On Oct. 17, cannabis will be legalized throughout Canada. Students across the country have rejoiced the news, although many university campuses have banned cannabis from being consumed on campus.
Ontario will allow anyone over the age of 19 to purchase cannabis once it becomes legal next month, but smoking it in public places has been banned. If people want to smoke, they will only be able to do so in private residences.
In theory, “expanded access” means more people will be using, smoking and consuming cannabis. This can mean various things depending on who you are. According to a March 2018 Health Canada article, consuming cannabis frequently has been linked with an increase in anxiety and depression disorders.
It’s also estimated that one in 11 people who use cannabis will develop an addiction to it. According to the same report, rates of cannabis addiction are one in six for people who started using cannabis as a teenager.
Around 2.3 million people, more than the population of Toronto, in Canada will have displayed symptoms of cannabis abuse or dependence in their lifetime, according to a 2012 Statistics Canada report.
Student Struggles
Edward, whose name was changed to protect his identity, is a third-year commerce student at Carleton. He has used cannabis in order to relax in the past, but said he does not feel the same benefit now.
“This past summer, I worked a job I hated and I came home stressed and angry, and I found it was very nice to get high and relax for a few hours,” he said. “In the first few weeks of school, I did the same when I felt overwhelmed by school, because again, it made me very happy and worry-free. However, I have since stopped smoking it regularly because it doesn’t help in the long run.”
Courtney Brennen, an occupational therapist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), said using marijuana is often a short-sighted approach to dealing with stress.
“It’s not to say people are not seeing benefits from using cannabis—it can be effective in being a stress-reliever in the short-term,” she said. “But, in the long term, it can actually cause more stress much in the way nicotine does—where your stress tolerance decreases over time and you actually become more stressed.”
As she put it, short-term gains equal long-term pains.
Danielle Sampson, a first-year communications studies student, said she has been smoking cannabis since Grade 10, but has done so as more of a social activity to de-stress at the end of the week, as opposed to being a frequent user.
“I’m the kind of person who will never be dependent on weed. When I’m high, my thoughts are everywhere. It was not a thing to help with school—it was to help be distracted from school.” – Danielle Sampson, first-year communications student
The Science
According to Brennen, cannabis with higher THC content—the chemical in cannabis that causes a “high”—is more likely to cause cannabis-induced psychosis and ensuing mental health problems. Cannabis higher in cannabinoids (CDD) is less likely to cause these effects, but cannabis higher in THC is more likely to induce the experience of being high.
Edward said he found that after he had used cannabis for a while, he began to notice the negative effects more.
“Smoking weed regularly actually made me scared of being in public for a while. Eventually though it went the opposite and I have just become completely oblivious to everything happening around me, and I think that can be attributed to what weed does to your brain. I cannot focus for long periods of time anymore and I’m always nervous.” – Edward, third-year business student
Normally, Brennen said, people would access this information by visiting their healthcare practitioners. But now, because cannabis will be sold by the government and other private companies, she says the onus needs to rest with the people selling to make people aware of potential pitfalls of frequent cannabis usage.
“Like alcohol, it’s hurting more people than it’s helping in the long run. But, legalization takes away some of that stigma and puts it more on the table for people to talk about,” she said. “By improving access, it cuts out a lot of the dangers associated with it.”
Brennen says these mental health problems occuring in cannabis users are rare, but are more likely to occur when people start using at a younger age.
“There’s no clear answer to how much kickstarts the genetic process. I will say that a lot of people starting university may be experiencing a lot of new, intense stressors without their usual support system—the social support system they developed in high school. They’re putting themselves in a position where they are very at risk for developing a mental illness.” – Courtney Brennen, occupational therapist with CAMH
How to Cope
As well as being more at risk for cannabis-induced psychosis, people who start using cannabis or other substances, such as alcohol, are less likely to develop key coping mechanisms such as exercising or talking to a friend, said Brennen.
“If you’re looking at drugs as a primary way to relax or make yourself feel better, there’s better things you can do to fix that that’ll make you feel better in the long run,” she said.
Edward used to have coping mechanisms in high school that worked for him, but found the situation was different when he made the transition to university.
“I used to de-stress through physical activity. However, I soon realized I did not care for that, but that could also be because the weed started to take over my life,” he said. “Before I used it to calm down, I used to just put my head down and get through the issue stressing me, knowing that it would be better once it worked out.” 
Your brain is still developing throughout your time in university, “shaping how you’re going to respond to things for the rest of your life,” according to Brennen.
“If you don’t develop those coping strategies in universities or in your twenties, then chances are, you might never develop them, because you become reliant on cannabis or alcohol,” she said.
Sampson said she struggles at times with managing an education and living on her own, with a lot of stress being due to the financial burden of life as a student. She said she exercises and makes herself a day planner to help her manage stress instead.
“I like to see why I’m stressed, so I know what I have to do every day during the week and I don’t get overwhelmed,” she said. “I can’t overestimate the importance for me of setting a main goal to achieve in a day.”
These things may not work for everyone, said Brennen, but establishing a positive, coping mechanism takes time.
“If you’re using things like alcohol or cannabis to physically relax, the likelihood of you developing a dependence on those things and not developing coping strategies that might be more positive, like exercising or talking to a friend or other activities that would be more positive in the long run, then the odds of you developing down the road are less likely, because you opted to use a more easily accessible and immediate coping strategy that’s not hard to initiate to ask.”
Graphics by Paloma Callo
