ABUSE MAGAZINE
Hans Breiter, a professor of psychiatry and
behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine studied
marijuana’s impact on teens and concluded,
“Marijuana is the ideal compound to screw
up everything for a kid.”
“If you’re an athlete, a chess player,
a debater or an artist, you need working
memory, and marijuana hurts the brain circuitry,” he said.
As for the long-term impact, adults who
smoked marijuana as teenagers did worse
in IQ, memory and decision-making tests
than adults who had not smoked pot, Duke
researchers found in a study.
Kelly said that whether someone is for or
against medical marijuana, the fact remains
that pot is not good for tween and teen
brains that are still developing. She said that
it’s a very different scenario but those differences aren’t being discussed in the media.
“It’s not rocket science to think if you
smoke weed when your brain is developing,
that it can’t be ‘good’ for you, just like any
‘toxic’ substance isn’t good for you,” Dr.
Gregory Tau, a psychiatrist and drug abuse
researcher at Columbia University, told NPR.
Even if kids do see it as a medicine, kids
need to know that medicines are not always
good for you, that they can and often do
have negative impacts on the body and that
they can be abused.
Kelly added that it is “tremendously more
potent” than marijuana from a few decades
ago, which means that it is stronger and
therefore has a stronger impact than the
weed that parents may have smoked.
There are no FDA-approved medical reasons for children or teenagers to use marijuana or THC in any form. It’s also worth
noting that, in 2011, nearly 4.2 million
people 12 and older had a marijuana abuse
or addiction problem. And teens absolutely
need to know that it is not safe to drive
while high, with marijuana being the most
commonly identified illicit drug in fatal accidents.
Talk with your kids that legalized marijuana for adults does not mean that it’s
safe for them. Explain how their brains are
changing and developing and that pot is
harmful to that process. Take advantage of
the news story about the third graders in the
bathroom to start the discussion, and keep
talking.
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Photo Source: www.health.harvard.edu
abusemagazine.org | Idaho Spring/Summer 2014 |
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