerly Surterra, another weed company in FL.
Most weed advocates are basing their support of “give us weed weed weed”on their own past experiences with marijuana.
There was no medicinal value whatsoever in your past experiences; it was 100% get high, over eat munchies, and if you were lucky sex sex sex. Yet you all claim to be experts in weed’s medicinal values.
Why? Because weed was difficult enough to get in your past so that you – along with nobody you knew – had access to enough weed to even know the harmful effects.
When You all get 24/7 weed access of your dreams – you are gonna be off the chain with mental health and physical health issues – so that you will die about 15 years early and annoy everyone including your families with your overloaded weed induced psychosis and extreme fatness from your larger and larger food binges and drunkenness.
Probley gonna be a burden on society with all your mental and physical fatty fat illness too.
However if you all go on and shave 15 years off your life expectancy due to the effects of way too much weed – the financial element of the weed problems burden equation on society may just balance its self out.
Maybe that was the plan all along. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
mpeak075@gmail.com
Legalize it
Medicinal properties galore in weed
Get rid of alchohol and you will solve most of the issues
I’m gonna guess that Nikki Weed made those comments right after she was done coughing out a huge hit off the ol’ water bong. I also suspect that the finger pad location on her iPhone is covered with Cheetos dust.
Nikki Weed appears to be a typical ethically-compromised political hack NaziCrat… likely riddle with conflicts of interest and possibly guilty of public corruption. As I said before, we should recall the stoner… or at the very least, insist on a formal investigation.
Very good summary of the problems that legal marijuana cause. We see very few articles about the horrible statistics coming out of Colorado.
Lastly, Fried benefits from marijuana! Where are the conflict of interest charges?
This is BS. Marijuana is a miracle drug. You need to make alcohol this is a plant put on earth for a reason. Ban e cigs and alcohol.we need not to abuse alcohol and it’s ok. Don’t abuse marijuana and you can benefit from it not like alcohol which is made.
A disclaimer is needed that her comment was made April Fool’s Day. Is there a breathalyzer for weed? Please make it stop…