Parent Tips: Marijuana are we mixing the message?

The National Institute of Drug Abuse recently released their Monitoring the Future Survey and their findings are causing a bit of a stir. Particularly in the area of marijuana use by teens. The report found that " Marijuana use, which had been rising among teens for the past two years, continues to rise again this year—a sharp contrast to the considerable decline of the preceding decade."  What can be the cause of this continued increase? There is a potential theory, in part youth don't see it as unsafe or risky. 

According to the survey “Though this upward shift is not yet very large, its duration and pervasiveness leave no doubt in our minds that it is real,” said Lloyd Johnston, the principal investigator of the study. “Perhaps the most troublesome part of it is that daily use of marijuana increased significantly in all three grades in 2010.” Daily or near-daily use is defined as use on 20 or more occasions in the prior 30 days; the rates for grades 8, 10, and 12 were 1%, 3%, and 6% in 2010. In other words, about one in sixteen 12th graders today uses marijuana on a daily or near-daily basis.

One possible explanation for the resurgence in marijuana use is that in recent years fewer teens report seeing much danger associated with its use, even with regular use.  Possibly as a result, fewer teens have shown disapproval of marijuana use over the past two or three years. Add into the fact of the ambiguity surrounding Medical Marijuana and the confusion that faces teens only increases. This ambiguity over whether marijuana is safe to use or not creates confusion for teens at the very time, when they need structured parental support, solid guidance and real facts. Instead they get mixed messages, and when a mixed message comes across for a teen, they do not turn to adults for reason, but to their peers for peer support. Resulting in potential experimentation that probably would not happen under less confusing time.

So what should you know?

Parents should really under stand that Marijuana is the most commonly abused illicit drug in the United States. It is a dry, shredded green or brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds, and leaves derived from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa. The main active ingredient in marijuana is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC for short.


How is Marijuana abused?
Marijuana is usually smoked as a cigarette (joint) or in a pipe. It is also smoked in blunts, which are cigars that have been emptied of tobacco and refilled with a mixture of marijuana and tobacco. This mode of delivery combines marijuana's active ingredients with nicotine and other harmful chemicals. Marijuana can also be mixed in food or brewed as a tea. As a more concentrated, resinous form, it is called hashish; as a sticky liquid, hash oil.  Marijuana smoke has a pungent and distinctive, usually sweet-and-sour odor.


How does Marijuana Affect the Brain?


Brain Activity on THC



When a person smokes marijuana, THC rapidly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream, which carries the chemical to the brain and other organs throughout the body. THC acts upon specific sites in the brain, called cannabinoid receptors, kicking off a series of cellular reactions that ultimately lead to the "high" that users experience. Some areas of the brain have many cannabinoid receptors while others only have a few or none.  The highest density of cannabinoid receptors are found in parts of the brain that influence pleasure, memory, thinking, concentrating, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement.



Brain Activity Off of THC



What marijuana does is that it can cause distorted perceptions, impaired coordination, difficulty with thinking and problem solving and problems with learning and memory. For chronic users, marijuana's adversely impacts learning and memory, which lasts for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off.

Is Marijuana Addicting?

Long-term use of marijuana abuse can lead to addiction; that is, compulsive drug seeking and abuse despite the known harmful effects upon functioning in the context of family, school, work and recreational activities. 9 percent of users become addicted to marijuana; this number increases among those who start young (to about 17%) and among daily users (25-50%).

Long-term marijuana abusers trying to quite report withdrawal symptoms including: irritability, sleeplessness, decreased appetite, anxiety and drug craving, all of which can make it difficult to remain abstinent. These symptoms begin within about 2 day following abstinence, peak at 2-3 days and subside within 1 or 2 weeks following drug cessation.

So what should parents do?

Here are some quick tips:


1. Parents need to become educated, by learning about the drugs that might be available in their community.
2. Work very hard and developing lines of communication with your children. Be open to listening to their needs and interact with them as often as possible. Teens will not simply open up to their parents. Parents must constantly engage their children, through conversations, one-on-one interactions and providing advice on matters as they pop up.
3. Get to know their friends. Know who their parents are, what the teens are interested in, as well as the teens parents.

4. Network: Network with other parents, teachers, police officers, public officials and prevention specialists in your community to stay abreast of activity, trends and issues as they appear in your community.

5. Be involved, Be involved in every aspect of your child's life.