YOUTH AND MARIJUANA

From the Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology:   That’s a mouthful!   It’s article focused on here, is also contradictory to what the youth in America have come to believe, … and needless to say, … that’s nothing unusual.

Fact is that they’ve (users) trusted people who do not have their best interests at heart.   Wow!   That’s an understatement and a half!   Truth is, these people who’ve made them think that smoking pot won’t hurt them … these manipulators, … they’re evil, … pure evil!

For eons, we’ve been warning teens who regularly use marijuana are at risk for developing serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia!  Now, a new study confirms this.

Whether it’s promoting pot as not being harmful, or promoting it as actually medicinal, this is because regular marijuana use in adolescence, (but supposedly not adulthood),  seems to have been found to permanently damage brain function and cognition, according to new research.

Scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine hope that the latest findings will help warn policy makers contemplating legalizing marijuana about the potential long-term dangers of the drug.   That’s not likely; not only does it fly in the face of the current trends, these “trends” are not happenstance; they’re heavily financed by amoral, agendized and myopically focused evil people.

It seems that even though crowds of potheads gather to go watch the original movie “Reefer Madness” so they can laugh at it, … now they (if they were not so closed off to new information that doesn’t fit in with their belief system) scientifically, it’s shown to actually trigger schizophrenia.

The old movie, “Reefer Madness” just compressed the time frame ……   This new information, is even more damaging to youth than the movie depicts; problem is, … it’s not apparent for a while, thus the distrust of the old time wisdom.   Users don’t notice the change in thinking patterns ….. it happens over too long a time frame and they’re focused on what yields instant gratification at their pertinent stage of life!

“Over the past 20 years, there has been a major controversy about the long-term effects of marijuana, with some evidence that use in adolescence could be damaging,” senior author Asaf Keller, Ph.D., Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine said, in a news release.

Previous studies have suggested that children who start using marijuana before the age of 16 are significantly more likely to develop permanent cognitive deficits and psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia.

“There likely is a genetic susceptibility, and then you add marijuana during adolescence and it becomes the trigger,” Keller explained.

The current study wanted to identify the biological evidence and determine whether marijuana use during adolescence really comes with permanent health risks.

Not that youth who use, will accept any of this, but in the study, researchers examined the cortical oscillations in mice.  Cortical oscillations, or patterns of neuronal activity, are believed to underlie the brain’s various functions.  Researchers say that these oscillations are very abnormal in people with schizophrenia and in other psychiatric disorders.

The study revealed that mice exposed to very low doses of the active ingredient in marijuana for 20 days had “grossly altered” cortical oscillations in adulthood.  Researchers said these mice also exhibited impaired cognitive abilities.

“We also found impaired cognitive behavioral performance in those mice.  The striking finding is that, even though the mice were exposed to very low drug doses, and only for a brief period during adolescence, their brain abnormalities persisted into adulthood,” lead researcher Sylvina Mullins Raver, a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in a statement.

After repeating the experiment in adult mice, researchers found that the cortical oscillations and ability to perform cognitive behavioral tasks remained normal in mice exposed to the drug only after they’ve fully matured.  Researchers said this suggests that it was only marijuana exposure during the critical period of adolescence that impaired cognition through this mechanism.

Further analysis revealed that that the frontal cortex, the brain area that controls executive functions such as planning and impulse control, is significantly more affected by the drugs during adolescence.  Researchers noted that the frontal cortex is also the area most affected in schizophrenia.

While the latest study was on mice, researchers believe that the findings have implications for humans as well.  They say the next step is to continue researching the underlying mechanisms that cause these changes in cortical oscillations.

“The purpose of studying these mechanisms is to see whether we can reverse these effects,” explained Keller.  “We are hoping we will learn more about schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders, which are complicated conditions.  These cognitive symptoms are not affected by medication, but they might be affected by controlling these cortical oscillations.”

As stated at the beginning, these latest findings are published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology (to actually read the info search for: “Adolescent Cannabinoid Exposure Permanently Suppresses Cortical Oscillations in Adult Mice” and if you’re persistent, it can be found on the net.