AN UNEXPECTED side effect is plaguing western countries that have "freed the weed".
Doctors are at their wit's end now hordes of nauseous tourists are turning up in emergency rooms — all because they can't handle their cannabis.
States that have legalised the herbal remedy are reporting a huge increase in foreigners who want to indulge in the pot on offer at local dispensaries.
And emergency room visits by "high" tourists have soared.
In the year recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado, US, 16% of patients admitted were foreigners suffering from weed-related ailments — an increase on 1% the previous year.
The figures were published in a New England Journal of Medicine study this week.
Despite the longer A&E queue, the law change has had various benefits.
Colarado Tourism Office said that access to weed has influenced visitors' decisions to travel there for a holiday.
And the legalisation has spawned a new tourism industry offering green-themed experiences.
Trips including a four-hour Dispensary and Grow tour where guests are packed onto a tinted-windowed party bus and given a marijuana user’s guide all to the tune of John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High have proven particularly popular.
This week Australia followed suit and is one of the latest western countries to give the green light to medical marijuana, following Canada and more than half the states in the US.
Medical professionals and lawyers have warned the UK is falling behind other western countries on drug laws.
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