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Caution: Marijuana May Not Be Lesser Evil
02.05.07|USA Today

Tyreol Gardner first smoked marijuana when he was 13.
"The main reason I tried it was curiosity," Gardner recalls. "I wanted to see what it felt like."

He liked what it felt like, and by age 15, he was smoking pot every week. He supported his habit with the money his parents gave him for getting straight A's on his report card. They didn't have a clue.

"By 16, when I got my license, it turned into a fairly everyday thing," says Gardner, now 24. "I believe it is very addictive, especially for people with addictive personalities."

Millions of baby boomers might disagree. After all, they smoked marijuana — the country's most popular illicit drug — in their youth and quit with little effort.

But studies have shown that when regular pot smokers quit, they do experience withdrawal symptoms, a characteristic used to predict addictiveness. Most users of more addictive drugs, such as cocaine or heroin, started with marijuana, scientists say, and the earlier they started, the greater their risk of becoming addicted.

Many studies have documented a link between smoking marijuana and the later use of "harder" drugs such as heroin and cocaine, but that doesn't necessarily mean marijuana causes addiction to harder drugs.

"Is marijuana a gateway drug? That question has been debated since the time I was in college in the 1960s and is still being debated today," says Harvard University psychiatrist Harrison Pope, director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at Boston's McLean Hospital. "There's just no way scientifically to end that argument one way or the other."

That's because it's impossible to separate marijuana from the environment in which it is smoked, short of randomly assigning people to either smoke pot or abstain — a trial that would be grossly unethical to conduct.

"I would bet you that people who start smoking marijuana earlier are more likely to get into using other drugs," Pope says. Perhaps people who are predisposed to using a variety of drugs start smoking marijuana earlier than others do, he says.

Besides alcohol, often the first drug adolescents abuse, marijuana may simply be the most accessible and least scary choice for a novice susceptible to drug addiction, says Virginia Tech psychologist Bob Stephens.

No matter which side you take in the debate over whether marijuana is a "gateway" to other illicit drugs, you can't argue with "indisputable data" showing that smoking pot affects neuropsychological functioning, such as hand-eye coordination, reaction time and memory, says Wesley Clarke, director of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Adolescents have the greatest rates of marijuana use, and they also have the greatest amount to lose by using marijuana, scientists say.

"Adolescence is about risk-taking, experimentation," says Yasmin Hurd, professor of psychiatry, pharmacology and biological chemistry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York who last summer published a rat study that found early exposure to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, led to a greater sensitivity to heroin in adulthood.

"All of the studies clearly show the earlier someone starts taking marijuana, the greater their vulnerability to addiction disorders and psychiatric disorders. I'm so shocked still that so many parents are not considering enough the dangers of early drug use."

Use is more common

Marijuana use by adolescents in the USA declined slightly from 2005 to 2006, but it's still more common than it was 15 years ago, according to "Monitoring the Future," an ongoing study by the University of Michigan that tracks people from the eighth grade through young adulthood. It's paid for by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or NIDA, part of the National Institutes of Health.

In 2006, 11.7% of eighth-graders said they had used marijuana during the past year, compared with 6.2% of eighth-graders in 1991. Among 12th-graders, 31.5% said they had used marijuana in the previous year; in 1991, 23.9% said they had.

"You are at school, and your main job as an adolescent is to learn and memorize," NIDA director Nora Volkow says. But if you keep becoming intoxicated by smoking marijuana, she says, you'll fall further and further behind in your studies. "How are you going to catch up?"

In a study comparing heavy marijuana users with people who'd had minimal exposure to the drug, Pope found that the former had lower verbal IQ scores than the latter. In a 2003 paper, he and his co-authors postulated three potential reasons: innate differences between the groups in cognitive ability that predated first marijuana use, an actual toxic effect of marijuana on the developing brain or poorer learning of conventional cognitive skills by young marijuana users who skipped school.

 

TehUberGeeK

you can't argue with "indisputable data" showing that smoking pot affects neuropsychological functioning, such as hand-eye coordination, reaction time and memory

Who argues with that?

bugs68

I read here all the time, --and just couldnt resist replying to point this painfully obvious contradiction out. I had to laugh...hehhe


"He liked what it felt like, and by age 15, he was smoking pot every week. He supported his habit with the money his parents gave him for getting straight A's on his report card. They didn't have a clue..."


"You are at school, and your main job as an adolescent is to learn and memorize," NIDA director Nora Volkow says. But if you keep becoming intoxicated by smoking marijuana, she says, you'll fall further and further behind in your studies. "How are you going to catch up?"


peace all,
bugs

Lit_Match

I wonder how long it is supposed to take for these withdrawal symptoms to occur. I've been smoking for many years, during that time I've gone without smoking for days, weeks and months and most of those times my stash was an arm's length away. I doubt a heroin addict can say the same.

I've seen studies that show there is no link at all, so who's right?

That's because it's impossible to smoke marijuana and become addicted to crack as a result.

He'd lose if he was betting on me, I've tried other drugs and didn't care to try them again. Furthermore I don't think it's anyone else's business what you decide to put in your body as long as it doesn't have a negative affect on anyone else against their will.

First of all, if it were legalized this type of scenario would occur less often. Speaking for myself, I got academic recognition for scoring in the 98th and 99th percentile on a state wide test in science and math years after smoking on a regular basis. I doubt I could have done much better had I not been a marijuana user. I can't say for a fact whether or not marijuana use will cause you to be less able to learn and retain information, but in my years of smoking I haven't had any experience to indicate that it does.

Again I can only speak for myself. I started smoking at an age that I now realize was way young. I don't know if a verbal IQ score is any indication of a persons overall IQ or not, but my IQ is significantly above average. I have no reason to think it would be higher had I never tried marijuana.

