Marijuana & The Brain

Today marijuana is a hot button topic in America. It is something that is commonly in today’s news, something that is easily to debate.  Much has been made of whether it is right that it has been made legal in some states, and whether some states should follow suit and legalize it also. In this March 2014 journal by Robert J. Hilt, he goes on to discuss a possible side effect of using marijuana. Specifically adolescents who may use marijuana.

                The side effect that he focused on was something that I had never thought of and never heard off. That side effect being long term psychosis or hallucinations. I've personally experienced very short term hallucinations from marijuana, at most the minute, but never long term. The article goes on to say that adolescents who abuse marijuana have a higher chance in developing mental disorders, such as schizophrenia. When looking at mood disorders the correlation was relatively weak.

It is a known fact that an adolescent’s brain is less developed than one of an adult. Different in ways such as information processing pathways, number of neurons, degree of dendritic connections, and degree of myelination. Because of this adolescents who are diagnosed at a younger age with schizophrenia have a poorer future prognosis. Basically anything that interrupts the development of the brain, marijuana is the prime example, can have numerous affects that are still being discovered.

In all I find this article is very interesting, mainly because I have never heard this as a consequence of smoking marijuana. I do not truly believe it all though, if anything I think it is just a coincidence that people who had smoked marijuana developed a mental disorder. Overall I think the journal just blows some case out of proportion as a scare tactic.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/1555292788?pq-origsite=summon

Hilt, R. J. (2014). Cannabis and the adolescent brain. Pediatric Annals, 43(3), 89-90. 
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3928.00904481-20140221-02