It is obvious that parents ought to be speaking with their teens about smoking weed. However, what can you do when it is clear that ‘just saying no,’ won’t cut it? Here are 2 reasons why weed is a big deal for your child:
- Teenagers who smoke perform poorly on memory-associated tasks: Adolescence includes a sensitive period for brain development. If a teenager introduces the use of pot during that point in their life, it may have severe consequences on their capability of problem solving, for their memory as well as for critical thinking in general. However, this perception is all wrong. Within a report published recently, it was discovered that teenagers who smoked lots of marijuana experienced irregular changes within their brain structures associated with working memory — a predictor of poor academic performance, as well as impaired daily functioning — and that they did badly on memory-oriented activities. If you are an athlete, chess player, artist, or debater, you require working memory, and cannabis hurts brain circuitry.
- Marijuana smokers and schizophrenics might share similar brain changes: A study that was published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin sought to differentiate the effects of regular pot use on the teenage brain from the effects of schizophrenia upon the deep areas of the brain which are needed for working memory. Though the scientists weren’t equating weed smokers with the ones suffering with schizophrenia — a disabling, chronic brain disorder — they found similarities in one respect. Schizophrenia includes an extremely disruptive illness upon working memory, and smoking pot produced many likewise effects to schizophrenia, according to one researcher. The researchers stated that these effects still were apparent 2 years after the subjects ceased in smoking marijuana, yet more studies will be required to decide if the neurological irregularities in heavy teenage weed smokers are permanent.
