EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Sanjay Gupta tells us about the women-led “green rush” that’s happened since Oklahoma legalized medical marijuana. Watch him now on CNN.
It was a milestone birthday (you know, one of those that ends with a zero), and I was reveling in Colorado’s stunning natural beauty during a weeklong visit. My husband booked dinner on my special day at a restaurant along the banks of the Roaring Fork River in Glenwood Springs, followed by live music in the garden of our historic hotel.
What better evening to try something I hadn’t done in decades?
My husband, Ben, and I had gone into a legal cannabis dispensary earlier in the day, an unimaginable option back when we were teenagers. In those days, you got your weed surreptitiously from friends of friends and did your best not to get caught. The stakes were high: Possession of even small amounts could be considered a felony, resulting in fines, probation or serious jail time.
I didn’t smoke pot often in my youth and haven’t much since — weed just makes me sleepy. What’s the fun in that? So, when the budtender in the Colorado shop asked for my order, I was stumped. I gaped at the four large displays on the wall — similar to menus in fast-food restaurants — while she told me how each type of cannabis would produce a different response.
“Do you want a body high or a head high?” she asked. I stared at her blankly. “Do you want to relax or be energized?” I explained my history with weed. I didn’t want to fall asleep, but did energize mean jittery? That didn’t sound fun, either.
“OK, let’s go with a hybrid. You’ll get the best of both worlds,” she decided.
I walked out with a small canister of pre-rolled joints (thank goodness, because my rolling skills were long gone), and I was ready for my birthday adventure.
‘Can you die from smoking weed?’
Dinner was delicious, almost as delectable as the golden rays of sunset sparkling over the river. Soon it was time for the next chapter of my celebration. I pulled a small joint from the canister and lit up, inhaling the smoke into my lungs. “Hold it!” I told myself, trying my best not to cough and failing. Channeling my younger self, I took two more puffs, holding those longer each time.
I handed Ben the joint. He took a hit, coughed and handed it back. I took another one — or maybe two? — and gave it back. He decided to put it out.
“I feel like a kid again!” I said with a giggle as we walked into the hotel to change before the concert. By the time we got to the room, I was definitely elevated. “Look, everything is popping out like a 3D movie,” I told Ben. “Are you seeing that?”
Suddenly the fun stopped. After a sprint to the bathroom, I spent the next hour or so saying goodbye to my expensive birthday dinner. I finally stumbled over to the bed, collapsing. Time passed. Or did it?
Ben leaned over and shook me. “Are you breathing? I can’t tell! I’m going to call 911.” I roused long enough to ask the ridiculous: “No, wait, before you call, do a search: ‘Can you die from smoking weed?’”
Potency of weed has skyrocketed
More than a dozen years have gone by since that ill-fated evening and looking back, it’s hard to believe I had no idea the days of sharing an entire joint to get a decent high were history.
Today, as the main writer covering marijuana for CNN, I know levels of THC or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis, have risen dramatically over the years — from approximately 4% in the 1970s to more than 20% today.
“You can even buy cannabis in dispensaries that has a THC content of 35%,” said Dr. Deepak Cyril D’Souza, Vikram Sodhi ’92 Professor of Psychiatry and director of the Yale Center for the Science of Cannabis and Cannabinoids in New Haven, Connecticut.
Cannabis concentrates, such as wax, rosin, shatter and hash oil, can have THC levels between 60% and 90%, and “even for products that are labeled, there’s some concern about the accuracy. That’s something consumers should be aware of,” D’Souza added.
The impact of that increased potency goes far beyond a silly, uneducated boomer lying on a Colorado hotel bed worrying about dying while stoned. For a growing number of people, high-potency weed could be devastating.
A link to addiction and worsening mental health
About 3 in 10 people in the United States who use today’s more potent marijuana have cannabis use disorder, the medical term for marijuana addiction. One in 6 children will become addicted when marijuana use occurs before age 18, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA.
In fact, the risk of addiction is four times higher when using high-potency cannabis compared with low-potency cannabis, according to a September 2022 review of studies.
Lower-potency products are typically 5 to 10 milligrams per gram of THC, study coauthor Tom Freeman, a professor in the department of psychology and director of the Addiction and Mental Health Group at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, told me in an email.
People are considered addicted to weed when they have a strong, uncontrollable urge to use, have to add more to get the same high, keep using despite health, work or social problems, and try to quit but fail. Daily or near-daily use is most likely to lead to addiction, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. A family history of drug abuse and the length of time a person has been using marijuana can also play a role.
As use of potent weed rises, so do cases of marijuana-associated psychosis, according to the September 2022 report. Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that can be characterized by hearing voices and having delusions. The risk of a psychotic disorder rose fourfold when highly potent weed was used daily, the study found.
