LEGALIZED MARIJUANA

Reefer madness: On teens and pot, those

stars you see are asterisks

Health officials acknowledged there would likely be little progress toward

legalization of marijuana while the anti-drug Conservatives hold power in
Ottawa, instead suggesting such a radical change would likely come about
only if the Liberals win the fall election.

BY JEFF CHIU/AP
ERIN ANDERSSEN
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 15, 2015 UPDATED DECEMBER 24, 2016
Legalizing marijuana is now an official goal of the federal government, and not just a
campaign promise. Ontario's premier even suggested this week that the province's
liquor stores could sell weed next to wine. The natural worry for parents and policy
makers is what this might mean for teenagers. Here's what you need to know.

What does the science say about a teenager's brain on pot?

Researchers have definitely found some worrisome links. A University of Ottawa study
found an increase in brain activity when performing cognitive tasks in teenagers who
smoked pot at least once a week for three years – in other words, their brains had to
work harder on tests measuring areas such as working memory and sustained attention.
A 2014 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience also found structural changes in
brain regions affecting emotion and reward processing in teens who smoked up at least
once a week. A New Zealand study published in 2012 that followed subjects from birth
into their 40s, linked long-term marijuana use to lower IQs – particularly for teens who
continued using into adulthood. Experiments with rats have also found memory deficits
in rodents given marijuana extract in adolescence. Other research has suggested a link,
especially in teenaged boys, between marijuana use and schizophrenia. And compared
with their non-stoner peers, teenagers who smoked pot daily, according to a 2014 study
published in the Lancet medical journal, were 60 per cent less likely to finish high
school or get a university degree than those who didn't smoke. They were also eight
times more likely to use other illicit drugs as adults, and seven times more likely to
attempt suicide.

That sounds pretty conclusive. Is it?

It's safe to conclude that marijuana isn't doing the teenage brain any favours – and, in
some cases, it's at least a factor in serious harm. Still, a shortcoming of many of these
studies is that they reveal a "correlation" between pot and certain deficits, but not
whether pot directly "caused" the brain changes, or whether those differences existed
before the pot use. Further confounding the studies is the fact that teenaged pot
smokers – especially chronic users – often differ in many ways from their weed-averse
teens; for one, they typically drink more alcohol and use other illicit drugs. Scientists
also speculate that the negative effects of marijuana may be influenced by genetics,
potentially explaining, for instance, the connection to schizophrenia. For years, one
theory has been that teens starting to experience the symptoms of schizophrenia were
self-medicating with marijuana. That's been largely debunked by new scientific
research. But it is still unclear whether marijuana changes the brain in ways that lead to
schizophrenia, or whether it triggers schizophrenia in teenagers already genetically
disposed to the mental illness.

Will legalization lead to a nation of teenaged stoners?

In the summer, an American study analyzed the self-reported pot use among one
million teenagers in 48 states between 1991 and 2014. In the 21 states that had passed a
medical-marijuana law, researchers found that, while the teens in those states tended to
be higher users in general, there was no increase in use after the law was passed. If
legalization did translate into higher teen use, you might expect states such as Colorado
and a nation such as the Netherlands to have the world's most stoned adolescents. But,
based on 2013 data, the percentage of Colorado teens who reported using pot in the
previous month fell slightly since the law changed. And according to the United Nations,
17 per cent of Dutch teenagers said they had smoked pot in the last year – compared
with 28 per cent in Canada.

So what's the Canadian story?

Teenagers here already have the highest rate of cannabis use in the developed world.
According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, about 10 per cent of Grade 12
students smoked up daily. It's pretty clear that motivated teenagers have figured out a
way to score an illegal joint long before politicians were talking about selling pot in
liquor stores. What's more, the street pot they're smoking is a lot stronger than the kind
that made the rounds at Woodstock. In the 1960s, marijuana contained 1 per cent
tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient. Today's weed has a THC
concentration of at least 10 per cent and, according to Health Canada, as much as 30 per
cent. Regulating marijuana would arguably make a safer product.

So what should I tell my teenager?

Quote the science. Adolescence is a critical stage of development for the brain, which
continues to build new connections even into adulthood. Parents can tell their kids that,
given the preponderance of evidence suggesting negative and possibly permanent
effects, and the fact that science cannot yet predict who may be most vulnerable to
harm, smoking pot during a brain-boosting time of life is not a good idea. (Incidentally,
parents should share the same message about binge drinking.) In the New Zealand
study, for instance, while subjects who started smoking only as adults didn't show IQ
deficits, teenagers who eventually gave up pot did not restore their IQs to the level of
their non-smoking peers. Many researchers suggest that educating teenagers about the
scientific findings may be the biggest deterrent to drug use – whatever the law of the
land.

Questions:

1.) How reliable are the sources of this article?

2.) Who are the writers of this article and what are their credentials?
3.) How current in the article/
4.) What type of propaganda could you design to get this “message” across to your
readers/viewers?
5.) Where did the information come from for this article?
6.) How do you feel about this article in general and why do you feel that way?
7.) Imagine that you are employed by an anti-marijuana lobby group. Your job is to create a
news article the same length as the one you just read but with an agenda to promote only the
harmful effects of marijuana in society. What types of posters, T.V. written literature,
commercials, and social media techniques would you use?
8.) Create two posters, One news article similar to the one you’ve just read in the Globe and
Mail, and one social media technique you could use for your agenda.

Scoring:

2 posters = 12.5% x 2= 25%

1 typed newspaper article with verified sources and specific facts and details = 50%
1 Social media campaign = 25%

Due Thursday April 26th 2018