Marijuana

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN March 19, 2022 Some people with pain, anxiety or depression who obtain medical marijuana cards may overuse marijuana within a short time frame, leading to cannabis use disorder while failing to improve their symptoms, a new study found.

SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) has developed a resource guide to review the literature on prevention of marijuana use among youth, distill the research into recommendations for practice, and provide examples of the ways these recommendations can be implemented. Abstract Marijuana use among youth and young adults is a major public health concern. Early youth marijuana use is associated with:1. Neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental decline2. Poor school performance3. Increased school drop-out rates4. Increased risk for psychotic disorders in adulthood5. Increased risk for later depression6. Suicidal ideation or behavior As policy and legalization efforts evolve and the availability of legal marijuana increases, communities and families need guidance to support the prevention of marijuana use among youth. This guide covers programs and policies to prevent marijuana use among youth aged 12 to 17, including:1. Environmental strategies, such as regulating the price of marijuana products, where these products are sold, the

American Lung Association / https://www.lung.org The American Lung Association is concerned about the health impacts of marijuana use, especially on lung health. We caution the public against smoking marijuana because of the risks it poses to the lungs. Scientists are researching marijuana now, and the American Lung Association encourages continued research into the effects of marijuana use on lung health. Smoke is harmful to lung health. Whether from burning wood, tobacco or marijuana, toxins and carcinogens are released from the combustion of materials. Smoke from marijuana combustion has been shown to contain many of the same toxins, irritants and carcinogens as tobacco smoke. Beyond just what’s in the smoke alone, marijuana is typically smoked differently than tobacco. Marijuana smokers tend to inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer than cigarette smokers, which leads to a greater exposure per breath to tar. Secondhand marijuana smoke contains many of the same

By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD / July 15, 2021 / https://www.latimes.com Nearly five years after Californians voted to create a legal marijuana industry through Proposition 64, the illegal weed market is as big as or even bigger than it was before the ballot measure passed. The end of prohibition at the state level was supposed to be the beginning of a highly regulated marijuana market served by legitimate, taxpaying companies (even though marijuana remains illegal under federal law). Legalization was billed as a way to tame the Wild West-style marijuana industry, which often flouted environmental and health strictures and was a bastion for organized crime. It hasn’t worked out that way for a variety of reasons. Nowhere is the failure of Proposition 64 more apparent than in the deserts of Southern California, where a booming illegal marijuana industry has spread across the arid landscape. Click here to read the rest

Partnership to End Addiction / By Partnership Staff / May 2021 www.drugfree.org As more states legalize marijuana, how can parents and policymakers protect young people from the risks marijuana can cause? Partnership to End Addiction CEO Creighton Drury spoke with Kevin Sabet, Ph.D., CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and author of Smoke Screen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know, and Linda Richter, Ph.D., Vice President, Prevention Research and Analysis at Partnership to End Addiction, about the issue and possible solutions. Click here to read the rest of the article.

Wednesday, 26 May 2021 Newfangled marijuana products — edibles, concentrates, vapes — are driving an overall increase in pot-related calls to U.S. poison control centers, a new study shows. There were more than 11,100 calls related to marijuana use in 2019, up from about 8,200 in 2017, researchers said. More and more of those calls are related to manufactured products that contain distilled amounts of THC, CBD, and other chemicals found in cannabis. “We saw this generalized increase in calls nationally,” said lead researcher Julia Dilley, an epidemiologist with the Oregon Public Health Division in Portland. “But when we dug into it, that increase is being driven by these manufactured products,” Dilley continued. “Flower cannabis exposure calls are actually declining.” Pot plant exposures made up the bulk of calls to centers in 2017, with 7,146 pertaining to marijuana plants and just 1,094 related to manufactured products. But by 2019, calls

Author: Tracie White / April 16, 2021 / https://scopeblog.stanford.edu April 16, 2021 States that legalize recreational marijuana use, and in some cases allow retail sales of the drug, may see more suicide attempts and other self-harm among younger men, a new Stanford Medicine study suggests. Researchers examined whether rates of self harm injuries — which include suicide attempts and non-suicidal behaviors like cutting — correlate with changing marijuana laws and found an increase among men younger than 40 in states that allow recreational use. The study indicated no such correlation with states that allow only medical marijuana use. “States that legalize, but still constrain commercialization, may be better positioned to protect populations from unintended harms,” said Keith Humphreys, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Humphreys is the senior author of the study published March 18 in JAMA Network Open. Ellicott Matthay, PhD, a post doctoral scholar at UC-San Francisco,

By DR. GREGORY SHANGOLDHARTFORD COURANTAPR 05, 2021 Legalizing recreational marijuana has been cast as a state budget matter, but to physicians, marijuana use is a public health matter. At the start of each physician’s career, we take the Hippocratic Oath, committing ourselves to science and a set of ethical principles that promote health, honesty, trust and service to all patients in need of medical care. Fragments of the oath can be traced back thousands of years, making it sacred to medical providers like me. The Connecticut State Medical Society believes it must ensure that Connecticut policymakers and their constituents — our patients — are informed about the health and societal ramifications of public policies. One such issue is legalizing recreational marijuana, which the CSMS sees as a bad idea. Click here to read the full op-ed.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month! So, Johnny’s Ambassadors is hosting Marijuana Mental Health Awareness Month, to draw attention to the mental harms that can come to youth who use marijuana! Please join the Marijuana Prevention Challenge! Click on the following link to be a part of Johnny’s Ambassadors Marijuana Prevention Challenge.https://johnnysambassadors.org/mentalhealth/

FEBRUARY 1, 2021 EDITOR https://poppot.org Black market growers of marijuana destroyed my Colorado retreatWhenever you listen to or read dialog from the pro-marijuana crowd, they say that legalizing marijuana will make the black market go away. This statement is a blatant lie. Rather, legalizing marijuana invites criminal organizations into your state and allows them to grow pot illegally under the guise of running a legal operation. I am the owner of a summer home in rural Colorado with beautiful mountain views. In the midst of this beauty, a Chinese group purchased a ten-acre parcel with a house near my home. Within a year, they had cleared a section of the indigenous vegetation, which is so important to the survival of the local wildlife, and illegally grew thousands of marijuana plants. These marijuana plants are not even native to Colorado or North America; in fact, they had to grow them in

Minority experience worsening of symptoms over time, especially younger peopleDate: January 8, 2021Source: Michigan Medicine – University of MichiganSummary: More than half of people who use medical marijuana products to ease pain also experience clusters of multiple withdrawal symptoms when they’re between uses, a new study finds. And about 10% of the patients taking part in the study experienced worsening changes to their sleep, mood, mental state, energy and appetite over the next two years as they continued to use cannabis. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210108142134.htm