And as they point out , and again , I'm paraphrasing here . This is the first systematic review of the association of cannabis potency and all of the data point to a very clear conclusion , which is the more potent the THC concentration , the higher probability of developing psychosis or a major depressive episode or a major anxiety disorder later in life . That should be of particular concern because we know we are absolutely clear about the fact that with the advent of all these new strains of cannabis and with the engineering and availability of cannabis at much higher potency , meaning THC potency , the risk of psychosis is going up and up and is likely to continue going up unless something is done to reduce the frequency of cannabis use to zero ideally or to very low frequency , very low potency in adolescents and teens and people age 25 or younger .
This is the first systematic review of the association of cannabis potency and all of the data point to a very clear conclusion , which is the more potent the THC concentration , the higher probability of developing psychosis or a major depressive episode or a major anxiety disorder later in life . That should be of particular concern because we know we are absolutely clear about the fact that with the advent of all these new strains of cannabis and with the engineering and availability of cannabis at much higher potency , meaning THC potency , the risk of psychosis is going up and up and is likely to continue going up unless something is done to reduce the frequency of cannabis use to zero ideally or to very low frequency , very low potency in adolescents and teens and people age 25 or younger . I know a lot of people don't wanna hear this message because first of all , it's alarming .
All of that relies on the fine tuning of this neural circuitry that we've been talking about up until now . And it's abundantly clear that cannabis and THC in particular dramatically disrupt those processes . So if this isn't clear enough , just from my statements , I'd like to point to a particular paper .
So if this isn't clear enough , just from my statements , I'd like to point to a particular paper . This is one of the more impactful papers in this area in recent years , this is a paper published in Lancet Psychiatry in 2022 title is Association of Cannabis Potency with Mental ill health and addiction . A systematic review , a number of very important points in this very fine paper .
And the takeaways from this study are very clear . First of all , chronic cannabis use , so more than twice per week has consistently been associated with mental health disorders . I'm pulling some phrases directly from the paper heavy cannabis use , meaning cannabis use more frequent than twice per week has been associated with four times the risk of psychosis later in life .
