Op-Ed: Today's Weed Is Too Potent for Teens

Parents who think their kids are smoking the same "mellow" marijuana they once tried are, in the view of one specialist, dangerously mistaken. In a New York Times opinion piece, child and adolescent addiction psychiatrist Dr. Sivabalaji Kaliamurthy argues that today's cannabis marketplace—dominated by highly concentrated THC vapes, edibles, and waxes—is putting teens at serious risk. He describes patients who start young and use daily, then show up with depression, academic collapse, aggression, psychosis, and even suicidal thoughts. The problem, he says, isn't just more use, it's much stronger products. Where cannabis once hovered under 10% THC, today's cannabis bud products now often hit 20%, and concentrates can top 70%.

Kaliamurthy isn't calling for rolling back legalization, but for treating cannabis more like alcohol and tobacco: THC caps, standardized labels with clear mental health and pregnancy warnings, stronger public-health messaging, and more research. States, he writes, have largely failed to regulate potency even as teen brains remain especially vulnerable to high, sustained THC exposure. Read the full essay.