Study suggests rate of recurrence and severity of undesirable reactions to cannabis

New research identifies the feasible frequency and severity of a wide range of effects to cannabis use.

A study featuring in the Journal of Cannabis Study identifies the practical frequency and severity of a variety of acute effects to cannabis use. The researchers also investigate factors that may make a person extra vunerable to these adverse reactions.

The study plays a part in a small body of research wanting to clarify the short-term effects of using cannabis and helps identify areas of cannabis use that it could be valuable to study in more detail in the future.

Short-term unwanted effects of cannabis use

The analysis notes that in the United States, medicinal cannabis use is currently legal in 33 states, in addition to the District of Columbia (D.C.). Meanwhile, 11 claims, D.C., and Canada have got legalized recreational cannabis employ.

Consequently, more people who have not used cannabis before may try the drug in the future. As the authors take note, these users “may possess limited understanding of the possible undesireable effects of cannabis.”

The authors, therefore, wanted to determine more in what types of effects happen when someone uses cannabis, how likely they are that occurs, and what factors might make a person more likely to experience them.

The team was especially interested in acute effects, in which negative unwanted effects happen for a short duration. The authors remember that previous exploration has explored different chronic adverse reactions to cannabis work with, whereas there is normally less research on acute undesireable effects.

Dr. Carrie Cuttler, an associate professor of psychology at Washington Point out University, Pullman, and among the paper’s authors, notes, “There’s been surprisingly little analysis on the prevalence or regularity of various effects to cannabis and minimal research trying to predict who's more likely to see these types of effects.”

“With the legalization of cannabis in Washington and 10 other states, we thought it would be important to document a few of this information to ensure that more novice users could have an improved sense of what types of adverse reactions they could experience if they use cannabis.”

Almost 1,000 participants

The researchers recruited 999 participants, most of whom were undergraduate learners at the Washington Express University’s Department of Psychology and had used cannabis.

72.7% of the participants were women, and 72.7% were white. Of the cohort, 94.8% used cannabis on a recreational, rather than medicinal, basis. Overall, 73.4% inhaled cannabis, and 11.4% used edibles.

Each participant filled within an over the internet questionnaire that took approximately 30 minutes to entire. The questionnaire included 26 effects to cannabis, that your researchers published by reviewing past empirical exploration and speaking to cannabis users.

The individuals had to answer yes or no to ever experiencing each one of the adverse reactions. If indeed they answered yes, then they ranked how distressing the adverse reaction was on a five-point level of 0-4, with 0 being never distressing and 4 staying severely distressing.

The experts also asked a subset of relevant participants (370 altogether) how frequently they experienced acute effects when consuming cannabis - that's, what percentage of the changing times they consumed cannabis did they go through the adverse reaction.

The authors also determined whether the participants experienced signs of cannabis use disorder, which the National Institute on Drug Abuse define as the continued make use of cannabis despite clinically significant impairment.

They also gauged: