Eduard Vieta: "CBD products must be monitored because they may contain cannabinoids that are more harmful to health"
A review of 101 meta-analyses (50 observational and 51 clinical trials) shows that cannabis, cannabinoids and medicines based on them can improve some medical conditions such as epilepsy, pain and inflammatory bowel disease, but the harmful effects outweigh the benefits , especially in certain population groups – adolescents and young people, people with a predisposition to mental disorders, pregnancy and drivers.
Specifically, an increased risk of psychosis has been found in young people, adolescents and people predisposed to having a mental health problem; low weight in pregnant babies, and car accidents due to drowsiness.
This study, which contradicts the popular belief that consuming cannabis has no health consequences and is the largest international study on cannabis to date, is published today in the British Medical Journal.
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It has been led by Elena Dragioti, from Linkinging University; Marco Solmi of the University of Ottawa and Jae Il Shin of Yonsei University. And it included the participation of Eduard Vieta, head of the Psychiatry and Psychology Service at the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona and the Bipolar and Depressive Disorders group at Idibaps, researcher at CIBERSAM and professor of Psychiatry at the University of Barcelona (UB), and Joaquim Raduà, head of the Image of Mood and Anxiety Related Disorders (IMARD) group at Idibaps, researcher at CIBERSAM and associate professor at the UB.
Vieta, in a meeting with Raduà with the press, confirmed that, according to this study, “no one under 25 years of age should consume cannabis”. The risk of developing psychosis, he specified, occurs even in a single or first opportunity of consumption.. There could be a genetic factor behind it but he recalled that for now there is no way to know who has more or less risk.. It is estimated that there are 24 million people in the world with a disorder due to its use.
Among the cannabinoids, more than one hundred, are tetrahydrocannabidiol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), which are the most clinically relevant.. CBD is increasingly used in more and more indications, including neurological disorders such as refractory childhood epilepsy, and care and cosmetic products.
Vieta has indicated that in the case of CBD there would be no risk but has recommended carefully analyzing products that contain this compound “because they may contain cannabinoids that are more harmful to health.”
On the other hand, the UN decided in 2020 to remove cannabis from list IV, reserved for the most dangerous drugs without any use such as heroin, and include it in list I, drugs that must be kept under control but that have therapeutic properties. of some kind, like morphine. And countries such as Germany, Italy or the United Kingdom, and more than half of the states in the United States, have authorized its medicinal use.
In Spain, in 2021, three initiatives – from Más País, Podemos and ERC – were presented in the Congress of Deputies urging the approval of a law that regulates its medicinal and also recreational use, since the ban has not stopped its use.. He already tried it before, in 2017, Ciudadanos.