Can we believe what comes up on Google?

Online information needs to be read carefully and critically. Any information comes with biases. It is always important to look at who is providing the information and question why they are doing so.

If you google “cannabis overdose” all sorts of contradictory information comes up. A lot will have a prohibitionist bias that overstates risks and ignores benefits, while information written by those supporting cannabis legalisation sometimes bends the stick in the other direction.

Commercial bias is common. This is particularly the case with information from the US, where healthcare is highly corporate and profit driven. Information from US private rehabilitation and detox providers can be somewhere in between evidence-based medical information and advertising to convince people that they need to pay for a service. If you see something like this on a website, it’s likely that the information could be a bit alarmist: