Marijuana in the News

Marijuana's So-Called Gateway Effect
Kids Who Smoke Pot Are More Likely to Be Offered LSD

April 5, 2002 -- Marijuana has been called a "gateway" drug because it's suspected that smoking pot is often the first step toward using stronger, potentially more dangerous substances. And now there's some proof to back up that suspicion.

The research appears in the most recent issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence. A Johns Hopkins University team looked at data from the 40,000 people age 21 and younger who took part in the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. They found that 47% of those who used marijuana had been offered hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, while only 6% of those who did not smoke pot had been offered hallucinogens. Overall, the pot smokers were at least 16 times more likely than were the nonsmokers to have had an opportunity to try hallucinogenic drugs.

Not only were the pot smokers more likely to get the chance to try the stronger drugs, but "marijuana use is associated with greater likelihood of actual hallucinogen use once an initial hallucinogen exposure opportunity has occurred," the researchers write.

They offer two possible explanations for the findings. First, kids using one drug are more likely to be hanging out with kids using other drugs. And second, once offered, kids who are already experimenting with drugs are more willing than non-users to try another.

The next step, the researchers write, is to clarify why some marijuana users are exposed to hallucinogens while others are not, and "to understand why some marijuana users do not progress [to other drugs] even when they have a chance to do so."

Why You Shouldn't Allow Your Children To Smoke Marijuana

Some parents who saw marijuana being widely used in their youth have wondered, "Is marijuana really so bad for my child?" The answer is an emphatic "yes," and parents should familiarize themselves with these reasons:

Marijuana now exists in forms that are stronger - with higher levels of THC, the psychoactive ingredient - than in the 1960s.

Studies show that someone who smokes five joints a week may be taking in as many cancer-causing chemicals as someone who smokes a full pack of cigarettes every day.

Marijuana is illegal.

Hanging around users of marijuana often means being exposed not only to other drugs later on, but also to a lifestyle that can include trouble in school, engaging in sexual activity while young, unintended pregnancy, difficulties with the law, and other problems.

Marijuana use can slow down reaction time and distort perceptions. This can interfere with athletic performance, decrease a sense of danger, and increase risk of injury.

Regular marijuana users can lose the ability to concentrate that is needed to master important academic skills, and they can experience short-term memory loss. Habitual marijuana users tend to do worse in school and are much more likely to drop out altogether.

Teens who rely on marijuana as a chemical crutch and refuse to face the challenges of growing up never learn the emotional, psychological, and social lessons of adolescence.

Drug Use More Prevalent Among American than European Teens
The New York Times-February 21, 2001

A recent study released at a World Health Organization meeting found that American teens are more likely to smoke marijuana and use other illicit drugs than their European counterparts. While they are more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, only 17 percent of European 10th graders reported marijuana use, compared to 41 percent of American 10th graders.

Research Shows TV PSAs Effective in Reducing Teen Marijuana Use
January 31, 2001

Researchers have demonstrated that television public service announcements (PSAs) designed for and targeted to specific teen personality-types can significantly reduce their marijuana use. In a study published in the February 2001 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers report that PSAs with an anti-marijuana use message resulted in at least a 26.7 percent drop in the use of that drug among the targeted teen population.

"This study shows that public health messages can have a significant impact if they are prepared and delivered appropriately," says Dr. Alan I. Leshner, Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
The PSAs were designed to appeal to the 50 percent of teens who tested high (above the median) on sensation seeking. Teens with this personality trait are much more at risk for using drugs, and for using drugs at an earlier age, than are adolescents who test low as sensation seekers.

Dr. Philip Palmgreen, head of the University of Kentucky research team that conducted the study, said that sensation seeking is a "personality trait associated with the need for novel, emotionally intense stimuli and the willingness to take risks to obtain such stimulation."

He and his colleagues used this trait as the basis for developing SENTAR, a prevention approach targeted at sensation seekers. SENTAR encompasses several components, including designing high-sensation-value prevention messages that are novel, dramatic, and attention-getting, and placing these messages in high-sensation-value contexts, such as TV programs that are favorites of high sensation seekers. This study shows that not only does a SENTAR-based campaign get the attention of high sensation seeking teens, but that such campaigns can also change their drug use behaviors.

