Marijuana: What’s the big deal?

The Surgeon General has issued an advisory, an urgent public health notice, that teen marijuana use damages developing brains. According to the Surgeon General, “no amount of marijuana use…during adolescence is known to be safe.”

While marijuana is illegal under federal law, many states have legalized its use by adults for medicinal or recreational purposes, which may have contributed to a perception among young people that it is safe for use. Currently, marijuana is both widely available and widely used by adolescents, second only to alcohol in illicit substances.

The Surgeon General’s office quotes data from 2017, reporting that “approximately 9.2 million youth aged 12 to 25 reported marijuana use in the past month and 29% more young adults aged 18-25 started using marijuana.” According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health (NIDA/NIH), “30.5% of high school seniors used cannabis (marijuana) in the past year.”

This trend is troubling, because the human brain continues to develop from the womb until the mid-20s, and developing brains are vulnerable to addictive substances.

Why is it dangerous to teens?

According to the Surgeon General, frequent marijuana use during adolescence is associated with:

• Changes in the areas of the brain involving attention, memory, decision-making, and motivation. Deficits in attention and memory have continued to be detected in marijuana-using teens even a month after they stop use.
• Impaired learning. Chronic use actually lowers IQ and negatively affects school performance, which jeopardizes professional and social achievements, and life satisfaction.
• Increased school absences and drop-out rates.
• Increased suicide attempts.
• Risk for and early onset of psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. The younger the user, the greater the risk. Risk also increases with the potency of the marijuana product and how often it’s used.
• Other substance use. In 2017, teens 12-17 reporting frequent use of marijuana showed a 130% greater likelihood of misusing opioids.

The Surgeon General stresses, “Marijuana’s increasingly widespread availability in multiple and highly potent forms, coupled with a false and dangerous perception of safety among youth, merits a nationwide call to action.”

Read the Surgeon General’s advisory on marijuana here.

To learn more about how marijuana affects the brain, watch these videos here or here.

Photo by Elsa Olofsson on Unsplash