There’s blood on the hands of an industry that wraps itself in tie-dye and talks of “wellness.” Behind the carefully cultivated image of cannabis as a harmless plant medicine lies a devastating truth: young people who use marijuana face an 87% increased risk of attempting suicide. Not 8%. Not 17%. Eighty-seven percent.
These aren’t numbers conjured by prohibition-era scaremongering. They emerge from a rigorous systematic review and meta-analysis examining 500,408 participants across 18 studies. This is the kind of evidence that would trigger product recalls, congressional inquiries, and public health emergencies if we were discussing any substance without an army of lobbyists and cultural cheerleaders protecting its reputation.
Yet here we are, watching an entire generation’s mental health catastrophe unfold whilst cannabis culture shrugs, dissembles, and counts its profits.
When 87% Isn’t Enough to Matter
Let’s sit with that suicide attempt figure for a moment. An 87% increased risk amongst young cannabis users compared to non-users. Even after researchers adjusted for every conceivable confounding factor (socioeconomic status, family history, other substance use), the risk remained elevated at 80%. For suicidal ideation, the increase stands at 65%.
These are the kinds of risk elevations that pharmaceutical companies would be sued into oblivion for concealing. Yet somehow, when it comes to cannabis and youth suicide, we’re expected to smile politely whilst an industry built on wilful ignorance floods our communities with high-potency products specifically marketed to appeal to young people.
The cognitive dissonance is breathtaking. We claim to care about youth mental health. We wring our hands over rising suicide rates amongst 15 to 29-year-olds, the demographic for whom suicide remains the fourth leading cause of death globally. Then we turn around and normalise, commercialise, and celebrate a substance proven to dramatically increase their risk of suicidal behaviour.
Depression, Anxiety, and Convenient Amnesia
The suicide statistics are merely the most tragic endpoint of cannabis youth mental health harms. Young marijuana users show 51% higher odds of developing depression and 58% increased likelihood of experiencing anxiety. These aren’t subtle correlations requiring statistical gymnastics to detect. They’re blazing red flags visible from space.
Study after study, across multiple countries and methodologies, tells the same story: early cannabis initiation correlates with subsequent mental health deterioration. The earlier young people begin using, the earlier depressive symptoms emerge. As frequency increases (from occasional to weekly to daily use), mental health outcomes spiral downward with grim predictability.
But don’t expect cannabis culture to acknowledge any of this. Their playbook, borrowed wholesale from Big Tobacco’s greatest hits, involves manufacturing doubt, cherry-picking data, and dismissing inconvenient research as “reefer madness.” When confronted with evidence of harm, they pivot to legalisation talking points, criminal justice reform, or whatever rhetorical smokescreen proves most expedient.
The Neuroscience They’d Rather You Ignore
Here’s what actually happens when adolescents (whose brains won’t fully mature until their mid-twenties) consume cannabis regularly: THC disrupts cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CBR1), triggering a cascade of neurological interference. Nerve impulse transmission falters. Intraneuronal connectivity suffers. The production of neuronal growth factors essential for synapse formation gets disrupted during the most critical period of brain development.
Neuroimaging studies have documented grey matter loss in specific brain regions amongst chronic cannabis users. These are structural changes associated with psychiatric and mood disorders. This isn’t speculation. It’s observable, measurable damage to developing brains.
Yet the cannabis industry continues peddling its “natural” and “harmless” mythology, as though something being plant-derived renders it incapable of harm. By that logic, hemlock makes an excellent salad ingredient and belladonna belongs in your smoothie.
The Self-Medication Lie
When pressed about the risks linking cannabis and youth suicide, advocates often deploy the “self-medication” defence: vulnerable young people use marijuana to cope with pre-existing mental health challenges, they argue, creating a chicken-and-egg scenario that conveniently absolves cannabis of culpability.
Even if we accept this framing (and the evidence suggests it’s only part of the picture), it hardly exonerates the substance. What kind of “medicine” increases suicide attempt risk by 87%? What manner of “therapy” exacerbates the very conditions it purports to treat?
