TEEN MARIJUANA ADDICTION OVERVIEW

OTHER NAMES FOR MARIJUANA:

Some common names for Marijuana are: Pot, Grass, Herb, Weed, Mary Jane, Widow, Hash, St.Nicholas, Reefer, Skunk, Boom, Gangster, Kif, Chronic, and Ganja.

Teens today are using drugs at younger and younger ages, when their brains and bodies are still developing. Of all of the illicit drugs, marijuana is the most widely used. If your child is exposed to drugs, he or she will most likely be offered marijuana.

• Some frequent, long-term marijuana users show signs of a lack of motivation (a motivational syndrome). Their problems include not caring about what happens in their lives and a lack of concern about how they look. As a result of these symptoms, some users tend to perform poorly in school or at work.

• Heavy or daily use of marijuana affects the parts of the brain that control memory, attention and learning and can make it more difficult to learn and perform tasks that call for more than one or two steps.

• Smoking marijuana causes some changes in the brain that are like those caused by cocaine, heroin and alcohol. Scientists are still learning about the many ways that marijuana can affect the brain.

• One joint can deliver four times as much cancer-causing tar as one tobacco cigarette.

• In a study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a moderate dose of marijuana alone was shown to impair driving performance; the effects of a low dose of marijuana combined with alcohol were markedly greater than for either substance alone.

• While not everyone who uses marijuana becomes addicted, when a user begins to seek out and take the drug compulsively, that person is said to be dependent on the drug or addicted to it. In 2002, more than 280,000 people entering drug treatment programs reported marijuana as their primary drug of abuse, showing they needed help to stop using it. Some heavy users of marijuana show signs of withdrawal when they stop using the drug. They develop symptoms such as restlessness, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, weight loss and shaky hands.

• The marijuana that teens use today has more than twice the concentration of THC, the chemical that affects the brain, than the marijuana of 20 years ago.

• Young people who use marijuana weekly have double the risk of depression later in life, and teens who smoke marijuana weekly are three times more likely than non-users to have suicidal thoughts. Marijuana use in some teens has been linked to increased risk for schizophrenia in later years.