As part of the study, anti-marijuana PSAs developed for adolescent high sensation seekers were televised January through April 1997 in Fayette County (which includes the city of Lexington) Kentucky. Similar campaigns were conducted January through April 1998 in both Fayette County and Knox County (which includes the city of Knoxville), Tennessee. The PSAs were placed in programs that survey results had indicated are watched by high sensation seeking adolescents. An average of 777 paid spots and 1,160 unpaid spots were aired per campaign. At least 70 percent of the targeted age group was exposed to a minimum of three PSAs a week.

To establish the extent of teen marijuana use prior to the campaigns and to assess the effect of the campaigns, 100 randomly selected public school students were interviewed each month in each county for 32 months. The interviews started 8 months before the first Fayette campaign and ended 8 months after the last campaign. The teens were in grades 7 through 10 at the time of the initial interviews. In total, more than 3,000 teens were interviewed in each county.

Pre-exposure levels of marijuana use and other substances by 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in both counties were found to be consistent with figures reported by NIDA's annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) study. For example, 25.5 percent of Fayette County and 20.3 percent of Knox County 12th graders had used marijuana in the past 30 days, in line with 1997 and 1998 national MTF 12th grade estimates of 23.7 percent and 22.8 percent.

The campaigns, however, resulted in significant reductions in current marijuana use (defined as use within the past 30 days) by the target population. The campaigns also were successful in reversing the usual trend of more teens beginning to use marijuana as they get older. In Knox County, effects of the campaign still were evident several months after its conclusion. There, the estimated drop in the relative proportion of high sensation seekers using marijuana was 26.7 percent.

As expected, the campaigns had no effect on teens characterized as low sensation seekers, a group that already exhibited low levels of marijuana use. "While these findings do not indicate that all anti-drug PSAs will produce behavioral change, nor that PSAs alone should be the only avenue to prevention, they do show that SENTAR-based PSAs can play an important role in drug abuse prevention," Dr. Palmgreen concluded.


For Some, Marijuana Grows Mean
By HOWARD MARKEL, M.D.

Recently one morning, I received an urgent call from the mother of an 18-year-old named Daniel, whom I treat for marijuana abuse.

For most of the past few years, Daniel had smoked more than a quarter of an ounce of marijuana daily and was almost always high, except, perhaps, when he was asleep.

His marijuana problem has led to many others: he has been hospitalized, fired from jobs and thrown out of high school. He has faced run-ins with the police and lost the trust of most of his family members and friends.

"Daniel had another relapse," his mother said that morning. Released only a month earlier from a drug rehabilitation program, Daniel and a friend had obtained some potent hash-oil-laced blunts, or marijuana-filled cigars, and smoked themselves into oblivion.

Marijuana, of course, can make one giddy and euphoric but it can also make one quite paranoid. Instead of the mellow high they were promised, the young men became enraged and began fighting over who would take custody of the remaining marijuana.

In an angered haze, Daniel pulled out his jackknife and threatened to use it if his friend refused to give up the blunts. In reality, he nicked the other boy's skin. But at the time, Daniel was convinced that he had killed his friend.

Inebriated and frantic, Daniel ran home to confess his crime to his mother. When she called me, he was already being evaluated in the emergency room.

Since the 1960's, many Americans have been more lenient in assessing the risks of marijuana than those of heroin, cocaine or even alcohol.

Marijuana does not destroy the liver, as alcohol does, nor is it as vicious a drug of abuse as heroin or cocaine. Indeed, the physical manifestations of dependency on pot are small in comparison.

And because marijuana's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is lipophilic, it remains in the fat cells of the body for days to weeks, slowly working itself out without any of the harsh physical withdrawal symptoms seen in the alcoholic or heroin user who goes cold turkey.

But today marijuana is anywhere from 10 to 20 times as potent as what was passed around at Woodstock. With that increase in potency, the risks of daily dependence have increased. In fact, many users are dependent on marijuana and suffer from all the psychological ramifications, if not the serious signs physical addiction.

These include feeling a need to use the drug daily to cope with life, consuming ever-increasing amounts to achieve a high, expending considerable money and effort to get and use the drug in relation to other needs or priorities, lying about drug use to family members, and losing loving, trusting relationships.

With marijuana dependence, these destructive forces can be every bit as severe as the forces that can bring havoc to the lives of people who rely on the bottle, the syringe or crack pipe.

Addiction specialists have long understood that some people have a genetic or neurochemical predisposition to particular drug addictions or dependencies.

