Drugs, Depression A Perilous Mix For Teens
Report: Depression Triggers More Marijuana Use, Leading To Dependency, Mental Illness
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A teen who has been depressed at some point in the past year is more than twice as likely to have used marijuana as teens who have not reported being depressed - 25 percent compared with 12 percent, said the report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"Marijuana is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years," said John Walters, director of the office. "This is not just youthful experimentation that they'll get over as we used to think in the past."
Smoking marijuana can lead to more serious problems, Walters said in an interview.
For example, using marijuana increases the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 percent, the report said. And teens who smoke pot at least once a month over a yearlong period are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than nonusers, it said.
The report also cited research that showed that teens who smoke marijuana when feeling depressed were more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become addicted to pot - 8 percent compared with 3 percent.
Experts who have worked with children say there's nothing harmless about marijuana.
"I've seen many, many kids' lives negatively impacted and taken off track because of marijuana," said Elizabeth Stanley-Salazar, director of adolescent services for Phoenix House treatment centers in California. "It's somewhat Russian roulette. There are so many factors, emotional, psychological, biological. You can't predict the experimentation and how it will impact a kid."
The drug control policy office analyzed about a dozen studies looking at marijuana use, including research by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Overall, marijuana use among teens has decreased 25 percent since 2001, down to about 2.3 million kids who used pot at least once a month, the drug control office said.
While the drop is encouraging, Walters appealed to parents to recognize signs of possible drug use and depression.
"It's not something you look the other way about when your teen starts appearing careless about their grooming, withdrawing from the family, losing interest in daily activities," Walters said. "Find out what's wrong."
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



I know 100''s of Adults whom have smoked marijuana as teenagers, and many still do. All of them are leading normal lives, rasing families and none of them are depressed outside of the normal everyday drag that any human would get depressed or upset about.
none of them have committed suicide...
Sorry I don''t trust anything the fed says in reagrds to pot, because they sure have trouble getting rid of the the real problems drugs.. METH, HEROINE, COCAINE, and PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE.
maybe if they took care of those drugs we''d see a big time difference in this countries well being.
maybe we should ask ourselves how TONS of Cocaine and Heroine make it into this country past our borders. Obviously the FED is a complete failure here, since pot is grown locally, but coke and heroine are being shipped in thru our so called secure borders at horiffic amounts.
There are people getting real wealthy off of cocaine and heroine imports and I''m willing to bet its people connected to our government and border security
Rules? We don''t need no stinkin'' rules!!!
Smoke da ***!!!
Note this "report" is from the White House that routinely rewrites real scientific research papers to say what it wants. These drug policy boneheads are probably just trying to counter the recent REAL research that found NO LINK BETWEEN MARIJUANA USE AND LUNG CANCER. Again, another inconvenient truth.
May as well scrap this propaganda. Real science doesn''t support it.
You can take any group up people...find out some kind of % of people of them that smoke ganja using god knows what kind of questioneer that is supposed to be accurate within 5 %... and try to link two completely seperat entities/issues with their use of ganja.
lets say people who work at music/record stores selling cds and knowing alot about bands are big stoners across the country (for our purposes)
OMG lets write an article about this that sites music as a cause for smoking the reafer.
ask your self one question tho... would u rather take a bunch of chemicals chucked together into some pill that is made to flock with your head in some way that will help you. OOORRR smoke a god given herb that has grown for thousands of years.
ALL I can see it doing is making them get into something that is normally boring to them like watching tv or playing a game and letting them "zone out" persay and stop thinking about their real life problems. Which in some cases time is the best thing to remedy problems you have. It could harm them by them escaping and not thinking about their worries or because it is illegal in america it can just add to this of things they have worry about. aka keeping it hidden and not getting arrested for something privetly in their homes. The only violence to do with drugs is created because government has forced it into the black market where lots of money can be made by dealers. thus these people arm them selves to deal with the cops and rival dealers. (why not let the government make the money from selling and spend some of they money to educate people about drugs and pump some money into schools, social security, whatever.
