Ever since we were kids we’ve been told drugs are bad for obvious reasons. They alter your state of being and destroy important parts of your brain. A recent study was done by medical researchers at Universita degli Studi di Milano, a university in Italy, testing the long term effects of marijuana. Surprisingly it led to serious autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, and rheumatoid disease for adults when used in the teenage years.
To test the research they did, the researchers set up an experiment on adolescent mice where they injected them for 10 days with THC, the main active component of marijuana. This 10 day period correlated with the adolescence period of humans (12-18). There was also a second group of mice that were given a placebo and both groups were left alone for two months after the treatments to reach full adulthood. The researches then evaluated the immune systems of both groups taking many measurements into consideration. The result was that the mice treated with THC had severe immune complications in adulthood.
If these results would be able to be replicated it would show that adolescence is a key phase of immune sensitivty when your immune system is forming to be the strongest it can be. If you alter factors during this period of development they can lead to serious and permanent health issues. One of the researchers, Paola Sacerdote mentioned “I hope that the knowledge that early exposure to marijuana is associated with immediate and long-term deleterious effects on the immune system may reach adolescents and their families”.
I’m a strong believer that drug should not be used especially for teenagers. It is proven to be very detrimental to your immediate health but many people aren’t aware of the serious, permanent long term effect it can have.
Sources:
http://learnaboutmarijuanawa.org/factsheets/adolescents.htm
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20140901053148.shtml
Something I did with my new scientific-thinking mind thanks to this class, is to consider the studies on mice/rabbits as a little unreliable. I do believe that there are effects to smoking a lot of marijuana but smoking isn’t injecting yourself with THC and mice probably react differently than humans do. Something I’ve noticed, at least personally, (anecdote here), is that people who smoke a lot of marijuana in their teen years definitely change personality wise. I’ve noticed that my friends who have done so have become less attached to the things they used to and are definitely dependent on it. Here’s an article that looks into the psychiatric effects.
While I do agree that weed should not be smoked by people until they are older because it could potentially cause future issues. I would like to ask, if weed is that bad why have two states legalized it? Why was it illegal in the first place? And lastly, Doesn’t alcohol have a negative effect as well? Well the answer to all the questions is taxes. The state of Colorado has racked up 25 million dollars in taxes (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/colorado-marijuana-legalization/) all legal drugs such as alcohol and weed are money makers because young adults, especially in college, will be willing to buy very large quantities. If the government can make money… it will.
Nice blog. Thanks for your opinion. What if we could take a drug to speed up the process? Say we could
boost the immune system to reach adulthood a lot earlier, making smoking (weed specifically) at an early age (teen years) not such a horrible decision. Would that make you more comfortable or are you against marijuana completely? Or is it just early smoking with teens you don’t particularly like? Maybe the health issues are the biggest problem for you? I just noticed you talked about teens and premature immune systems so I was wondering while reading which element are you most against? Health, teen smoking, drug use? Thanks -Azhane