How Does Marijuana Affect the Brains of Young People?

THC or tetrahydrocannabinol in marijuana or cannabis is known to trigger brain region responses related to memory, coordination, perception, and thinking. Thusly, this chemical has a lasting impact on the brain of those who use cannabis if the drug is taken frequently over a certain extended time period. This goes double for young people and their developing brains as well.

True, there’s less known about how the brain’s first introduction to marijuana affects it and its neurons than how cannabis dependency is developed. This is because most marijuana studies in regards to its mental effects are mostly done on addicts and chronic cannabis users. According to Susan Weiss, PhD (the Director of the Division of Extramural Research of NIDA or the National Institute on Drug Abuse), there isn’t much data on those who use the substance only once or twice and occasionally.

The Upcoming ABCD Study and Marijuana

There are quite a number of studies being conducted that should shed light on the multitude of ways that cannabis affects the average teen’s developing brain. Researchers from the NCI or National Cancer Institute, the NIAAA or National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and NIDA are leading a new study on children’s brain and body development in light of outside factors, in fact.

The ABCD or Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study is a study that’s currently being conducted that should uncover what happens to a first-time user. Will one-time use change the brain and make the youth more vulnerable to taking other drugs, thus cannabis gets to earn its long-time moniker of being a gateway drug? That’s what the ABCD study intends to find out. To wit:

• What Is the ABCD Study? The ABCD study is a collaborative investigation funded by the NIH or National Institutes of Health. This a decade-long project that will follow 10,000 children aged 9-10 years old. It will get its info from academic records, surveys, psychological tests, genetic tests, and brain scans. The study should help reveal the complex role cannabis has in triggering brain changes or even schizophrenia in certain individuals.
• What Is the Goal of the ABCD Study? According to Weiss, its aim is to help scientists single out the cannabis effects on brain development and maturity. It could specifically open a door or at least a window into how the developing brain is shaped by biological factors like sex hormone exposure and various other variables, such as social or peer pressure and exercise.
• How Will the ABCD Study Go About Its Goal? 21 research centers across the United States of America will follow 10,000 children from age 9 to 10 over a decade. Every 2 years, researchers will conduct MRIs or Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans on the brains of the participants. They’ll also collect biospecimens like saliva for them to genetically analyze and examine the children’s interview answers and cognitive test performance. Follow-ups will happen every 3-6 months.
• What Can Be Derived from the ABCD Study? Aside from analyzing the effects of experimenting on marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, and other substances on a percentage of participants, the study also aims to track and map out the physical and behavioral trajectories of these children over a 10-year period. The study should create the first-ever dependable map of adolescent bodies and brains as they’re shaped by social and biological factors.

The Reefer Madness Effect Has Ruined Objective Marijuana Research

The government-funded anti-drug propaganda against marijuana as a gateway drug of the worst kind back in the 20th Century hasn’t exactly helped in accurately examining the effects of cannabis on the youth and their brains. Movies like “Reefer Madness” and all the anti-drug PSAs or public service announcements against using pot have commonly mischaracterized or exaggerated the perils of cannabis, claiming they can cause psychosis, addiction, and brain damage.

• Fodder for the Pro-Legalization Side of the Debate: Such hard-sell tactics to discourage teens from using marijuana has actually helped the pro-legalization side of the marijuana debate to make their case. In fact, only a small percentage of marijuana users develop outright addiction or marijuana disorder at all. Furthermore, it’s still unclear whether marijuana is capable of lasting brain damage or not.
• Many teenaged cannabis users use pot but not in a chronic or abusive way but instead in a recreational manner, so when they don’t develop brain damage, psychosis, or addiction as advertised by the PSAs of yore, their bias against such propaganda are only confirmed. You can’t blame the instinctive skepticism of many a teen after they’ve discovered firsthand that marijuana isn’t “that bad”.
• The Unvarnished Facts Are Scary Enough: It’s more effective to present to teens what marijuana actually does to them rather than claim falsehoods to scare them “straight”. For example, getting high impairs learning, memory, and attention. Your brain is clouded by either a couch-lock effect or a euphoric effect depending on the strain of marijuana you took.
• Those are actual facts that can make a teen think twice before taking a hit of pot. It’s better than claiming they’ll develop brain damage. What’s more, some of today’s stronger strains or varieties of marijuana are confirmed to make people physically ill or outright delusional, especially if they’re first-time pot users.
• Adult Users versus Teen Users of Cannabis: There are loads of studies about the effects of marijuana on adult users. It’s been established that nonusers beat chronic users on tests of verbal abilities, motor skills, memory, and attention. However, these results might be caused by lingering cannabis traces in the body or withdrawal effects from abstaining from cannabis in the first place.
• According to a 2012 meta-analysis of 13 studies, when adults stop using weed for 25 days or more, their cognitive test performance don’t differ all that much compared to nonuser results. However, it’s a different case with teens. During adolescence, the teenaged brain matures in different ways that make it more efficient.
• Marijuana Isn’t Exactly Benign Anyway: Even if the ABCD study reveals that marijuana doesn’t pose a direct danger for teenagers and their developing brains, it’s hardly harmless. The results of the ABCD study isn’t required to showcase how bothersome it is for students to show up high in class since they’ll most likely miss out the social and intellectual stimulation of school that the adolescent brain is typically attuned to.
• It’s during adolescence where humans maximize their capacity to navigate through complex situations, thus literally building your brainpower. It’s a critical time for not only physical development but mental development as well. On average, teenagers who partake heavily on cannabis end up becoming underachievers in school, work, and life, thus leaving them unhappier until their next hit.

