By Kevin Sabet

The vaping crisis is in full swing across the country, including New Jersey. Legislative leaders such as Senate President Stephen Sweeney have called for banning vapes outright, while Gov. Phil Murphy has put together a team to recommend next steps after seven deaths and hundreds of cases nationwide of a mysterious respiratory illness linked to vaping.

While lawmakers are right to call for action against vaping, many seem to be missing – and some even actively supporting -- the root cause of these deaths and illnesses: marijuana vaping.

Having transformed the drug into something much more addictive than Woodstock weed, the new marijuana industry seeks to cash in on THC candies, cookies, sodas, and their latest innovation: vape oils. The consequences have been catastrophic.

Earlier this year in Louisiana, a coroner claimed a woman died from respiratory failure after vaping a high potency marijuana oil. The industry, media, and even some researchers were quick to absolve marijuana as the cause, but perhaps this was the canary in the coal mine?

Now, hundreds of people nationwide have gotten sick and at least seven have died and a recent study suggests many of these individuals vaped pot prior to becoming sick.

The immediate spin from Big Marijuana was these products were purchased from the black market and these deaths and illnesses would never occur from purchases made on the “highly regulated” markets where the drug is legal.

And then a death in Oregon deflated this entire argument.

There, a man passed away after vaping THC oil purchased from a “legal” store. Earlier this year, the Oregon secretary of state found the state has utterly failed to regulate its marijuana market. Amazingly, Oregon lawmakers have proposed exporting their potentially tainted – and now potentially fatal – product to other states.

The industry could care less about health harms, its sole concern is expanding commercialization of high potency marijuana products to all 50 states and pocketing massive profits.

Expanding this now fatal experiment in New Jersey will only expand upon the harms we have already documented.

From the available data, we know marijuana use affects memory, learning, drives down IQ points, and has even been linked to mental illness such as schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. And this is from studies on pot nowhere near the average potency found on the shelves in Denver.

When it comes to the marijuana vapes, gummies, sodas, and ice creams all featuring up to 99% THC, we are only beginning to decipher their effects on the body and brain, but recent research has found daily use of high potency marijuana is associated with a five-fold increase in instances of psychosis and other mental illness.

New Jersey lawmakers must see how marijuana commercialization is opening Pandora’s box for a world of problems. Just this week, Governor Murphy said, “Let me be perfectly clear: Many people have no idea what chemicals their vape pen is putting into their bodies. The only alternative to smoking is not smoking. Period, full stop.”

To protect the health, safety, and productivity of New Jersey, we must take the same approach to marijuana legalization as we are to vaping, Mr. Governor. We cannot tackle one addiction epidemic while rolling out the welcome mat for another. The time has come to halt the push to legalize marijuana in the Garden State.

Kevin Sabet, Ph.D, is a former senior drug policy adviser to the Obama administration, author of “Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana” and current president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

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