Minuteman staff photo
Dr. John Douglas at Westport Town Hall
Around 75 concerned and somewhat surprised parents were in attendance at Town Hall Friday morning when Dr. John Douglas, clinical director of the outpatient addiction program at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, gave a talk on the subject.
“It’s very much becoming part of our culture,” he said. “People feel a right to use it.”
However, about one in 10 people who try it will become addicted. Regular use increases risks for mental illness, anxiety, depression and psychosis, and for people under 25, whose brains are still in development, it can be particularly detrimental. Specifically it can damage development of the prefrontal cortex, which is a key determinant in one’s planning and impulse control, and the hippocampus, which impacts learning and memory.
“People who started smoking marijuana in adolescence and continued through age 38 lost an average of 8 IQ points,” Douglas said, which results in a “noticeable drop in someone’s ability to think and reason … The earlier someone starts using cannabis, and the more frequently they use it, the more pronounced this cognitive impairment is.”
“Policies we make as a country are going to have a disproportionate effect on our adolescents and young adults,” said Douglas, as marijuana use is more common than alcohol and even cigarette among that demographic.
Marijuana as a drug continues to evolve, not only since its potency has been tripled through craft breeding, but in how it’s consumed. Hash oil, which like other drugs can sometimes be purchased through the Internet, is often vaporized in the e-cigarettes that are in common use. “I think one of the big challenges I see these days is the e-cigarette,” which Douglas described as being “heavily tied to the drug-abuse community.”
“It’s a little vaporizing machine and there’s a chamber here that can contain liquid ... Instead of loading it with nicotine solution, people load it with hash oil and other drugs — anything that can be vaporized,” he said.
“Hash oil is about 50% concentrated THC,” the chemical responsible for the euphoria in the drug,” he said. “The highest concentration in marijuana is about 12% now.”
“There’s actually over 400 different chemicals in marijuana,” he said, but only THC and Cannabidiol, which given a countering calming effect to the THC stimulation, are “the two main compounds that are of clinical interest at this time related to marijuana use.”
Synthetic cannabinoids, which consist of plant matter that has been sprayed with manmade chemicals, have also become popular and are easily obtained at certain shops and even gas stations. “It’s still very new and still widely available,” Douglas said, “and in fact a lot of people buy it online and have it shipped to them … It is illegal to sell in the gas station, (but) it’s actually sold usually as incense or potpourri, and it’s usually sold as things other than it is.”
“There is a whole synthetic drug industry where drugs are being made intentionally to skirt legislation,” he said, noting he has patients in his office who have ordered ecstasy and cocaine online.
Douglas explained that marijuana, which is technically the flower and leaves of the cannabis sativa plant, has been deemed a controlled substance by the federal government since 1970. While it is still technically illegal according to federal law, it has been legalized for medical use in 23 states including Connecticut, and is now legal for recreation in Colorado and Washington.
Douglas stressed that it’s important for parents to encourage children to refrain from trying marijuana for as long as possible, given its adverse effects on brain development and functioning, not to mention related dangers such as motor vehicle accidents that result from impaired coordination and other symptoms.
“Cannabis is definitely addictive, and what I mean by addiction is when someone has lost control over their ability to use a substance,” he said. “They just can’t stop using the drugs despite all these reasons that are coming up. They hust don’t have the control to do that.”
Douglas stressed the value to talking to children about the effects of the drug, as well as stating a desire that they not indulge. He said that despite appearances to the contrary, children do listen to what adults in their lives are telling them, as well as what they’re demonstrating by example.
Along with a having a strong family bond, Douglas said positive school engagement and involvement can be a key tool in preventing drug use, or certainly postponing it.
“It has been shown that for every year someone delays their initiation for using alcohol or drugs, they decrease their risk of addiction by five percent,” he said, “and the reason that is, is because as a young person is going through their life they’re encountering different stressors (and) different pressures.”
“When they start using drugs, they stop learning how to use their coping skills to deal with life,” he said, “and using drugs becomes their coping skill.”
“That’s what increases their risk of addiction.”
Douglas wrapped up by saying he didn’t want to overplay the negative effects of the drug, but said it was important to recognize the push to make it publicly palatable. That’s one of the problems, he said, of having “an industry behind the development of this product.”
“It’s certainly not safe,” he said. “That’s the message that I hope is becoming clear. This is not a safe drug.
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