Cannabis Use and the Developing Teenage Brain

According to recent studies, it’s during the teenage years that the human brain really starts to develop all the way to an individual’s twenties. As the maturing brain forms new connections and structures, it can end up vulnerable to various disruptions, particularly those exposed to certain experiences such as hard drinks, cigarettes, and “socially accepted” drugs like marijuana.

1. Unclear If the Addictive Tendency Is Causal or Not: It’s currently unclear (until the ABCD study is completed, at least) if the tendency to develop marijuana disorder from people who use it at a young age is because it’s a red flag for a person’s general risk for addiction or if it’s a causal factor and cannabis use actually changes a person’s brain chemistry when used during his or her youth.
2. Potential Reasons for the Marijuana Disorder Tendency: It might be that people who have addiction tendencies are likelier to try cannabis and develop dependency on various substances in general rather than cannabis causing them to be addicted later on. Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone who smokes marijuana as an adult won’t become addicted.
3. The Dangers of Marijuana’s Psychoactive THC: Marijuana’s signature high comes from the psychoactive THC component, which isn’t exactly risk-free. Short-term cannabis use is known to impair functions like decision-making, learning, memory, and attention. The effects of marijuana can last for days even after the high has worn off.
4. Teenagers Who Heavily Use Marijuana Tend to Be Unhappy: Heavy doses of marijuana during early adulthood or adolescence have links or correlations with a dismal set of life outcomes. This includes lower life satisfaction or unhappiness, greater unemployment, increased welfare dependence, higher dropout rates, and poor school performance. Behind the stereotype of the happy high stoner lies broken dreams and unfulfilled potential.
5. Does Marijuana Deserve the Bulk of the Blame? 5.There are researchers who allege that marijuana doesn’t necessarily ruin lives and that its use is more of a symptom than the disease itself. They allege that other factors such as a tendency towards problem behavior, emotional distress, or peer influence could predispose some to use drugs and end up with poor life outcomes. Marijuana isn’t necessarily the cause but rather part of a variety of vulnerability factors.
6. Worrisome Findings from New Zealand: A long-term prospective New Zealand study called the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study by Terrie Moffitt, PhD (a Duke University psychologist) and various colleagues. The study reveals persistent cannabis use has links with IQ declines, even after using a control sample for educational differences. The longitudinal research followed 1,000 New Zealanders born since 1972.
7. The New Zealand Study Claims That Marijuana Makes You Dumber: The participants of the study answered questions about cannabis at 18, 21, 26, 32, and 38 years of age. They also went through neuropsychological testing at 13 and 38 years old. In light of these parameters, New Zealand researchers found that the most persistent cannabis users experienced a neuropsychological function drop of about 6 IQ points. Comparatively, this is the same realm of impact as lead poisoning.
8. Adolescence Is a High-Risk Period for Cannabis Use: Studies from NIDA also suggest that the majority of data and info currently available indicates that adolescence is a high-risk period when it comes to marijuana usage tendencies, particularly when it comes to regular usage of cannabis. Teens that use marijuana are simply likelier to use and abuse marijuana once they grow up.
9. Changes in the Connections of Their Brain Structures: Previous papers and research on the topic show that marijuana users who use the drug often and/or for the long-term show changes in the connections in their brain structures. This suggests that chronically using marijuana can cause such changes. It’s still unknown whether the resulting brain changes of a person using cannabis repeatedly in their youth are in the volume of certain brain areas or within the structures themselves.
10. More Likely to Develop Marijuana Disorder: According to recent and completed studies forwarded to NIDA that have already gotten their results back, people who use marijuana when they were young are likelier to develop marijuana disorder and dependence issues later on as they grow older. They’re also likelier to develop other substance use disorders on top of dealing with chronic cannabis use.
11. Cannabis Can Disrupt the Young Brain’s Developmental Processes: Marijuana can muck up the brain’s development of executive functions such as emotional self-control. Various lines of research confirm that the drug is capable of disrupting these processes that are vital for the maturity of the young brain, especially in light of the fact that the brain itself makes its own supply of cannabinoids.