The self-medication narrative actually reveals cannabis culture’s profound cynicism. They’re essentially admitting that psychologically distressed teenagers and young adults are turning to their product, then shrugging when those same young people experience worsened outcomes. It’s the equivalent of selling alcohol to someone drowning and calling it a flotation device.
A Twenty-Billion-Dollar Lie
Global cannabis sales continue their meteoric rise, with legalisation spreading across Canada, multiple US states, Germany, Malta, Thailand, and South Africa. Consumption has surged 20% over the past decade. Marketing budgets rival those of major consumer brands. Product innovation (edibles, vapes, concentrates with THC levels our grandparents couldn’t have imagined) proceeds at breakneck pace.
And through it all, the industry maintains its pose of wounded innocence. According to them, they’re just providing what the people want. They’re correcting historical injustices, they insist. A safer alternative to alcohol is what they’re offering. Consumer choice is being respected.
What they’re actually doing is replicating every cynical strategy that allowed tobacco companies to hook generations of customers whilst denying the mounting evidence of harm. The difference is that cannabis has successfully cloaked itself in progressive politics and counterculture credibility, making it somehow gauche to point out that their products are destroying young people’s mental health and, in the most tragic cases, contributing to their deaths.
The Studies They Won’t Discuss
By 2021, 46% of countries identified cannabis as the predominant substance associated with drug abuse disorders. Thirty-four percent cited marijuana as the primary reason individuals sought treatment for substance abuse. These figures represent a global crisis hiding in plain sight.
Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) rates are climbing, with adolescents proving particularly vulnerable. Those who develop CUD show even higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal behaviour. It’s a vicious cycle that begins with “just trying it” and ends with grey matter loss and psychiatric disorders.
The research demonstrates clear dose-response relationships: more frequent cannabis consumption correlates with worse mental health outcomes. Daily users report intensified feelings of burdensomeness, thwarted belonging, and suicidal ideation. New consumption methods like vaping (marketed with the same sophisticated techniques that made Juul so devastatingly effective amongst teenagers) appear to amplify these risks.
Yet somehow, amidst this tsunami of evidence, cannabis culture has convinced itself and much of the public that marijuana is essentially harmless. It’s a marketing triumph and a public health catastrophe.
The Gender Gap They Ignore
Even the research landscape reveals telling gaps. Whilst most studies include mixed-gender samples, only a minority provide sex-disaggregated results. This matters enormously, given evidence that women with Cannabis Use Disorder exhibit higher prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders compared to men.
But conducting thorough, gender-specific research might reveal inconvenient truths. Better to maintain strategic ambiguity, continue the broad-brush reassurances, and avoid drilling down into the specific mechanisms of harm.
Profiting from Pandemic Trauma
The COVID-19 pandemic intensified mental health challenges amongst young people: daily disruptions, health anxieties, isolation, bereavement. In any sane response to this suffering, we’d be doing everything possible to protect vulnerable youth from substances that worsen mental health outcomes.
Instead, cannabis companies saw opportunity. Market expansion continued unabated. Product development accelerated. The push to normalise marijuana consumption amongst ever-younger demographics intensified.
When the dust settles on this era, when we finally acknowledge the full scope of cannabis youth mental health harms, we’ll look back with horror at how an industry was permitted to exploit a generation’s trauma for profit.
The Frequency Trap
The pattern is grimly consistent: occasional use leads to weekly use, weekly use escalates to daily use, and daily use correlates with the most severe mental health outcomes. Young people aren’t being told this. They’re being told cannabis is medicine, that it’s natural, that it’s safer than alcohol.
No one tells them that daily cannabis use intensifies feelings of hopelessness and social disconnection, the very psychological states that lead to suicidal crises. No one tells them that as THC potency increases, with today’s products vastly stronger than those from a decade ago, the psychiatric risks rise as well.
The cannabis industry knows all of this. They employ researchers, monitor studies, track trends. Their ignorance isn’t innocent. It’s calculated.
Beyond Doubt
The systematic review examining cannabis youth mental health outcomes encompassed over half a million participants. The methodology was rigorous. The findings were consistent across different study designs, countries, and time periods. This isn’t preliminary data requiring cautious interpretation. It’s evidence demanding urgent action.
