Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/lCgarvg7Y1M   I’m attending the National Assn. of Broadcasters Meeting this week.  Here is some evergreen “Health News You Can Always Use.”   Marijuana use is spreading like wildfire, and the prevailing opinion is that its components are harmless.  Another of this weeks stories highlights its potential danger for those with heart problems.  Now a study from Britain’s University of Oxford and Canada’s McGill University shows that regular cannabis use in adolescence can trigger adult depression and suicidal ideas.   The researchers reviews 11 international studies covering more than 23,000 young persons.  Regular weed use by an individual bumped his or her risk of serious depression and suicide up by a factor of about 7%.  The number isn’t huge, but the consequences are tragic for that person so affected.  Then when you amplify the individual effect over a population, it translates into more than 400,000 cases of deadly depression in the U.S., 60,000 case in the U.K., and 25, 000 case