Skunks in Carpinteria?

By Dr. Paul S. Aijian, M.D.

Stinky. Courtesy: Stonerdays/edited

Skunks in Carpinteria

Several years ago, I watched a show, featuring a mother telling the tragic story of her son’s suicide. He had been a straight-A high school student, had gone off to college in Colorado. This state had, some years earlier, made it easy for people to get recreational marijuana. The young man had reportedly been “dabbing, which is inhaling the vapor of very high potency THC, heated by a torch. Marijuana today is a far cry from that being smoked in joints when boomers were young. The THC concentration now is many times higher.

He did this during his first term in college, and as a result of the drug, became paranoid schizophrenic. It was a permanent mental illness condition, from which he would never recover. He feared that people were out to get him. He flunked out of college, was treated by various psychiatrists, was repeatedly in and out of psychiatric hospitals, given medicines, and returned home to his distraught parents. Just before he jumped off a six-story parking garage to his death, he sat at the kitchen table, and told his mom that she was right about the hazards of marijuana. He told her he loved her and that he was losing his mind. 

Mental Illness and Uncontrollable Vomiting

This story was not hard to find on an internet search. What is sobering is how many similar stories there are. I read today that 60 percent of the people incarcerated in our county jails have some sort of mental illness. Much of this is drug and alcohol-related. A large proportion of people who are homeless are drug addicted, and many are also suffering mental illness. The link between marijuana use and mental illness is well known to the medical profession. Articles about this come across my desk regularly.

A strange, but rare, condition of THC addiction is uncontrollable vomiting. The only thing that seems to help is standing in a hot shower. I had an obese, marginally employed young man come see me with this very complaint. I suggested that he should stop smoking marijuana so often. He worked in a marijuana dispensary, so it was a little like telling someone working at Krispy Kreme not to eat donuts. He thanked me for my opinion, and I haven’t seen him since. I would not at all be shocked to see him in the doorway of a downtown business, wrapped in a dirty blanket, asking for contributions. Another possible place he might end up is in the Emergency Department for a psychotic episode.

Marijuana a Common Factor in Suicide

As a physician, over recent years, I have had multiple visits of young adult men, accompanied by their fathers, for them to “get a checkup.” It turns out this is the desperate attempt of the parents to have a doctor tell their sons that their marijuana use is dangerous. I tell them the story of the young man who jumped off the parking garage. I point out how many young people are going nowhere with school or career, lost in the unmotivated haze of habitually using THC. I tell them that young men are particularly susceptible to the curse of schizophrenia, for which there is no cure. Also, marijuana is a common factor in suicide, even if the victim is not psychotic. Young people’s brains don’t stabilize until well into their late 20s.

A Community Plague

I was happy to see one of these young men, extremely hostile on our first visit, who returned a year later, having a completely different demeanor. He had totally stopped using marijuana. He told me that the change was spiritual, due to straightening out messed-up relations with his heavenly father and his earthly father.

The fact that marijuana is a plague on our society should not surprise anyone. Instead of trying to limit access to it, our elected officials are happily encouraging its sale and cultivation everywhere. It has gone from medical use approval to recreational use in much of the country. It is still illegal, however, in federal law. Rarely does a week go by without the business news of a new dispensary opening on the Central Coast. The politicians may have initially figured that the revenue generated from taxing the marijuana industry would more than cover the costs of solving the societal problems it would cause. It seems obvious they badly miscalculated. 

From Chrysanthemums to Pot

A current article states “Santa Barbara County is now California’s undisputed capital of legal cannabis, boasting more acres than each of the storied Emerald Triangle counties of Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino.” They are talking about once bucolic, peaceful Carpinteria, formerly known for flower growers and “the world’s safest beach.” As one drives through Carpinteria, which once smelled of roses and chrysanthemums, one is now assaulted with a smell resembling that of skunks.

We all know what it is and have read endless stories of flower growers becoming pot growers. Their neighbors have been suing the growers, whose greenhouses, full of marijuana plants, are belching out the skunky smell. We have also followed the seemingly futile efforts to get “odor scrubbers” that actually work. Neighbors find that their property, being adjacent to this nuisance, limits their ability to sell their once valuable home, and to move somewhere less polluted.

Roy Lee Could Possibly Help

The only people who have really made out in this fiasco seem to be politicians who accepted money from the growers, and dispensary owners. The growers and vendors seem to be doing great. It takes little effort to find local news stories about local politicians accepting money from the marijuana lobby. You can probably guess who tops the list. There is an election coming soon, where the citizens of this marijuana capital have the opportunity to vote advocates of marijuana growers and sellers out of office. We have met with Roy Lee and are persuaded that he is a worthy challenger in this regard.