Im 13 should i smoke weed

Some information may no longer be current. Like it or not, your kids will probably try marijuana. So will their friends. Canadian teens are more than twice as likely as adults to smoke pot — and have the highest rate of cannabis use in the developed world.

As much as 5 per cent of Canadian adolescents — and as much as 10 per cent of Grade 12 students — smoke pot every day, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. The pot smoked at Woodstock in contained about 1 per cent of the psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol.

Legalization is shaping up as a key election issue. Politicians are staking out ground on marijuana, with the Liberals championing legalization and regulation, the NDP favouring decriminalization and the Conservatives holding the line on enforcement. But do Canadians actually know how the drug affects our most prolific users? For tweens and teens, whose brains are in a crucial stage of development, is there such thing as a harmless pot habit?

To determine what science has to say about the effects of high-octane pot on the developing brain, The Globe interviewed top researchers in the field and combed through dozens of peer-reviewed studies, taking reasoned critiques into account.

Harold Kalant, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Toronto who has conducted research on alcohol and cannabis since Marijuana hijacks normal brain functioning in teens, and many scientists believe the drug may have permanent effects on brain development.

Andra Smith, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa, used functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI to compare brain activity in youth ages 19 to 21 who did not smoke pot regularly, and those who had smoked at least one joint a week for three years or more. Urine samples confirmed their cannabis use. Smith and colleagues found increased brain activity in the regular pot smokers as they completed tasks designed to measure impulsivity, working memory, visual-spatial processing and sustained attention.

The youth were drawn from the Ottawa Prenatal Prospective Study, which has followed them from before birth to age 25 to Researchers collected about 4, lifestyle variables, including socio-economic status and prenatal exposure to marijuana and alcohol, as well as teenage cannabis use. Adolescents who smoke pot as early as 14 do worse by 20 on some cognitive tests and drop out of school at a higher rate than non-smokers, confirms the study, published Dec.

However, the cognitive declines associated with cannabis do not seem to be global or widespread, cautioned the study's lead author, Natalie Castellanos-Ryan, an assistant professor at UdeM's School of Psychoeducation. Her study found links between cannabis use and brain impairment only in the areas of verbal IQ and specific cognitive abilities related to frontal parts of the brain, particularly those that require learning by trial-and-error.

In addition, if teenagers hold off until age 17 before smoking their first joint, those impairments are no longer discernible. In the study, she and her team of researchers at UdeM and CHU Saint-Justine, the university's affiliated children's hospital, looked at teenagers who were part of the Montreal Longitudinal and Experimental Study, a well-known cohort of 1, white French-speaking males from some of the city's poorer neighbourhoods.

The teenagers completed a variety of cognitive tests at ages 13, 14 and 20 and filled out a questionnaire once a year from ages 13 to 17 and again at 20, between and Roughly half -- 43 per cent -- reported smoking pot at some point during that time, most of them only a few times a year.

At 20 years of age, 51 per cent said they still used the drug. In general, those who started early already had poor short-term memory and poor working memory that is, the ability to store information such as a phone number long enough to use it, or follow an instruction shortly after it was given. Conversely, the early users also had good verbal skills and vocabulary; Castellanos-Ryan suggested one possible explanation: "It takes quite a lot of skills for a young adolescent to get hold of drugs; they're not easy-access.

She and her team found smoking cannabis during adolescence was only linked to later difficulties with verbal abilities and cognitive abilities of learning by trial-and-error, and those abilities declined faster in teens who started smoking early than teens who started smoking later. The early adopters also tended to drop out of school sooner, which helped explain the decrease in their verbal abilities.

World Health Organization. National Institute of Drug Abuse. Updated December Prev Sci. Influence of parental smoking on the use of alcohol and illicit drugs among adolescents. Einstein Sao Paulo. Zimmerman GM, Farrell C. J Youth Adolescence. Lopez-Quintero C, Neumark Y. Prevalence and determinants of resistance to use drugs among adolescents who had an opportunity to use drugs. Drug Alcohol Depend. Bernstein NI.

New York: Workman Publishing Company; Weir K. Marijuana and the developing brain. American Psychological Association. Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife. Calkins K. J Addict Med. Psychol Addict Behav. Cannabis Addiction and the Brain: a Review. J Neuroimmune Pharmacol.

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