Odyssey House President & CEO Dr. Peter Provet responded to The Wall Street Journal’s editorial on the increase in young adults nationwide showing up at hospital emergency rooms with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome.
Your editorial, “Potheads Head for the Emergency Room” (Dec. 10), highlights something that treatment providers are seeing nationwide. At Odyssey House in New York, admissions of adolescents and young adults for marijuana misuse have declined substantially in the legalization era. That aligns with multistate research showing that cannabis-treatment admissions for youth fall sharply after legalization, largely because court, school, and other mandated referrals shrink—not because problems vanish.
Meanwhile, rigorous studies are sounding alarms. Mass General Brigham reports a near-fourfold increase in THC-positive tests among adolescents presenting with psychiatric emergencies. A JAMA Network Open analysis finds steep nationwide growth in adolescent emergency-department visits for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, especially where recreational use is legal. The burden on hospitals is rising even as fewer young people seek treatment.
Voters backed legalization to reduce inequitable enforcement and to escape punitive drug policies. But a rapidly expanding, high-potency, commercially driven cannabis industry, combined with social normalization, can leave vulnerable young people more exposed and less likely to recognize that their use has become a problem. Policymakers should be wary of interpreting declining treatment admissions as a success—they may simply signal underrecognition of and underreferral for cannabis-related harms among youth.
Peter Provet
President and CEO, Odyssey House
New York