Hot showers and baths are often described as the only way to mitigate the discomfort. In rare cases, the condition has resulted in death, health officials said.
“[Patients] are not high in any fashion and in fact are in significant distress with uncontrolled vomiting, gagging, hurling, and pain,” Dr. Sam Torbati, the medical director of the Ruth and Harry Roman Emergency Department at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, explained to Nexstar via email. He sees patients already diagnosed with or presenting with suspected cases of cannabis hyperemesis arrive in his emergency department weekly.
It’s not limited to his emergency department either.
Virginia authorities reported that emergency department visits for CHS have jumped almost 29% since 2020. Significant spikes have also been reported in Massachusetts and Northern California and parts of North Carolina. An official at Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, said last summer that patients with CHS are seen “every week, if not every day.”
In October, the World Health Organization added CHS to its diagnostic manual, a move meant to make it easier for health care providers to report the specific diagnosis rather than an overview of a patient’s symptoms. Patients may have otherwise been misdiagnosed as having another condition, like cyclic vomiting syndrome, according to a 2025 study.
A new report from the CDC found that, as expected, emergency department visits involving CHS increased in the months after the WHO’s update. While researchers noted the rise “[suggests] improved recognition” of CHS, it could indicate that “the public health impact” of the condition was previously underestimated.
