Fearmongering about cannabis reached new levels on cable news this past week.
Last Tuesday, in a segment on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News, political commentator Laura Ingraham blamed “pot psychosis” due to widespread legalization for the rise in mass shooting incidents. The Fox News pundit doubled down on her pot psychosis theory the very next evening.
While most people disagree whether gun violence is a gun control issue or a mental health issue—Ingraham blames pot instead.
Ingraham welcomed Russell Kamer, M.D., medical director of Partners in Safety, a drug testing organization, to question why people aren’t “talking more about the pot psychosis-violent behavior connection.” You can watch a clip of the entire segment here.
“What we find in studies [is that] it’s very clear that the use of the high potency marijuana is strongly associated with the development of psychosis,” Dr. Kamer said.
“My colleagues in Colorado,” Kamer continued, “are sounding the alarm because that was one of the first states to legalize. It’s practically a daily occurrence that kids come into the emergency rooms in florid, cannabis-induced psychosis.”
Ingraham dug deeper into her theory.
“This is something that the medical community is well aware of. Yet, you get the sense that the billions of dollars on the line are more important than our kids,” Ingraham said. “And what’s happening especially to young men in the United States, who are frequent users of this high-potency THC that’s now in marijuana products sold legally in dispensaries across the United States. I mean, this at the very least needs a serious national conversation.”
The Daily Beast reports that Ingraham claimed that