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Poison Watch Title: Teens and parents told: Marijuana is indisputably addictive and harmful Colorado, Washington, Alaska, and Washington D.C. have all legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Observers believe that legalization could be put to a vote next year in five other states. Fully 58 percent of the population believe that marijuana should be legal. Fully 38 percent have tried marijuana at some point in their life, up from only 4 percent in 1969. Big Pot, in other words, has both momentum and time on its side, and it’s hard not to conclude that, in five or 10 or 15 years, marijuana will be as legal and easily obtainable a recreational substance as alcohol now is, in every state of the Union. Meanwhile, as well-intentioned people on both sides of the issue debate the merits of legalization, their kids may be reaching conclusions of their own: how can a substance that folks in Colorado are congratulating themselves on being able to use in their own homes, with the government’s blessing no less--a substance that’s prescribable as a medication in 23 states--a substance whose “impact on the individual consumer” even President Obama says is “less dangerous” than alcohol’s impact--how could such a substance possibly be bad for you? And once a teen, or a tween, starts thinking that way, he or she’s only a friend’s nudge away from lighting one up. A joint, that is, not a cigarette. Thanks to the schools, every 8-year-old knows and is happy to tell you that tobacco is not only toxic but evil. That’s why, when the same kid turns 12 or 13 or 14 and is ready to experiment with a substance, he’s more likely now, for the first time ever, to smoke a J than a Marlboro. For Michelle Volk, it’s what that kid doesn’t know--what maybe his parents don’t know either--that could hurt him: namely, that marijuana is addictive, that it is harmful, that there are in fact long-term non-negligible too-late-to-do-anything-about consequences from regular use. Volk is president of the Porter County Substance Abuse Council (PCSAC), and last week at the IMAX in Portage PCSAC and its Lake and LaPorte county counterparts hosted “The Blunt Truth about Marijuana.” PCSAC’s goal, as Volk told the Chesterton Tribune before the event: “To show how dangerous this drug is to a teenager’s still developing brain.” The keynote speaker: Carol Falkowski, formerly the director of the Minnesota Department of Human Service’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division; the author of numerous publications on substance addiction and trends; and a technical consultant to the FDA, DOJ, ABA, and the Rand Corporation. 12th Graders Falkowski’s first point: nationwide, 44 percent of high-schoolers will have tried marijuana at least once by the time they graduate. And nearly half of any population is a lot of people. “Chances are it’s not someone else’s kid who’s smoking marijuana,” she said. “Chances are, it’s your own child.” Simply put, there’s been a “decline in the belief that marijuana is harmful” and not just because President Obama says it’s safer than alcohol. When the legalization of marijuana is made to sound in the media like some kind of liberation movement, then the innocuousness of marijuana becomes a received wisdom. “The less harmful kids think it is, the more likely they are to use it,” Falkowski said. Potency Here’s the problem: it’s not their parents’ marijuana. Even less is it their grandparents’. Fifty years ago, marijuana might have averaged a 1- or 2-percent concentration of THC, the psychoactive ingredient. By the 1980s, the typical concentration had increased to 4 percent. Now, Falkowski said, it can be anywhere from 12 to 20 percent. And the cross-breeding and cutting-edge cultivation technologies which make the product available to kids today so much more potent than it used to be, also make its effects on their bodies and brain that much more powerful, Falkowski said. Addiction Back in the day, it was common to say that marijuana is “psychologically addictive,” whatever exactly, or inexactly, was meant by that. Falkowski didn’t equivocate. Marijuana is addictive, she said bluntly. “The jury’s no longer out” on that one. And by addiction she means just that: “a chronic disease that will require lifelong management.” Going cold turkey, Falkowski added, is a lot like quitting tobacco, with symptoms akin to those associated with nicotine withdrawal: irritability, anxiety, craving, sleep disruptions. Fully 40 percent of kids younger than 15 who use marijuana “seriously” will become addicted to it, she said. They may have a genetic predisposition to addiction, they may be responding to their environment--a bad home situation, say--but in either case the fact that they’ve got 13- or 14-year old brains still “under construction” has something to do with it: more likely to make bad decisions, less likely to control their impulses, they enthusiastically accept the notion that “if something feels good, more of it is better.” “So not only are they putting themselves at risk for doing stupid things under the influence of marijuana,” Falkowski said. “They’re also setting themselves up to become addicts.” Smoking Oneself Stupid As “indisputable” as the addictiveness of marijuana, Falkowski said, are the short- and long-term cognitive effects of using it. Turns out, you literally can smoke yourself stupid, according to a longitudinal study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. It’s no surprise to be told, by the NEJM study, that marijuana use impairs short-term memory and motor coordination, alters a person’s judgment, puts him at greater risk of being injured in an accident. Cheech and Chong got rich making being high and dopey look hilarious. There’s an increased risk as well, however, of chronic psychotic disorder, like schizophrenia, in predisposed users of marijuana. And of developing symptoms of chronic bronchitis later in life. But the NEJM study showed something else, Falkowski said: “persistent” marijuana users who were tested at age 13 and then again, 25 years later, at 38, not only presented memory problems but had lost on average eight IQ points. Persistent users in high school also tend to have “poor educational outcomes,” not a shocking finding inasmuch as the loss of short-term memory could make it more “difficult to learn.” And they tend to report what Falkowski called “diminished life satisfaction”--as measured, for instance, by earnings potential--the kind of correlation one would expect to be associated with a poor educational outcome. Gateway Drug? On the old chestnut--whether marijuana is a gateway drug to narcotics--Falkowski took no definitive position, although she allowed that it probably is for some. “Kids get fascinated by mood changes,” she said. “With marijuana the mood change is fairly mild. They may then start looking for other drugs to alter their mood.” But marijuana is a demonstrably harmful drug already, all on its own, Falkowski concluded. It doesn’t need to be a gateway drug to make smoking it a bad idea. The World We Live In Falkowski urged parents to learn the signs of marijuana use--sudden changes in behavior, friends, personal appearance; secretiveness; defensiveness--and to begin an ongoing, non-confrontational dialogue with their children about its dangers. She also counseled them not to despair if their kids become involved with marijuana. “It doesn’t mean they’re bad children or that you’re a bad parent,” Falkowski said. “It’s just the world we live in.”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 44.
#1. To: Gatlin (#0)
Marijuana is safer than alcohol.
And, according to the (ridiculously subjective) chart, Ecstasy and LSD are safer than marijuana. As are a host of other "club drugs". Let's legalize those drugs first and see how that goes. Then we can consider more dangerous drugs like marijuana.
Both were legal.
As was heroin and cocaine. What's your point?
#51. To: misterwhite (#44)
Ecstasy and LSD Both were legal. As was heroin and cocaine. What's your point? Wasn't the world a better place in the past? Clearly the drug war has not made America Olde Timey like in the days of real cocaine in the soda pop.
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