Canada’s legalization of cannabis has been linked to an increase in schizophrenia cases, new research shows.
Over a 16-year time period — spanning before and after legalization of cannabis for medical and recreational use — the number of new cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder (CUD) in Ontario nearly tripled after legalization, investigators found.
“There has been a lot of research on the association between cannabis use and schizophrenia and one of the main concerns about cannabis legalization is whether it might result in increases in cases of schizophrenia,” study investigator Daniel Myran, MD, MPH, with Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, told Medscape Medical News.
“We found that there have been concerning increases over time in the percentage of people…