Most teens don’t feel that smoking pot is harmful — even that it’s safe to experiment with and use. Teen Challenge has heard from our students repeatedly that their drug abuse began with marijuana. Some parents take a laid-back or tolerant approach toward smoking pot despite the evidence that this experimentation and use can lead to harder drugs and serious substance abuse problems.

Researchers at McGill University now have evidence that will hopefully change the Canadian perception towards marijuana use, particularly among youth. This is not the first study Gabriella Gobbi, lead researcher, has conducted on the effects of marijuana and the results of these studies should raise concerns about long-term use.

Teen Challenge encourages everyone to be aware of the harms and dangers associated with marijuana and cannabis products. For more information on marijuana click here.

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Regular teen pot smokers prone to depression, anxiety: Study

By Aaron Derfel, Montreal Gazette

December 17, 2009

MONTREAL — Teenagers who smoke marijuana on a daily basis cause damage to their developing brains, making them more susceptible to depression and anxiety in adulthood, a new McGill University study suggests.

The finding is particularly significant in the Canadian context, given previous research showing that more teens in this country consume cannabis than do adolescents in the United States or Europe.

"Just because marijuana is a plant doesn't mean it's harmless," said Gabriella Gobbi, one of the study's co-authors.

"Our study demonstrated that the cannabinoid, when consumed daily during adolescence, can induce a permanent change in the brain."

Scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre experimented on adolescent and adult lab rats. They discovered that when they exposed the rats for 20 days to cannabinoids — the active ingredient in marijuana — only the adolescent rats were adversely affected.

This suggests that the adolescent brain — since it's still developing — is particularly vulnerable to chronic drug use.

The researchers observed a decrease in serotonin levels in the brains of the adolescent rats. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in emotional perception.

Conversely, the researchers noticed an increase in norepinephrine levels. repinephrine plays a key role in the so-called fight-or-flight response, and increased levels could make one more anxious.

The findings were published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease. Although the research was carried out on lab rats, Gobbi said one can assume the same effects on the human brain. Still, Gobbi plans to carry out a different type of study on humans to confirm the effects of the animal trials.

Gobbi cited research by the Public Health Agency of Canada in 2004 that showed that 42.7 per cent of Canadian adolescents had tried marijuana compared with 40 per cent of teens in the United States and 35 per cent of teens in Europe.

Earlier research by Gobbi has also challenged some of the myths surrounding marijuana. In 2007, she published a study that found that although marijuana does act as an anti-depressant in the short-term, it produces the opposite effect in the long run.

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