Yet cannabis advocates continue their evidence-denying rampage, dismissing research that doesn’t support their narrative whilst trumpeting any study (however methodologically flawed) that suggests potential benefits. It’s the same playbook tobacco companies used for decades, the same cynical manipulation of scientific discourse in service of profit.
What We Owe Young People
Young people deserve honesty. They need adults who will prioritise their mental health and survival over cultural trends, political posturing, and corporate profits. We must also protect them from an industry that treats their developing brains as acceptable collateral damage in the pursuit of market share.
Most urgently, we owe them recognition of what the evidence actually shows: cannabis consumption amongst young people correlates with dramatically increased risks of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. The 87% increased risk of suicide attempts isn’t a statistical artifact or a coincidence requiring elaborate alternative explanations. It’s a screaming alarm that we’re choosing to ignore.
The Reckoning to Come
History won’t be kind to this moment. Future generations will look back and ask how we knew (how the evidence was this clear, this consistent, this damning) and did nothing. How we allowed an industry to market psychoactive substances to vulnerable young people whilst their lobbyists wrapped themselves in social justice rhetoric and their accountants counted the profits.
They’ll ask why, in an era supposedly concerned with youth mental health, we simultaneously normalised a substance proven to increase suicide risk. Who benefited from our collective amnesia and who paid the price will be another question demanding answers.
The answers will be uncomfortable. The cannabis industry benefited. So did cannabis culture. Politicians seeking easy tax revenue profited as well. Meanwhile, young people (an entire generation of young people) paid with their mental health and, in the most heartbreaking cases, with their lives.
Choosing Courage Over Comfort
Challenging cannabis orthodoxy invites predictable pushback. The accusations are as reliable as they are tedious: prohibitionist, alarmist, anti-science. Never mind that the science actually supports concerns about cannabis and youth suicide. Never mind that the systematic reviews and meta-analyses tell a consistent story of harm.
Cannabis culture has perfected the art of deflection. When confronted with evidence of psychiatric risks, they pivot to criminal justice reform. Studies showing increased suicide risk are dismissed with claims that correlation isn’t causation. Neuroimaging revealing structural brain changes? Researchers must be biased, they say.
It’s exhausting. It’s also beside the point.
The question isn’t whether cannabis should be legal for adults or whether cannabis prohibition was unjust. The question is whether we’re willing to acknowledge that young people who use marijuana face dramatically elevated mental health risks, including an 87% increased likelihood of attempting suicide.
The evidence says yes. Cannabis culture says look over there.
The Bodies Left Behind
Behind every statistic is a young person whose life was cut short or irrevocably altered. That 87% increased suicide attempt risk represents actual teenagers and young adults who didn’t need to die. The elevated rates of depression (51% higher odds) and anxiety (58% increased likelihood) translate to students who dropped out, careers that never launched, relationships that never formed.
These aren’t abstract numbers. They’re someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s friend. They deserved better than to be sacrificed to an industry that values profit over human life and a culture that values being seen as progressive over protecting the vulnerable.
The systematic review examining cannabis and youth suicide provides evidence we can no longer ignore. Young cannabis users face dramatically elevated risks for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. The dose-response relationships are clear. The neurological mechanisms are documented. The consistency across studies is undeniable.
What remains unclear is whether we possess the courage to act upon this evidence or whether we’ll continue pretending everything is fine whilst young people die.
Cannabis culture wants us to believe this is complicated, that more research is needed, that we’re scapegoating a harmless plant. It’s not complicated. The research exists. And the plant is demonstrably not harmless when consumed by developing brains.
The Evidence Cannot Be Ignored
Studies published between 2013 and 2025, examining periods ranging from one month to 40 years, paint a consistent picture. Whether prospective longitudinal studies, retrospective analyses, or cross-sectional research, the pattern holds. The meta-analysis included data from countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Ukraine, and Mexico. Different populations, different methodologies, same conclusion.
After adjustment for gender, age, ethnicity, living situation, education, employment, and other drug consumption, the elevated risks remained. This isn’t confounding. This isn’t coincidence. This is causation screaming to be acknowledged.
