Dutch City Considers Safer Marijuana For The Mentally Ill

What’s the Latest Development?

Last week, in an attempt to help a group of about 80 people with “chronic psychotic disorder[s]” as well as a severe addiction to marijuana, officials in the Dutch city of Utrecht announced that they will go ahead with a study in which those people will be offered a “special cannabis variant” that claims to mitigate symptoms associated with their illness. The medicinal marijuana will come from the Dutch Ministry of Health, and the study will be conducted at two addiction treatment centers in the city.

What’s the Big Idea?

It’s still not clear whether there’s a link between marijuana use and mental illness in general and schizophrenia in particular. Studies have largely been inconclusive, which may be why Utrecht mayor Aalt Wolfsen explained in a statement that there may be a connection between the study group’s addiction and their inability to fully respond to traditional psychiatric treatment. Because marijuana is legal in the Netherlands, the study attempts to go around previously suggested recommendations “that people who suffer from or are predisposed to psychosis simply shouldn’t use marijuana.”

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