Cannabis ‘poisoning’ numbers increase in province’s hospitals

Emergency department visits by cannabis users in Alberta have been steadily growing, raising concerns among some doctors about the impact of impending pot legalization.

Among adults in 2015, there were 421 emergency department or urgent care visits by those suffering cannabis “poisoning” provincewide, according to Alberta Health Services. That number had jumped to 478 in 2016 and 619 in 2017.

Of those under 18 years of age, the number went to 136 in 2017 from 108 in 2015.

While he was reluctant to use the word “poisoning” for many of those cases, Dr. Eddy Lang said the majority of the cases involve the smoking of cannabis because the use of edibles isn’t widespread.

“We see kids with bad reactions, kids becoming mentally unstable,” said Lang, department head for emergency medicine at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine.

“It’s a problem, but it’s not an epidemic.”

Lang said those figures probably reflect an increased use of cannabis and increasingly potent strains.

He said people aren’t dying from cannabis use, compared to hundreds of fatalities a year from fentanyl and still more from other opioids and even legal pharmaceuticals.

But he said one consequence of regular, long-term marijuana use that’s troubling and becoming more common is cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, in which the drug triggers uncontrollable vomiting.

Such patients can remain in hospital for a few days, said Eddy.

“Cannabis has been a very good anti-nausea medication for a long time, but somehow there’s a flip that’s switched that leads to uncontrollable vomiting,” he said.

“We’re seeing more and more of those and we’ll see more and more with legalization.”