"The Side Effects Of Legalizing Pot" - Errol Louis
Mayor de Blasio has announced that the NYPD will drop a longstanding policy of arresting people for smoking marijuana in public. Senator Chuck Schumer has vowed to push for legislation that would decriminalize pot at the federal level, allowing individual states to work out regulations. A recent poll suggests 63 percent of New Yorkers favor legalization, the highest level ever recorded, about two to one over the 32 percent who oppose it, which makes the idea politically irresistible in this election year. But this is a case where the polls seem to be consulting the polls rather than the professionals. “Unfortunately, science and medicine was not at the forefront of any policymaking here,” said Yasmin Hurd, PhD, director of the center for addictive disorders for the Mount Sinai Health System. Dr. Hurd said the rush to legalization has outstripped what we know about the downsides of marijuana use. "Millions of people in the U.S. have a clinical diagnosis of cannabis use disorder. It's always shocking that people don't realize that you can become addicted to marijuana,” she said.
- Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Professor, Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Systems Therapeutics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Chair, Ward-Coleman Translational Neuroscience, Director of the Center for Addictive Disorders, Mount Sinai Health System