Study Tackles Marijuana Addiction – Health – redOrbitWhen [marijuana is] used in adolescents, it can permanently change the brain’s chemistry and how the brain functions, said Francesca Filbey, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Filbey and another Mind research scientist, Kent Hutchison, have started a $930,000, five-year study to understand more about the complex workings of marijuana in adolescents.
They want to study the brains of 96 adults, about half of whom used marijuana in their adolescent years and half who didn’t.
“What we want to look at is the long-term effects,” Filbey said. “We want to look at adults and see how their brains have changed.”
The researchers are looking for volunteers to participate in the study. All personal information will be kept confidential, Filbey said.Participants must be over age 18. The researchers are looking both for those who smoked marijuana between ages 13-18 and those who didn’t smoke marijuana between those ages for a control group.
Teenagers should definitely not be using cannabis, except under a doctor’s supervision for specific medical treatment. Studies have shown that marijuana does have harmful effects on the developing adolescent brain. It will be interesting to see what these researchers find. But when I read “marijuana addiction” in the title of the article, I worry about potential bias in the study.