12. Natural Brain-Made Cannabinoids Regulate Many Bodily Functions: Recent studies actually show how cannabinoids are produced by your body’s own nerve cells for the sake of wiring the brain in adolescence and even during the prenatal stage of development. Throughout a person’s life, these chemicals regulate his or her movement, memory, emotion, and sleep, which make perfect sense in light of marijuana’s mental, appetite, and sensory effects.
13. Concentration of Endocannabinoids During the Teenage Years: According to Yasmin Hurd, a neurologist from Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, during a person’s teenage years, the concentration of these natural endocannabinoids undergoes huge changes. This is why there’s concern regarding the impact of getting cannabinoid doses from the illicit drug of marijuana.
14. Brain-Imaging Studies Showcase the Difference Between Users and Nonusers: A number of small brain-imaging studies have revealed the differences in the brains of habitual marijuana smokers compared to nonusers, including a smaller hippocampus (a structure that deals with memory) and amygdala (a structure that deals with emotional regulation), inefficient cognitive processing, and changed connections between brain hemispheres.
15. Animal Tests Reveal More About the Impact of Marijuana on the Youth: Research in animals show more evidence of cannabis’s mind-altering capabilities. The THC chemical responsible for the high in cannabis was given to rats. This resulted in the rodents experiencing persistent cognitive difficulties when they’re exposed to the agent around the time of puberty. However, the same impact could not be seen with adult rats dosed with THC as well.
16. The Case Isn’t Airtight Regarding Permanent Brain Damage: Rat studies tend to use doses of THC so much higher than even potheads or addicts would absorb. Furthermore, rodent adolescent is only a few weeks long versus human adolescence that takes much longer. Meanwhile, the samples are small and the causality is unknown when it comes to brain-imaging studies. It’s difficult to conclude a correlation when there are other factors involved such as neglect, abuse, and childhood poverty at play.
17. There Are Always Other Mitigating Factors to Consider: It’s hard to say if cannabis or marijuana smoking alone is enough to cause brain structure changes or abnormalities. This is because most teenagers and young adults who use cannabis also use other substances such as tobacco and alcohol. Therefore, those studying the effects of marijuana will have to factor in those two other variables as well which could affect the results of studies like the ABCD Study.
18. The Positives of Marijuana and Its Impact on The Human Brain: Although marijuana has dire implications on the brain that’s under construction during adolescence, it also has considerable potential for medical treatment. It can help out with medical conditions involving seizure disorders, muscle spasms, pain, and nausea from chemotherapy. Many of these benefits root not from THC but from CBD or cannabidiol, which is the chemical component of the marijuana plant that doesn’t produce psychoactive results.

In a Nutshell

More and more states are legalizing cannabis use for medicinal and even recreational purposes. However, concerns remain regarding its long-term impact. Marijuana is one of the most widely illegal drugs in the U.S.A., but the term “illegal” might not be applicable any longer. 23 states have legalized medical marijuana use since 1996. As for recreational use for individuals 21 years old and over, it’s legal in Washington D.C., Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Alaska.

Acceptance in regards to cannabis use has been growing as of late. However, those laws are quite controversial. After all, many critics worry about cannabis usage by those with developing brains despite the legal age limits. They argue that legalization will make cannabis more accessible to everyone, including teenagers. The developing brains of teenagers might be vulnerable to lasting damage from the drug, especially when it’s abused.

If you’re a teen who has ended up developing marijuana dependence disorder and outright addiction, you can get help from institutions like the Lanna Rehab Wellness Center.

Marijuana Abuse and Withdrawal Treatment at Lanna Rehab

The Lanna Rehab Wellness Center has a crew of professional doctors, nurses, therapists, counselors, sponsors, and caregivers that are there to assist you when it comes to lifelong success and recovery against drug and alcohol addiction, including marijuana dependency. They’re quite well-versed when it comes to how cannabis use affects the brains of the youth and what can be done to curb marijuana usage amongst your young ones. Call their 24/7 hotline that’s toll-free for more information on how to book a stay at their rehab facility.