That’s ironic, because doctors often prescribe medical cannabis for anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and other mental health conditions, D’Souza said. Yet two recent analyses of existing gold-standard research — one of which D’Souza coauthored — found using medical or recreational marijuana for those conditions did not help at all. Weed also did not improve other mental health conditions such as anorexia nervosa, bipolar disorder or psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.
In individuals at high risk of bipolar or psychotic disorders — such as people with family histories — studies showed the use of marijuana raises the risk of suicidal thoughts and developing a psychotic or mental health disorder. Using weed after the onset of a mental condition can increase the chance of relapse.
More frequent use of marijuana also damages the brain’s working memory, which could lead to issues with safety, communications and work success, a 2025 study found.
Marijuana use during adolescence is dangerous
Experts say marijuana use during adolescence and young adulthood is especially worrisome as it can interfere with memory, cognition and brain growth at a critical time in a teen’s natural development. Use during adolescence can “cause permanent IQ loss of as much as 8 points,” the SAMHSA website says. “These IQ points do not come back, even after quitting marijuana.”
Heavy use of marijuana by teens and young adults with mood disorders — such as depression and bipolar disorder — is also linked to an increased risk of self-harm, suicide attempts and death. According to a 2025 national survey, 8% of eighth graders, 16% of 10th graders and 26% of 12th graders reported marijuana use in the past 12 months.
“Many people believe marijuana to be natural and therefore safe,” Dr. Robert Page II, a professor of clinical pharmacy and physical medicine at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Aurora, told me previously.
“It is a psychotropic medication, so it’s going to have psychotropic effects,” said Page, who chaired the medical writing group for the American Heart Association’s 2020 scientific statement on marijuana.
“If you have underlying psychiatric issues, realize that you need to be transparent with your provider and let them know if you’re using this medically or recreationally.”
A host of other health impacts
The risks reach far beyond cognitive development and mental health. Research over the past decade has shown frequent users of potent marijuana are at risk for strokes, heart attacks, cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure and myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle.
Regular marijuana users are nearly 25% more likely to need emergency care and hospitalization than nonusers. Weed users who do visit the emergency room or who are hospitalized have a 72% greater risk of dementia compared with the general population, according to a 2025 study.
Pregnant women who use marijuana to ease their nausea are putting their developing babies at risk. Past studies have shown the use of marijuana during pregnancy is linked to low birth weight, impulsivity, hyperactivity, attention difficulties, and other cognitive and behavioral issues in children, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There is even a connection to autism. Women who used weed during pregnancy were 1 ½ times more likely to have a child with autism, a prior study found.
Addiction to potent weed is also linked to a bizarre disorder the internet has nicknamed “scromiting” due to the combination of screaming and loud vomiting.
“They are writhing, holding their stomach, complaining of really bad abdominal pain and nausea,” Dr. Sam Wang, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told me previously.
The unusual condition is on the rise in the United States, experts say, with emergency rooms seeing more and more habitual users of cannabis, including teenagers, arriving for care. A 2021 study found a 29% increase in visits to the emergency room since marijuana was legalized in the Colorado. More than one-third of the vomiting cases were in people 25 years of age and younger.
Be an educated consumer
Science isn’t “out to get” cannabis, experts say. However, as more and more states legalize weed, researchers have been able to study the health impact of cannabis in a real world setting, and the findings aren’t always positive.
For those who partake in low doses on occasion, there’s good news — the dangers of marijuana are most evident when people use daily, or near daily. That doesn’t mean there is no risk, especially with today’s highly potent strains.
“While there may be thousands, perhaps millions, of people who use cannabis sporadically, in very modest amounts and do not experience adverse events, we also know of people who used cannabis a few times and suffered catastrophic adverse events that altered the trajectory of their life forever,” D’Souza told me.
The dramatic rise in potency may not be clear to consumers, experts fear, especially those who, like me, have not used weed in recent years (or decades).
While looking at a product label in a dispensary where marijuana is legally sold might tell a person the “precise potency” of THC, that’s not necessarily the case in unlicensed or illegal stores. “People buying cannabis illegally may not be able to access reliable information about the potency of the product they are using,” Freeman said.
In addition, certain types of cannabis are typically much stronger than others, experts say. Cannabis extracts, for example, are typically more potent than cannabis flowers.
While people do try to adjust their consumption, “such as by adding less cannabis to their joint or inhaling less deeply,” these efforts fail to completely work, Freeman said. “Higher-potency products still deliver a larger dose of THC to consumers than lower-potency products.”
I wish I’d known all this when I decided to try marijuana again after years of abstinence. I would have limited my intake to just one puff and actually enjoyed my birthday instead of hugging a porcelain throne.
But maybe it’s best this way. After all, the story always gets a big laugh at parties — that’s worth something, right?
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