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ADOLESCENCE
Why Its Still a Big Deal If Your Teen Smokes Pot
With the president coming out in favor of legalization, parents are wondering whether telling their kids not to use
marijuana is futile. But some sobering data about the effects of pot on developing brains can help make the case.
By Randye Hoder @ranhoder Jan. 23, 2014 41 Comments
With each passing day, it seems, smoking pot becomes less and
less stigmatized in our society.
In a much-buzzed-about piece in The New Yorker this week,
President Obama suggested making pot legal in large part to
correct the vast inequities that minorities face in terms of
cannabis-related arrests and imprisonment. Besides, said the
president, who was known to smoke his fair share of weed back
in the day, I dont think it is more dangerous than alcohol for
the individual user.
Even the straight-laced Bill Gates recently announced his
support of legalization. And this years Super Bowl has been
dubbed the Super Doobie Bowl, a reference to the fact that the
teams vying for the NFL championship, the Denver Broncos
and Seattle Seahawks, hail from the two states that have
legalized marijuana for recreational use. Mainstream websites are circulating marijuana-laced
game-day snack recipes. It wont be long before Martha Stewart comes up with her own pot-brownie
concoction.
With all of this hanging in the air, its obvious we parents should be talking to our kids about smoking dope. But what are we supposed to
tell them when its clear that just say no, isnt going to cut it?
After consulting with two researchers from Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine, I now know what Im going to tell my
own 16-year-old: Not so fast, buddy. Your brain simply isnt ready for you to start using pot.
Adolescence is a sensitive time for brain development, says Matthew J. Smith, a research assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral
sciences. If a teen introduces the abuse of marijuana at that point in their life, it could have consequences for their ability to problem
solve, for their memory and for critical thinking in general.
Unfortunately, this crucial message is getting lost in the pro-legalization fervor. Use of pot among adolescents, which had declined from the
late 1990s through the mid-to-late 2000s, is again on the rise, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. One likely reason: The
percentage of high-schoolers who see great risk from being regular marijuana users has dropped, over time the agency points out.
That perception, however, is all wrong. In a study published last month, Smith and his colleagues found that teens who smoked a lot of pot
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had abnormal changes in their brain structures related to working memorya predictor of weak academic performance and impaired
everyday functioningand that they did poorly on memory-related tasks.
While the study focused on heavy marijuana usersspecifically, those who indulged daily for about three yearsone of its most crucial
findings related not to the amount of pot an adolescent smoked, but when he or she started: The earlier the drug was taken up, the worse
the effects on the brain.
Marijuana is the ideal compound to screw up everything for a kid, says Hans Breiter, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at
Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine, and a senior author of the study. If youre an athlete, a chess player, a debater or
an artist, you need working memory, and marijuana hurts the brain circuitry.
Breiter, who himself has four children 11 to 21, adds: The more I study marijuana, the more I wonder if we should have legislation banning
the use of it for everyone under 30.
The study, which appeared in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin, sought to distinguish the effects of daily marijuana use on the adolescent
brain from the effects of schizophrenia on the deep regions of the brain that are necessary for working memory.
Although the researchers were not equating pot smokers with those suffering from schizophreniaa chronic, disabling brain
disorderthey did find parallels in one respect. Schizophrenia is a very disruptive illness on working memory, and using marijuana
produced many similar effects to schizophrenia, Breiter says.
The scientists noted that these effects were still apparent two years after their subjects had stopped using marijuana, but more research will
be needed to determine whether the neurological abnormalities in heavy teen pot smokers are permanent.
In the end, you cant blame kids if theyve come to believe that smoking pot is not that big a deal. The cultural cues are very strong.
President Obama said he tries to fight against this by telling his own two teenage daughters: Its a bad idea, a waste of time, not very
healthy.
But I think that parents have an opportunityand an obligationto be even more pointed with our children by saying to them: If youre
tempted to smoke pot, please hold off as long as you possibly can. Your beautiful brain is still developing.
Randye Hoder @ranhoder
Randye Hoder writes about the intersection of family, politics and culture. Her articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times,
the Wall Street Journal, and Slate.
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