Marijuana Is Not Your Friend
PediatricsMore and more of pediatrics is about anxiety, depression and other behavioral health issues. I’ve been learning from my patients about what works and what doesn’t work for over 35 years. While proponents of medical marijuana frequently cite patients with seizures where nothing else seems to work, such patients are vanishingly rare. The vast majority of medical marijuana patients are being treated for anxiety, depression and boredom by doctors who don’t care very much one way or the other about whether or not their patients get better. If you go to a marijuana Doctor the chances of not getting a prescription for marijuana are very close to zero. Ditto the chance that cleaning up your diet, getting more exercise, other medications or treatments for anxiety, depression or boredom will be discussed. Current estimates based on population studies in states that have approved medical marijuana are that there will be several million legally registered users within the next few years. At ~3 joints, $50 a day, (some users ‘need’ more), we’re talking about serious money. Most registered users have trouble affording their prescribed dose but the industry is spending a lot of money and optimistic about efforts to have medical marijuana covered by health insurance.
It’s about a zillion times harder to be a child, an adolescent, a young adult now than it was ten twenty or thirty years ago or when I was growing up. The discovery that alcohol, marijuana and other drugs can make anxious and/or depressed lonely people feel better is not new. I remain open to the idea that medical marijuana might help some people but so far I haven’t met any. I have several patients I know about who ‘have their card’.
The average medical marijuana patient is someone who would rather be stoned than not stoned. And most of them prefer to be stoned every day. Patients who go that route tend not stay to stay involved in the world. They retreat from friends, family and doing things in general. Getting better from depression or anxiety or other mental health issues and getting a life is hard work. Medical marijuana is just plain too easy. It doesn’t help anyone be a better friend or athlete or student or parent or anything. It makes you OK with things you maybe shouldn’t be OK with.
What’s really being pedaled here is not a way to stop seizures or vomiting. It’s about the money. Demand is high. Overhead and production costs are low. Each medical marijuana dispensary stands to become a multimillion business in very short order. Profit margins run as high as 45% yielding ~$5,000/square foot. Success breeds success and owners would be failing to meet their fiduciary responsibility to themselves and other investors if they didn’t branch out and set up more outlets. These guys are no more interested in the health of our children than the people who ramped up the cost of EpiPens are trying to help kids with allergies. Both things are legal but is that really the point.
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