UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

This comes as no surprise to me. If marijuana is medically acceptable for whatever ails you, why wouldn’t teens think that there’s no harm in smoking pot?

While the NIH study showed that the use of other drugs among high school students has waned, just wait until the regular use of pot becomes prosaic. Then those pot headed teens will try to find a better high by turning onto other drugs.

REGULAR POT USE BY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS HITS PEAK
By Anahad O'Connor

The New York Times
December 14, 2011

One out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on a near daily basis, a figure that has reached a 30-year peak even as use of alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine among teenagers continues a slow decline, according to a new government report.

The popularity of marijuana, which is now more prevalent among 10th-graders than cigarette smoking, reflects what researchers and drug officials said is a growing perception among teenagers that habitual marijuana use carries little risk of harm. That perception is fueled in part by wider familiarity with medicinal marijuana and greater ease in obtaining it, they said.

Although it is difficult to track the numbers, "we're clearly seeing an increase in teenage marijuana use that corresponds pretty clearly in time with the increase in medical marijuana use," said Dr. Christian Thurstone, medical director of the adolescent substance abuse treatment program at Denver Health and Hospital Authority, who was not involved in the study.

The long-running annual report, called the Monitoring the Future survey and financed by the National Institutes of Health, looked at more than 46,000 students nationwide. Overall, about 25 percent of 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders who took part in the study reported using marijuana in the past year, up from about 21 percent in 2007.

R. Gil Kerlikowske, the federal drug czar, said he believed the increasing prevalence of medicinal marijuana was a factor in the uptick.

"These last couple years, the amount of attention that's been given to medical marijuana has been huge," he said. "And when I've done focus groups with high school students in states where medical marijuana is legal, they say, 'Well, if its called medicine and it's given to patients by caregivers, then that's really the wrong message for us as high school students.' "

The report also revealed that a mixture of herbs and chemicals known as "spice" or "K2" - or synthetic marijuana, since it mimics the intoxicating effects of herbal marijuana - has quickly gained popularity. One in every nine high school seniors reported using it in the past year; most of them also regularly used marijuana.

While interest in marijuana and synthetic marijuana has climbed, the willingness to try most other drugs has waned. The report found declines in the use of crack, cocaine, over-the-counter cough and cold medicines, sedatives, tranquilizers and prescription drugs like Adderall and the narcotic painkiller Vicodin.