If you would like to submit a question for our next FAQ, whether it’s about vaping, marijuana, alcohol, screen addiction, or anything that doesn’t fall in those categories, please feel free to send it to [email protected] with the subject line “FAQ: (topic)”. We thought this would be a good way to answer some of the questions we get asked from parents, teachers, and school staff alike.
Do kids still use blunts or bongs?
One question we get a lot is about the methods in which teens are using marijuana. Most teens do not smoke weed like people used to. Blunts, bongs, rolls, and pipes have pretty much gone out of fashion. Many teens and youths use marijuana in a liquid form through an e-cigarette, vape, or pen. This is a concentrated form of THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. Whereas blunts and bongs will deliver THC at about 20% concentration, marijuana from a wax pen or vape will deliver THC at about 98% concentration.
Isn’t marijuana natural?
Sort of, since the beginning of humanity, we have used our abilities to change our environment to consistently make things easier, faster, and more efficient. In the same way we have changed plants over time, we have done the same to marijuana. If someone were to grow 100% natural marijuana like the ancient Egyptians used, it would be at about .5% THC. It would be really difficult for anyone to get high off of that. So, the same way you won’t see anyone, (except maybe hipsters) using a rotary phone, sending a telegraph, or even getting up to change the channel on a tv, people don’t smoke “natural” weed. Now just like when it comes to technology or food, the changes we have made could have potentially positive or negative side effects. People can get higher than ever before, and they can get high faster, but with the increase of THC concentration we are also starting to see some medical complications we haven’t seen before, including excessive vomiting, and increased anxiety and depression.
I know someone who smokes weed all day every day and they’re fine, just look at Snoop Dogg.
We get this question all the time from students and we call those people “the lottery winners.” In California, where we used to live, millions of people play the lottery, and they just increased the number of winners to 10. The odds of winning are about 1 in 36 million. But people still play, thinking “well maybe I’ll be that one!” this is the same with marijuana. For every Snoop Dogg you show us, I can show you thousands of teens who started using weed and dropped out of high school, can’t hold down a job, can’t get their lives together, and who just seem to struggle for anything they try to work for. It’s a sad fact, but everyone still looks at the lottery winner and says, “well maybe I’ll be that one!”
If marijuana is so dangerous, why would doctors prescribe it?
Legally, doctors are not allowed to prescribe marijuana. The word “prescribe” is actually an official term which comes with regulations and doctors are only allowed to prescribe medications that have been FDA approved for a specific ailment or condition. Some people will give “recommendations” for marijuana, but usually they are people who are more on the marijuana side of business, not the practicing medicine side. If you ask your GP for a medical marijuana recommendation, more than likely they will not give you one. While marijuana has been used throughout history to help with certain conditions, 1: that was before we had modern medicine, and 2: again, because of how drastically different marijuana is nowadays, it’s not really the same.
