Health: Pot Dependence in Adolescence Is Linked to a Long-Term Drop in IQ

With the Dunedin study data, researchers could compare subjects' IQ scores from age 13, before they began using any drugs, with their scores at age 38, and they could also eliminate confounding factors like education level and other drug and alcohol use. They found that those who used pot heavily showed a significant decline in IQ, particularly if they began during adolescence. The most frequent users experienced the most damage. And cutting down on marijuana after adolescence did nothing to alleviate the decline.

While these results suggest that developing adolescent brains are particularly vulnerable to the effects of marijuana and can suffer permanent harm from smoking pot, the drop occurred only in users diagnosed with cannabis dependence, which indicates more than just a fondness for marijuana, points out epidemiology blogger Suzi Gage. Such frequent users are not only more rare than casual consumers, they also tend to have other problems that getting high may help them face, such as depression.

For more, see Pot Dependence in Adolescence Is Linked to a Long-Term Drop in IQ by Sophie Bushwick, August 29, 2012 at 80beats.

Drugs: The Dutch Can Handle Their Pot

Since the 1970s, the Dutch have been famous among backpacking tourists, public health officials and drug-use researchers for their unusual national stance toward marijuana. Technically, the drug is illegal in the Netherlands. But the country has an official policy of non-enforcement, and you can buy the stuff — no more than 5 grams at a time — in hundreds of cannabis coffee shops.

This approach — somewhere in between all-out prohibition and free-market legalization — is like no other policy in Western Europe, or in the United States for that matter. But research reveals a surprising fact about Dutch tokers: The country's drug policy may be remarkable, but very little about its users is.

If you looked at all the data points in this paper, you wouldn't be able to tell which ones were the Dutch, said Robert MacCoun, a professor of public policy and law at the University of California, Berkeley, who has reported new findings in the journal Addiction. The Dutch data are right in the middle of the distribution. There's just nothing particularly distinctive about drug use in the Netherlands, which is interesting simply because many people assume that Dutch drug use must be out of control. And it's not.

Not only is it not out of control, but people who smoke pot in the Netherlands are less likely to escalate their use — into a heavier habit or harder drugs — than they are in the U.S., and they tend to mature out of marijuana faster than American users do.

Since 1997, officials have been stricter in shutting down shops that violate basic requirements. They can't allow in children under 18, they can't sell any other drugs, and they can't advertise marijuana.

For more, see The Dutch Can Handle Their Pot by Emily Badger, September 16, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Drugs: Marijuana Use Hastens Onset of Schizophrenia

Honing in on the risks of cannabis, scientists have found that marijuana use hastens the onset of schizophrenia by nearly three years for those already at risk for the disorder.

Schizophrenia is a disease characterized by severe hallucinations and delusions. Typically, it begins between the ages of 18 and 28 — slightly younger for men and older for women. Between 80 and 85 percent of the time, genes are the cause. The findings of an earlier onset for marijuana users have obvious implications for young people who have a family history of schizophrenia or who are beginning to show signs of the disease — but doctors caution that people may be at risk and not know it. Most schizophrenics don't have relatives who are afflicted.

For more, see Marijuana Use Hastens Onset of Schizophrenia by Melinda Burns, March 26, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Drugs: States Rethink Drug Laws

A growing number of states are renouncing some of the long prison sentences that have been a hallmark of the war on drugs and instead focusing on treatment, which once-skeptical lawmakers now say is proven to be less expensive and more effective.

While the changes are part of broader belt-tightening efforts, they also reflect a growing belief among state lawmakers that prosecuting drug offenders aggressively often fails to treat their underlying addiction problems and can result in offenders cycling in and out of prisons for years—a critique long voiced by groups that advocate in favor of defendants' rights.

"If you just throw everyone in jail, it's terribly expensive and they get out and they are in the same boat," said Tom Jensen, a Republican state senator in Kentucky who voted in favor of the law.

He said he had long "bought into the tough-on-crime concept" and adapting to a more rehabilitative model has been "an education process."

Lawmakers, Mr. Jensen said, had access to data indicating that drug offenders are less likely to reoffend if they receive intensive community treatment in lieu of prison.

But others argue such changes send the wrong message.

"You need to have serious consequences or repercussions in place if people use heroin, Oxycontin" and other drugs, said Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.

For more, see States Rethink Drug Laws by Nathan Koppel, March 5, 2011 at WSJ.com.

Drugs: Portugal's Drug Experiment

Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal's elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs — from marijuana to heroin — but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation's criminal justice system and improving the people's overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.

But nearly a decade later, there's evidence that Portugal's great drug experiment not only didn't blow up in its face; it may have actually worked. More addicts are in treatment. Drug use among youths has declined in recent years. Life in Casal Ventoso, Lisbon's troubled neighborhood, has improved. And new research, published in the British Journal of Criminology, documents just how much things have changed in Portugal. Coauthors Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens report a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and, shortly after the reforms took hold, a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized — indications, the authors argue, that police officers, freed up from focusing on small-time possession, have been able to target big-time traffickers while drug addicts, no longer in danger of going to prison, have been able to get the help they need.

Not everyone agrees with this analysis. The rate of people reporting drug use in Portugal is, in fact, increasing — and some say alarmingly so. Others argue that it's hard to draw lessons from Portugal's experiment because the nation increased access to treatment at the same time it decriminalized drugs. Many believe that Portugal's new focus on treatment — and prevention — may have had as much, if not more, to do with its success than its policy of decriminalization.

For more, see Drug Experiment by Keith O'Brien, January 16, 2011 at The Boston Globe.

Drugs: Ratio of Fatal Dose to Effective Dose

Watch out for nutmeg!

From "Being Keelhauled by a Freight Train on a Transcontinental Run" by Andrew Sullivan, December 15, 2010 at The Daily Dish.

Drugs: Teen Marijuana Use Continues to Rise

Marijuana use by 8th, 10th and 12th grade students increased in 2010, with more American teenagers now using marijuana than cigarettes for the second year in a row, according to numbers released today by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan as part of the annual Monitoring the Future survey. In 2010, 21.4 percent of high school seniors used marijuana in the last 30 days, while 19.2 had used cigarettes.

It's really no surprise that more American teenagers are using marijuana and continue to say it's easy to get. Our government has spent decades refusing to regulate marijuana in order to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers who aren't required to check customer ID and have no qualms about selling marijuana to young people, said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. The continued decline in teen tobacco use is proof that sensible regulations, coupled with honest, and science-based public education can be effective in keeping substances away from young people.

For more, see Teen Marijuana Use Continues to Rise by Mike Meno, December 14, 2010 at MPP Blog. Thank you, Andrew Sullivan.