WHOOPS THAT LAST SENTENCE WASN''T MEANT TO SAY THAT NOT SOLVING YOUR PROBLEMS IS GOOD. getting to the underlaying issues is definately they key. Which begs the question do our pharmacutical drugs even really help or is it just getting people "high" "druged/f ucked up so they stop worrying about the problems they are having......
MaryJane is a God-created plant, and as such, a renewable resource. However, pharmacists and other experts want to solve everyone''s problems with their OWN drugs, the ones they make fortunes on.
I believe I tend to agree.
Before I ever took anything like that I had a history of depression anyway. I find that the most dangerous drug today is the legal drug called alcohol. I could smoke as many joints in one spot and never get any higher. I could drink as many drinks in one spot and lose my consciousness and if, someone helped me to continue, I could actually die.
It''s interesting and suspect to see an article focusing on pot as the problem when there are so many variables out there. Marijuana is a natural plant that has been on this earth for millions of years. It wasn''t until the thirties of the twentieth century that the US government decided that pot was an "evil".
Do you know that the word "expert" is misleading. Many times people who proclaim such as just trying to get notice.
Posted by fabrat1
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That, or it started in the 1960s and nobody bothered to take notice until now...?
Oh, a ''White House report''. I''m sure that, as with everything else, that had nothing to do with its conclusions.
There''s not a single topic, from Global Warming, to tax cuts, to Iraq, to drug use, where this White House hasn''t been completely out of touch with reality and willing to use U.S. tax dollars to propagandize the rest of us that theirs is the path to sweetness and light. And the scientists can go scr*w themselves if they get in the way of the White House''s prior conclusions.
Hey, White House: seen any ''flowers and open arms'' in Iraq lately? Wow, that head in the sand is sure getting expensive for the rest of us!
I knew one guy in college who got addicted to weed. He had to take a year off to get straight, but when he came back he went on to get his PhD in plant propagation (he''d learned so much about growing weed in his closet). He still smokes but is careful.
I knew one guy in college who got addicted to cocaine. He had to take a year off to get straight. But, he never really got straight after that.
My aunt died of alcoholism, which destroyed the last 30 years of her life.
Weed is the least of our worries. I wish the gov''t would legalize it so they could mandate a reasonable concentration in it. Todays weed is like drinking vodka, while yesterdays weed is like drinking beer. Its amazing to me that weed is illegal but vodka is legal.
They think making it redily avaiable would give kids easier acess to ganja???? I know when i was in high school about 10 years ago I had a easier time getting a bag then finding a buyer for some alcohol. go figure. O yea but the war on drugs was supposed to make this not possible opps. failed. All the drug laws created was a resurgance of gangs and violence to protect and peddle their drugs.
As an alternative to drugs, suggest "cool" drug-free activities, like making a bird feeder out of a milk carton or interviewing local seniors about what the olden days were like.
Scare your kids straight with the terrifying tale of the time you were 16 and did bong hits in the back of an El Camino outside a Kansas concert.
Explain that only lowlifes like pro athletes and rock stars use drugs.
Kids may ask too many questions. To save time, just explain to them that the powder-filled balloons will keep them from getting sick on the plane ride back to America.
As an alternative to harmful drugs like marijuana, encourage your kids to experiment with safe, legal substances like cigarettes and alcohol.
Be direct, brief, and to the point. Remember, you only have about 45 minutes or so before the acid really starts to kick in.
Ask the editors of Highlights For Children to repeat the strip in which Goofus OD''s and chokes on his own vomit in a bathroom stall at the train station.
Whatever you do, do not talk to your kids about drugs.
Does anyone believe that this sort of *** only turns up after pot has been in use for abouty five thousand years?
Legalize Marijuana!!! For a better, peaceful America!!!
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by rushman71
May 12, 2008 10:36 AM PDT
- honestabe8: For the first time ever, last night I finally got to watch the movie "Reefer Madness" through the internet. Thank God I smoked some shiit while I watched it. I swear, the mentality of that time period is pratically the same as today. Sorry, Uncle Sam, I''m not buying BullShiit!!!
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See all 42 CommentsDanm, I hate it when I got the munchies!!!