"These findings are of great clinical relevance given recent evidence suggesting that exposure to marijuana during adolescence can increase the likelihoods of develop- ing schizophrenia later in life."-Laviolette, associate professorin the Department of Anatomyand Cell Biology, Universityof Western Ontario.Many university professors believe marijuana is safe, as they believe moderate drinking of alcohol is safe. Many doctors also consume alcohol. I suggest to you today, that the same pressure that is brought upon tobacco smoke should be brought upon alcohol users and marijuana smokers. This harmless stuff is an exercise in mythology.
There is a statement in the book Change Your Brain-Change Your Life that you may find extremely intriguing. It is written by Daniel G Amen. He states:
"I am truly amazed by the nonchalant attitude our country has toward marijuana usage. Even my home state of California passed a law in 1996 legalising marijuana as medicine. I think many people misunderstood Proposition 215, feeling that by voting for it they were allowing people dying from cancer to have marijuana to soothe their pain and increase their appetites. What they got was a law that basically says a doctor can write a prescription for marijuana for anything including anxiety, stress, moodiness, or irritability."The biggest problem with the law, as I see it, is that the perception of marijuana's dangerousness has gone way down. Teenagers tell me that it's medicine, not a problem."
Drug abuse expert Mark Gold, MD, put it succinctly:
"As the perception of a drug's dangerousness goes down, its use goes up."
Now, let us not trivialise what Dr Gold has stated:
"As the perception of a drug's dangerousness goes down, its use goes up."We have to appreciate the fact that as technology improves and expands, we have access to knowledge and evidence that we did not have before. A profound example of this is the nuclear medicine brain study called SPECT-single-photon emission computerised tomography. This measures cerebral blood flow and metabolic activity patterns.
Let us move from the technical description to the practical application. Amen has used SPECT to study both the short-term and long-term effects of marijuana on the brain. Now this is the same Amen who has said categorically that a number of American teen-agers believe that marijuana is safe, despite a "number of studies demonstrating cognitive, emotional and social impairment with chronic or heavy usage."Amen reveals that the studies report that inexperienced marijuana smokers had an acute decrease in cerebral blood flow and that chronic marijuana smokers had decreased perfusion when compared to a non-using control group. Notice the term "inexperienced marijuana users." This indicates first-time users, casual users etc. In other words, they are still in the experimental phase.
Some researchers have called the temporal lobes the "interpretive cortex." As Amen states, "they interpret what we hear and integrate it with stored memories to give meaning to the incoming information."Amen concludes that the ability to consistently feel stable and positive despite the ups and downs of everyday life is important for the development and maintenance of consistent character and personability. But note the following analysis and then decide whether we can afford damage to the temporal lobe:
"Optimum activity in the temporal lobes enhances mood stability, while increased or decreased activity in this part of the brain leads to fluctuating, inconsistent, or unpredictable moods or behaviours."
Let us look at problems associated with the dominant (usually left) temporal lobe:
...Aggression, internally or externally directed...dark or violent thoughts...abnormal sensory perceptions-visual or auditing distortions...reading difficulties... emotional instability.In other words, researchers are indicating to us that we cannot say "no big thing" or push for legalisation, because we are revealing that there is damage to highly sensitive areas in the brain.Let us switch from Daniel Amen to Prof Steven Laviolette at the University of Western Ontario. He has admitted that his team has now discovered "a critical brain pathway responsible for the effects of cannabinoid drugs on how the brain processes emotional information."A number of parents have come to me, and I am sure other pastoral counsellors and psychologists have had the same experience. Hear what those parents say and bear in mind what the researchers have uncovered:
"Pastor, the boy take a sudden turn for the worse. He has become extremely aggressive. The boy gone mad. It is not just marijuana he is using. Marijuana alone cannot do that. The boy using cocaine. I never saw him, but his behaviour, his behaviour, pastor."
Now please note that several of our teenagers are experimenting with three drugs: tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana. The social drinkers would say that alcohol should not be placed in the "horrible" listing that includes tobacco and marijuana. But a drug is a drug is a drug. Let us get that fact in our thick heads. Let us cut out the denial. The weed is dangerous indeed!There is a harmony between the research findings of Amen and Laviolette. Let us examine the following quote from the Canadian researcher, La Violette."We know there are abnormalities in both the amygdala and prefrontal cortex in patients who have schizophrenia, and we know these same brain areas are critical to the effects of marijuana and other cannabinoid drugs on emotional processing."
Did you get that word schizophrenia? We are talking about extreme psychotic behaviour. Schizophrenia is a "chronic, long-standing disorder characterised by delusions, hallucinating, and distorted thinking." Some psychologists talk about a "flattened affect"-inappropriate responses, a type of love affair with pain-happy when you should be sad and sad when you should be happy.
You must have heard this statement: "He is only a boy, he will grow out of it?" Well, well, well. While he is growing out, the schizophrenia, the madness is coming on.You talk to some so-called responsible people and they say with a smile, "The boy in a gang, but all they doing is smoking a little weed." Well the research is indicating that a little may be too much.Until next week, when we will continue to focus on this serious, very serious, issue.