Potent Form Of Cannabis Ravages Teens

Health officials warn of heated extracts that are ruining lives and gaining popularity

- LIZ ESSLEY WHYTE AND JULIE WERNAU

Heidi Lawrence's daughter was 14 when she began dabbing-heating and inhaling the fumes from powerful globs of marijuana extract. By 15, the girl couldn't resist the quick, intense highs and was dabbing every half-hour from school bathrooms to her bedroom.

Smoking the potent cannabis concentrates "has almost broken her brain," said Lawrence, of Longmont, Colo.

Dabbing has emerged in recent years as a popular way to consume marijuana, especially among youths. But it is dangerous. Like other new forms of marijuana use that have proliferated in recent years, dabbing involves highly potent concentrates of cannabis.

Health authorities sounding the alarm, warning that dabbing could addict users and is sending teenagers to emergency rooms with seizures, cyclical vomiting or psychosis. Some users and doctors call a cannabis overdose, with the accompanying sweaty nausea and disorientation, a "green out," a term believed to be a play on "blackout."

"People are consuming extremely high doses of THC," the psychoactive component of cannabis, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "People can become psychotic."

Now 17 years old, Lawrence's daughter has been hospitalized and sent to inpatient rehabilitation programs several times for cannabis addiction and mental-health problems. She told her mother that dabbing filled her with rage and despair, and intensified her desires to cut or kill herself.