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Donation links to NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) | MPP (Marijuana Policy Project)

king cola

First of all no one should be using drugs at age 13. If someone drank alcohol at 13 and used it often, wouldn't they possibly turn into a alcoholic?


With marijuana bein a gateway drug, that's because it's illegal which places it in an environment with other illegal drugs. Maybe I say this too much, but when people walk into a liquor store, they are there to get beer or hard alcohol, they aren't there getting marijuana, cocaine, etc. Legalize and regulate marijuana, have it sold in stores and the people that are in there to get marijuana are in there for pot, not for hard drugs. With marijuana on the street, dealers aren't too paranoid about talking to their customers about other drugs or even offering them a sample of a different drug. If a dealer walked up certain people that buy legalized alcohol and offered some marijuana, cocaine, heroin, or any other illegal drug, they will probably call the cops on the dealer. With marijuana smokers, it's illegal, someone offers a hard drug to a pot smoker and they aren't going to react the sameway because pot is illegal. Basically the dealer can advertise other drugs to people already breaking a law for illegal marijuana without fear of them telling the cops.

Again, alcohol is a drug and is technically illegal for people under age. How many under age teenagers throw drinking parties? Just about every high school has drinkers. Now they don't go and say anything about people drinking alcohol and then doing hard drugs, only if you use an illegal drug such as marijuana when your a teenager it automatically means it's a gateway to hard drugs!

Alcoholics go through withdraw symptoms too, what's their point? I started drinking beer around 15 or 16 before trying marijuana. I was able to quit any of them whenever I wanted, I didn't smoke pot everyday, I didn't drink alcohol everyday. The point should be that people use drugs when they are adults and to know how to use them in moderation. I've smoked marijuana every night for one week before, smoked pot every weekend, or every few weekends, i always changed it up. I never exactly had a routine for using it, sometimes i would smoke once a week or every 2 weeks. I've even gone a few weeks or months without smoking. I've been doing that for about 7 years and have never went through withdraws from it.

Illegal drugs are easier to get than legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. When people are in high school and going to parties, they will probably take whatever they can get. Maybe not everyone will, but the experimental type will that aren't afraid to try all this different drugs out there.

 

reggie_the_dog

Cannabis, in my experience, does not make someone smarter or dumber. If you are so inclined as to do well in school cannabis will not take that away from you. Of course if you decide to get high and play video games instead of doing your homework you will thake this inclination away from yourself. If you are usually a poor student cannabis will generally not make you more intelligent (it can give you a life changing experience if you use it right and do some introspection, but so can meditation and introspection).

Buzzby

I can't speak for anyone else, but when I'm really stoned I can't remember the beginning of my sentences by the time I get to the end. That doesn't seem like it would be a good thing in a learning situation.

I usually don't get high until an hour or so before bedtime because I spend most of my time reading and writing. When I'm high I sometimes take an hour crafting the perfect sentence. My reading speed goes from 1500 wpm to 200 wpm, with much poorer retention.

Again, I can't speak for anyone else, but I use cannabis to get out of my rational/verbal mind, which is where I live most of the time. It's a way to explore sensations, feelings, intuitions, and to reveal the hidden wisdom of the imagination. I find it hard to understand how people find it beneficial for studying and doing school work. It has never worked that way for me. My guess is simply that different people have different reactions to it.

I was introduced to cannabis when I went off to college. I ended up dropping out in the middle of my freshman year because I was having so much fun getting high every night that I neglected my work. I learned to keep work/study and getting high in separate compartments. After that I went back to being a straight A student.

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fh12345

before i decided to smoke for the first time i did a load of research on how marijuana affects you. I am a very health cautious person and wanted to see how harmful it would be if i used it in moderation. I found that many of the claims on how marijuana affects your health by the government are way over exaggerated. One myth that many people continue to believe is that marijuana will cause you to lose short term memory and learning will become more difficult. These symptoms of mj are just temporary and are only present while you are high. Basically from what i have read, to have any significant amount of brain damage done from smoking mj you would have to chronically smoke ( like 5 joints a day) everyday, for years. Basically alls mj can do to is harm your lungs( from irritation by smoke) and possibly cause amotivational syndrome. This is only if it is not used responsibly and in moderation. Of course if u decide to start smoking a load of mj every day, it isnt good for your health. But if it is used responsibly say about 2 times a week it will probably have little to no effects on your health. And as for the "gateway drug" theory. to be honest i haven't read much about it, but i believe that it will only lead to other drug use if you let it. Obviously if you decide to move on to cocaine, lsd ect. you are aware of how it is not good for your health and have reached a point in your life where you just don't care. Also if you smoke weed too much, like everyday, you wil probably start to build up a tolerance and get bored of it, which would lead to other drug use. But basically i feel that if marijuana is used in moderation and in normal amounts, its not going to affect your health or mentality at all.

Buzzby

I'd like to know where you've come up with so much misinformation.

There is no evidence that I've seen to indicate that any amount of marijuana smoking over any period of time causes any brain damage

There is no indication that the "amotivational syndrome" is anything other than an invention of the prohibitionists, confusing cause with effect. If you give a person with no motivation to do anything with his life a bag of weed he'll sit around and do nothing but smoke it because he has nothing better to do.

I know people who have been using it daily for 39 years with no effect at all on their physical or mental health. The only health worry regarding marijuana is that excessive smoking may lead to bronchitis.

Most long-term users of marijuana quite consciously develop a balance, maintaining their tolerance at a comfortable level so they can always get high without having to smoke too much or spend a lot. They do this by limiting the amount and frequency of their smoking. I use the same amount every day, always get high, and never feel an inclination to use any other drug.