Why marijuana use among kids literally isn't smart

Dr. Rick deShazo

While producing a documentary on marijuana use in youth for a public television documentary in Mississippi, we uncovered some sobering information: Scientific evidence strongly suggests marijuana use in teenagers and young adults can permanently lower their intelligence.

The debate on the legalization of marijuana has been a national lightning rod. In American culture, marijuana use has gradually come to be regarded as harmless or even humorous.

Meanwhile, marijuana of increasing potency has continued to become available to children, who are smoking, vaping and ingesting the controlled substance at an alarming rate. The Government’s National Survey on Drug Use reports that as of 2014, 7.4 percent of children ages 12-17 and 19.6 percent of young adults ages 18-25 had used marijuana.

The National Center for Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi, the source of standardized marijuana for medical research since 1995, reports increasing concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis — in street marijuana. THC produces the euphoria from smoked marijuana and marijuana extracts used for vaping and introduction into foods. Higher levels of THC are associated with more toxicity.

Recent research shows that persistent marijuana use can have permanent deleterious effects on the maturing brains of children and young adults.
Consider:

• Using brain MRI and PET scans to track brain development, Dr. J. N. Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health and other neuroscientists confirm the brain’s maturation process is not completed until individuals reach their early 20s — which helps explain problems with impulse control in teenagers.
• After a comprehensive brain imaging comparison of marijuana users and non-marijuana users, Dr. M. H. Meier and her colleagues at Duke University have concluded that marijuana has a “neurotoxic effect on the adolescent brain.” Their study found adolescents who began regular marijuana use that persisted into adulthood had an average 6 point decline in their respective IQs — a considerable drop on the intelligence scale.
• Meier’s most alarming finding: The abnormalities present in those who began using marijuana during adolescence and continued into adulthood did not resolve with abstinence. In other words, the damage was permanent.
• Just this year, Dr. Alejandro Meruelo and his colleagues at the University of California San Diego report a host of abnormalities in the brains of adolescent marijuana users.

We believe a more aggressive national effort is needed to deter marijuana use in children, adolescents and young adults. Screening for marijuana use by medical professionals under Substance Use, Brief Intervention and/or Referral to Treatment guidelines and other tools should be commonplace for all children under the age of 18.

A call to halt marijuana use in children, adolescents and young adults is the best course of action.

Until we as educators, parents and the media treat marijuana with the same fervent vilification as we have tobacco use during the last three decades, we may be dooming the next generation to a diminished quality of life — one toke or one brownie at a time.