ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2009) — Progression to daily marijuana use in adolescence may hasten the onset of symptoms leading up to psychosis, an Emory University study finds. The study was published in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
The researchers analyzed data from 109 hospitalized patients who were experiencing their first psychotic episode. The results showed that patients who had a history of using marijuana, or cannabis, and increased to daily pot smoking experienced both psychotic and pre-psychotic symptoms at earlier ages.
“We were surprised that it wasn’t just whether or not they used cannabis in adolescence that predicted the age of onset, rather it was how quickly they progressed to becoming a daily cannabis user that was the stronger predictor,” said Michael Compton, lead author and assistant professor of psychiatry in the Emory School of Medicine.
The study also found a gender difference: The female subjects who progressed to daily pot smoking had a greater increased risk for the onset of psychosis than the males.
Once again, researchers with grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health desperately seeking that link from marijuana to schizophrenia. Despite numerous analyses showing that the incidence of schizophrenia and psychoses worldwide remains fairly constant and very rare, even during peaks of social marijuana use.
The article points out that marijuana is the most used illicit drug among schizophrenics, but then it is the most used illicit drug among non-schizophrenics as well. It’s hard to separate whether the kids who progressed rapidly to daily cannabis use became psychotic because of their use, or they increased their use to self-medicate away an increase in psychoses.
However, there does seem to be a strong correlation between early and frequent adolescent marijuana use and onset of mental health issues. There is a great deal of brain development going on during early teenage years.
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This is perhaps the strongest evidence yet backing the rational claim that Control and Regulation of cannabis and all its compounds to make it more difficult for our youth to acquire at their most vulnerable point in life – adolescence, would protect them far more than our current prohibition does…
Polls of teens consistently show that alcohol and tobacco are far more difficult for minors to acquire than marijuana in every state, due to their Control and Regulation. No math required. These simple, incontrovertible data speak for themselves. Prohibition is the “Gateway” to the black market purveyors of the real dangers to our youth; cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and a whole host of other potentially lethal drugs are also more easily acquired than the better controlled and regulated substances, such as the aforementioned ubiquitous (legally obtainable for adults) alchohol and tobacco.
Once marijuana is rescheduled, or DE-scheduled, as should actually be the case, we will look back and wonder how it stayed in Schedule I with LSD, heroin and PCP for so many years, creating a damaging mistrust in our youth of all things “Scheduled”. Logic obviously had no role in this disastrous malfeasance perpetrated on US citizens and the world.
The sooner we reschedule (de-scheduling is asking a bit much, at this point; it makes too much sense) the sooner we start to reap the benefits of this wonderful, safe, easy to grow (outdoors, anyway) medicine. And begin to undo over 7 decades of damage to our environment, health and spirit.
Thank you, President Obama, for listening to the people, and signing the bill allowing for long-overdue implementation of medical marijuana dispensaries and other applications in our nation’s capital!
Or did I just dream that?
Apparently not…
http://www.ohiopatientsnetwork.org/
Gohio!
Can’t somebody come up with a potleaf/caduceus (mmj) emoticon?