The odds ratios speak for themselves. Depression: 51% higher in cannabis users, 28% even after adjustment. Anxiety: 58% increased odds. Suicidal ideation: 50% to 65% higher depending on the model. Suicide attempts: 87% unadjusted, 80% adjusted.
These numbers represent individual human tragedies multiplied across hundreds of thousands of young lives. They represent families destroyed, potential unrealised, futures stolen. They represent the price we’re paying for allowing an industry to prioritise profits over the wellbeing of an entire generation.
The Industry’s Playbook
The cannabis industry has learned well from its predecessors. When tobacco companies faced mounting evidence of harm, they didn’t admit fault. Tobacco companies funded counter-research and emphasised personal choice. When confronted with evidence, they questioned the science, then delayed, deflected, and denied until the body count became impossible to ignore.
Cannabis companies are following the same script. Cannabis companies fund studies designed to find benefits and emphasise adult choice whilst their marketing clearly targets youth. When results don’t suit them, they question the methodology. Hiding behind progressive rhetoric, the industry continues building an addiction-for-profit empire.
The difference is that we’ve seen this playbook before. We know where it leads. We know how it ends. Yet somehow, we’re permitting the same tragedy to unfold with marijuana consumption amongst young people, wrapped in different packaging but delivering identical results: corporate profits built on human suffering.
What Honesty Demands
The evidence demands we abandon comfortable fictions about cannabis being harmless, natural, or therapeutic for young people. The systematic review encompassing over half a million participants presents findings too consistent to dismiss, too significant to downplay.
We need open, honest discussions about cannabis and youth suicide, without the spin of commercial interests or cultural agendas. Those in power should put young people’s wellbeing ahead of profit. Schools, parents, and communities must also share the plain facts about marijuana’s risks, especially its links to suicide and serious mental illness.
Most urgently, we need to question why, in an era supposedly concerned with youth mental health, we’re simultaneously normalising a substance that increases suicide attempt risk by 87%. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
A Final Question
The only question left is: how many more young lives will we allow cannabis industry profits to claim before we finally say enough?
The research is unequivocal. Young cannabis users face 87% higher risk of suicide attempts. Young cannabis users experience 51% higher odds of depression and show a 58% greater likelihood of anxiety. Their rates of suicidal ideation rise by 65%, revealing just how severe the mental health risks truly are. These aren’t marginal increases. These are catastrophic elevations in harm.
Cannabis culture will continue manufacturing doubt. The industry will keep counting profits. Lobbyists will keep spinning narratives. But the evidence won’t change. The dead won’t come back. And history will record our choice: profits or young lives.
We know which one cannabis culture has chosen. The question is which one the rest of us will choose.
(Source: WRD News)
This commentary argues the need to prioritize regulation and abstinence-based prevention and recovery as critical services in efforts to maximize the reduction of substance-related harm and the promotion of mental health at a population-level. Treatment and harm reduction for those experiencing mental health and or substance use problems tends to be poorly integrated with regulatory and prevention approaches, which seek to reduce the development of these problems. This commentary examines evidence from Australia to argue the benefits of more deliberate service system integration based on life-course science. Harm reduction programs dominated the substance use prevention field in Australia until 2009 and were associated with high levels of youth substance use. The introduction of abstinence-based prevention programs and policies effectively reduced adolescent substance use and these reductions have flowed to generational reductions in adult substance use. The potential benefits of Australia’s movement to abstinence-based prevention continue to be disrupted by conflicting harm reduction treatment messages. This commentary outlines the argument to maximize substance use intervention effectiveness and mental health promotion by increasing investment in abstinence-based substance use regulation and prevention and then restructuring treatment and recovery services to more deliberately integrate with this emphasis. The benefits of this approach are argued to include reduction of substance use harm and mental health burden.
The Addiction Conference Revelation: At the 2022 Australia and New Zealand Addiction Conference, Odyssey House presented findings that should have reverberated through every child protection agency: “Every Drug Rehabilitation programme must see drug use as Family Violence. These go together.”
