TheStar.com | GTA | Marijuana use prompted attack, trial told

A man who has admitted killing his stripper girlfriend was suffering from a “major mental illness” at the time of the deadly beating, a forensic psychiatrist has told the jury at a murder trial in Brampton.

Dr. Stephen Hucker said it was “highly likely” Ryan Bucknor was in a “psychotic state” when be brutally beat Audrey Cote to death, and then ran down the street stark naked, throwing money to people, and later telling police he was “God.”

Although Hucker believed Bucknor was “completely normal” when he interviewed him two years later, he was convinced the accused man was suffering from a mental illness when he killed his girlfriend on July 31, 2005.

Huckner, the first witness called by defence attorney Aston Hall, also believed Bucknor’s mental illness had been induced by chronic marijuana use.

Hucker also told the court he didn’t think Bucknor’s mental illness was “an act” because he wasn’t sophisticated enough to pretend to be delusional or schizophrenic.

Bucknor was a daily user of marijuana. Hucker said studies have determined that frequent users of cannabis have double the risk of developing mental illness or schizophrenia.

Apparently Dr. Hucker doesn’t keep up on his marijuana studies. According to Schizophrenia Research, in a study published last May:

London, United Kingdom: Marijuana use is not associated with heightened symptoms of schizophrenia, according to data to be published in the journal Schizophrenia Research.

Investigators at London’s Institute of Psychiatry assessed whether the prior use of cannabis in patients with schizophrenia was associated with appreciable changes in schizophrenic symptoms compared with patients who had no history of marijuana use.

Investigators reported no statistically significant “differences in syptomatology between schizophrenic patients who were or were not cannabis users” after controlling for patients’ age, sex, and ethnicity.

Researchers also failed to find “any evidence that cannabis users with schizophrenia were more likely to have a family member with the disorder.”

These findings “argue against a distinct schizophrenic-like psychosis caused by cannabis,” authors concluded.

Bucknor may indeed be mentally ill — seems pretty obvious he was — but his marijuana use was probably in response to his illness, not the cause of his illness. If you had voices in your head screaming at you that your girlfriend is a demon and you need to brutally kill her and run down the street naked, you might just try to quiet that voice with a little weed.

Multiple sclerosis patients who smoke marijuana in search of symptom relief are more likely to suffer cognitive shortfalls and mood disorders, new Canadian research suggests.

A slowing down in the ability to process and remember information is one significant side effect, as is a rise in the rate of depression and anxiety.

“This is a small study, so our findings are preliminary, but the bottom line is that multiple sclerosis patients who smoke cannabis appear to be at an increased risk for cognitive issues, particularly with respect to the speed of their thinking,” said study author Dr. Anthony Feinstein, a professor of psychiatry with the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

Feinstein’s observations are published in the Feb. 13 online edition of Neurology and are focused exclusively on the impact of smoking marijuana illegally obtained by patients themselves. Medically prescribed marijuana was not studied.

The researchers therefore assessed the experience of 140 Toronto-based MS outpatients, 10 of whom had smoked the drug at least once in the previous month and were considered regular marijuana users.

MS patients who used marijuana were found to perform 50 percent slower on tests tracking information-processing speed and were more likely than nonusers to have a mental disability of some kind. Marijuana use was also associated with a greater risk for being depressed or experiencing anxiety.

That’s funny… the MS patient I know who uses the herb multiple times per day is one of the most gifted Flash animators and graphic artists I know. Smart, funny, happy… maybe it’s because she’s not Canadian, could that be it?

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