One colleague explains it this way: "These people have a light switch in the brain, and if they come in contact with their substance of abuse, that switch is turned on and is very hard to turn off." Moreover, marijuana use is widespread among American teenagers.

In the past year, more than 40 percent of all high school seniors used marijuana at least once and more than 10 percent of them used it monthly, or more often. Invariably, some of these young people, like Daniel, are hard-wired for THC dependence. But we have no diagnostic test to predict which ones they are.

When I visited Daniel in the hospital, he was relieved that he had not injured his friend but ashamed about his relapse. "I keep saying I will quit," he told me, "but every time I begin to do well, I go right back to it."

He is hardly alone. Among addicted teenagers, who do not always think through the long-term consequences of their actions, well over two-thirds who try abstinence will relapse.

At the end of our chat, Daniel timidly asked, "Maybe this is just too big for me to fight, you think?"

As he spoke, I could see more of the 9-year-old I used to reward with lollipops for taking vaccinations than the troubled young man he is today.

I reassured him that he did not have to fight this alone, that there were people who cared about him who wanted to help and that he needed to keep trying. As I left his room with a profound respect for the illness he was battling, I could only hope that next time he might be able to wrestle it to a draw.

MARIJUANA HOUSES GROWING OUT OF CONTROL

Barbara Brown, Lori Fazari

More than 100 large-scale marijuana labs are quietly operating in residential neighbourhoods but Hamilton police have been too busy to raid them. That was the testimony yesterday from a drug-and-vice squad officer, Detective Mark Petkoff, who took part in a January raid in which 532 marijuana plants were seized from a Stoney Creek house, along with $30,000 in pot-growing equipment and nearly $8,000 in cash. He told Ontario Court Justice Bernd Zabel the number and size of residential grow operations in Hamilton has increased dramatically in the past 18 months. "There are well over 100 suspected grow operations which have not been investigated. We base this on Crime Stoppers and other tips that come into our office. Your Honour, I constantly get calls from neighbours and that is sometimes how we prioritize these things."

The detective was testifying at the sentence hearing of Khuong Van Nguyen, 38, who pleaded guilty on March 7 to cultivating cannabis marijuana and to theft of electricity valued at more than $5,000.

Police were alerted by Hamilton Hydro after the utility received an anonymous tip about a suspected hydro theft at a Chianti Crescent residence. When the utility investigated, its agent noticed a strong odour of marijuana evident from the front sidewalk of the two-storey, single-family house.

In a recent interview, Police Chief Ken Robertson told The Spectator: "There are only so many officers we can devote to breaking up home-grows when there's all kinds of other crimes to contend with."

Carmen Upton, a revenue protection specialist at Hamilton Hydro, testified the house, which was home to several adults and four small children, was a dangerous fire trap and an electrocution hazard.

In order to power 53 grow lamps of 1,000 watts each, the illegal gardeners bypassed their hydro meter and tapped directly into the power lines servicing the house. By this means, they milked the utility of thousands of dollars a month in stolen electricity.

Upton said this type of electrical theft amounts to losses in the millions of dollars a year for Hamilton Hydro.

When the utility company read the meter at 32 Chianti Crescent on Jan. 25, it showed 203 watts of power. But when measured at the source, the actual amount surging into the house was a whopping 29,040 watts. This far exceeded the safe rating or capacity of the home's 100-ampere service, Upton said.

Upton entered with police when they executed their search warrant on Jan. 30. He said the house was rife with fire and electrical hazards, including exposed live wires and overheated electrical ballasts, which were used to operate fluorescent lamps.

"They had fans blowing on this equipment, trying to keep it cool, but the wooden shelves under the ballasts were all scorched and burned."

Police laboured several hours in 32 C heat carting portable fans, blowers, piping, hydroponic equipment, garbage pails and plastic bags out of the house.

Petkoff said the potential value of the marijuana seized was $532,000. At a street value of $300 per ounce, it would require a yield of 3 1/3 ounces of bud per plant to make $1,000. This estimate does not include shake from leaves and stems, which is used to manufacture cannabis resin.

Detective Sergeant Rick Wills, head of vice and drugs, said the 16-officer unit was swamped with tips about marijuana grow operations.

Petkoff said precautionary measures require at least six officers to execute a raid on a suspected grow operation.

The day Nguyen was busted, more than 100 search warrants were executed by police services across Canada in a project called Operation Green-sweep, which targeted hydroponic marijuana operations across the country.

Nguyen's sentence hearing continues on May 9.

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