Federal Report on Teen Marijuana Use is Misleading
New Federal Report on Teen Marijuana Use is Misleading…
(SALEM, Ore.) - A new federal government report on the ill effects of marijuana on teens may be a last ditch effort to demonize the medical weed before it sees its own day of emancipation. As it stands, even the most hardcore marijuana legalization advocates do not support children using anything that causes intoxication.
This new report uses scare tactics and seems to regard medical facts as a meaningless burden, and they are enlisting the help of celebrities with big money and big media ties to drive their message home.
Is it not a generally known fact that more teens are abusing prescribed drugs from mom and dads medicine cabinet more than marijuana these days?
“Don’t be fooled into thinking that pot is harmless,” said Dr. Drew Pinksy, internist, addiction expert, and host of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab. “Marijuana is an addictive drug. Teens who are already depressed and use marijuana may increase their odds of suffering from even more serious mental health problems.”
But medical marijuana and pharmacology experts like Dr. Phil Leveque of Molalla, Oregon, who writes regularly for Salem-News.com, suggest that there is no truth to the statement and that most of those who ultimately suffer from mental illness already would have.
“One of the biggest claims from the federal government is that marijuana causes ‘euphoria’ and if anyone needs that explained to them, it means the opposite of depression,” Leveque said.
As someone who suffers from depression and migraine headaches and anxiety medical cannabis is one of the best natural cures. Euphoria is not bad when you are crippled by social anxiety brought on by intense nausea from migraine headaches that stop you from being able to function day to day… cannabis medicine is sometimes the only thing that will help people get through the day. Using “teen drug use” scare tactics to try and stop medicinal use of a natural substance seems to be very idiotic in times like these.
He and most other advocates say kids should stay free and clear of marijuana use unless it is medically necessary, but it is a pussycat next to more deadly things like alcohol, prescription drugs, heroin and meth that potentially lead to death. Marijuana has no lethal quality; it can’t kill a person. It seems like a waste of time to get people listening, and then only tell them the bad data on marijuana. It seems very irresponsible.
The nation’s second largest association of doctors, the American College of Physicians, stated in a report that marijuana has been smoked for its medicinal properties for centuries, and preclinical, clinical, and anecdotal reports suggest numerous potential medical uses for marijuana.
They confirm that the use of medical marijuana in treating HIV wasting and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting has been well documented, and they believe additional research is needed to clarify marijuana’s therapeutic properties and determine standard and optimal doses and routes of delivery.
Reports like this new one from the federal government do not help doctors learn the real facts about medical marijuana.
In fact, the oldest continuously published pediatric journal in the country, a Journal of the American Medical Association called the “Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine”, released new information in November ‘07 indicating that pot smoking teens tend to function at better levels than teens who also smoke tobacco, and better in some ways than kids who abstain from both.
The study, completed in Switzerland, did not have an obligation to demonize marijuana on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies as the U.S. seem to. The report should actually make parents feel much better about teens and marijuana. The study compared students who smoked both pot and cigarettes, with kids who smoke marijuana only.
The study revealed that those who use only cannabis were more socially driven, and showed no more psychosocial problems than those who had never taken either of the substances.
As far as marijuana leading to harder drugs, the authors of the study say an accurate listing of the problems actually fall in a different order, and that cancer related illnesses suffered by cigarette smokers are the biggest risk of all.
The government report suggests that “Not only are adolescents at greater risk for drug abuse, but they may suffer more consequences,” said Nora D. Volkow, M. D., Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “There is also some evidence that in vulnerable teens-because of genetic factors-the abuse of marijuana can trigger a schizophreniform disorder.”
No one who supports medical cannabis is saying that children or teens should abuse it, but to use these studies to try and claim that marijuana is not medicine is not right.
In regards to nausea from chemotherapy, I have no experience with that, but I cannot state enough how effective cannabis is at defeating the nausea from migraine headaches.
How about the ties between alcohol and teen depression?
“This very week the British government’s official scientific advisors on illegal drugs issued a report saying they are ‘unconvinced that there is a causal relationship between the use of cannabis and any affective disorder,’ such as depression.” Mirken also questions the lack of warning about alcohol’s relationship to depression, which is completely left out of their new report.
“Data linking alcohol to depression is much stronger and alcohol use by teens is greater than marijuana use,” he notes.
More and more kids are using alcohol from their parents fridge, and popping mommies Valium and daddy’s Vicodin - stop trying to demonize medical marijuana.
Reschedule cannabis now!