Marijuana not harmless, says report

“Marijuana is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years,” said John Walters, director of the office. “This is not just youthful experimentation that they’ll get over as we used to think in the past.”

Smoking marijuana can lead to more serious problems, Walters said in an interview.

For example, using marijuana increases the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 per cent, the report said. And teens who smoke pot at least once a month over a yearlong period are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than nonusers, it said.

The report also cited research that showed that teens who smoke marijuana when feeling depressed were more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become addicted to pot — eight per cent compared with three per cent.

Experts who have worked with children say there’s nothing harmless about marijuana.

“I’ve seen many, many kids’ lives negatively impacted and taken off track because of marijuana,” said Elizabeth Stanley-Salazar, director of adolescent services for Phoenix House treatment centers in California. “It’s somewhat Russian roulette. There are so many factors, emotional, psychological, biological. You can’t predict the experimentation and how it will impact a kid.”

The drug control policy office analysed about a dozen studies looking at marijuana use, including research by the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration.

Overall, marijuana use among teens has decreased 25 per cent since 2001, down to about 2.3 million kids who used pot at least once a month, the drug control office said..