The real effects of marijuana on teens
Photo illustration by Matt French/The Globe and Mail
Like it or not, your kids will probably try marijuana. So will their friends. Canadian teens are more than twice as likely as adults to smoke pot – and have the highest rate of cannabis use in the developed world. Marijuana has become as much a part of Canada’s youth culture as hockey or Katy Perry.
Fully 28 per cent of Canadian children aged 11 to 15 admitted to using cannabis at least once in the past year (compared to 23 per cent in the United States, where pot is legal in the states of Colorado and Washington, and 17 per cent in the weed-friendly Netherlands), a 2013 United Nations Children’s Fund study found. As much as 5 per cent of Canadian adolescents – and as much as 10 per cent of Grade 12 students – smoke pot every day, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.
Canada’s youth are not only top consumers of the world’s most widely used illicit drug – they are also lab rats for the most potent bud the world has ever known. The pot smoked at Woodstock in 1969 contained about 1 per cent of the psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol. It was mere shrubbery compared to today’s street-grade marijuana, which typically has THC concentrations of at least 10 per cent, but may contain upwards of 30 per cent, according to Health Canada.
As Canadian youth take advantage of easy access to the street drug, despite law-enforcement efforts, pot’s reputation as “nature’s medicine” continues to grow, fuelling the debate over whether to decriminalize or legalize recreational marijuana use. Legalization is shaping up as a key election issue. Just last week, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto declared criminalization a failure at “preventing or reducing harms associated with cannabis use” – prompting support from Bill Blair, chief of police of Canada’s biggest city.
Politicians are staking out ground on marijuana, with the Liberals championing legalization and regulation, the NDP favouring decriminalization and the Conservatives holding the line on enforcement. But do Canadians actually know how the drug affects our most prolific users? For tweens and teens, whose brains are in a crucial stage of development, is there such thing as a harmless pot habit?
To determine what science has to say about the effects of high-octane pot on the developing brain, The Globe interviewed top researchers in the field and combed through dozens of peer-reviewed studies, taking reasoned critiques into account. Here are some key ways cannabis use could affect your child’s brain.
Your kid's brain on pot: READ MORE HERE
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