Editor’s Corner: A danger from smoking marijuana

The City Council has crafted regulations that will keep the growing of marijuana in Madera inside residences and out of sight once the recreational smoking of the weed becomes legal in January.

In a nutshell, here are the rules:

You can grow up to six plants once you get a permit to do so, and you must do the growing in your residence, out of sight. You must keep the vapors from the growing plants inside, too, so that neighbors or passersby don’t have to put up with the smell.

You can’t use flammable liquids to process the marijuana, making such stuff as honey oil. All you can do is grow it and smoke it in your house.

You can’t sell it to anybody — to members of your family or to the guys at work who haven’t had much luck growing their own stuff.

If you want to buy marijuana, you have to go somewhere it will be legal, which won’t be in Madera, unless the City Council changes its mind and decides to license sales.

If you do smoke it, you will have to watch out for a new disease that appears to be caused by smoking too much marijuana. The symptoms are extreme stomach ache and extreme vomiting, and it is being found in states where marijuana is legal.

Here is what CBS News said about this serious ailment:

In Colorado, for example, and other states where Marijuana use has been legalized, people who were using a lot of marijuana were presenting themselves in emergency rooms with the painful symptoms, but they refused to believe marijuana was the cause. They had too much fun smoking the stuff, and couldn’t believe it could cause them harm. They were wrong, just like alcoholics are wrong when they believe booze couldn’t be causing them all their problems.

The marijuana disease is called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS.

“It’s caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana,” CBS reported. “For unclear reasons, the nausea and vomiting are relieved by hot showers or baths.”

“They’ll often present to the emergency department three, four, five different times before we can sort this out,” said Dr. Kennon Heard, an emergency room physician at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado.

CHS can lead to dehydration and kidney failure, but usually resolves within days of stopping drug use, the CBS story reported.

The problem is, users don’t want to stop, and so they start taking a lot of hot showers to help them endure the pain.

This should not be happening if marijuana were not a problem drug as the backers of legalization have been claiming.

In any case, the existence of CHS is sure evidence that smoking weed is not without risk, and can leave the user with mental illness that runs from severe depression to loss of memory and ambition — all of which have been reported by users in Colorado and other states.

When January rolls around, be careful out there.