Tag: marijuana

I’d like to be able to tell you that teens don’t use drugs. Unfortunately, that’s not true. I wish I could assure you that tweens—kids ages 9 to 12—wouldn’t think of using drugs. But I’d be lying.

In my practice, I see tweens every day who are experimenting with alcohol and drugs, always without their parents’ knowledge. It’s not uncommon for tweens to first try drugs in middle school. Even if they don’t become hardcore users, just this short exposure can have dire consequences for the rest of your child’s life.

Giving your kids the keys to a car is one of the scariest moments of parenthood. "Will they make safe choices?" is always a parents’ haunting concern. I was involved in a Dateline special where we watched teens make decisions in what appeared to be potentially dangerous situations.

* Will they get into a car with a teen they think has been drinking?
* What about with a driver who says he is high?
* Which—if any—teen say, "No" to a peer and refuses to get into that car?

After marijuana was legalized for adults in the U.S. state of Washington, younger teens there perceived it to be less harmful and reported using it more, a new study found.

States should consider developing evidence-based prevention programs aimed at adolescents before they legalize the recreational use of marijuana, the researchers say.

"Across the country there has been a decreased perception of risk," said lead author Magdalena Cerda, of the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento.

She told Reuters Health that trying marijuana at a young age is tied to an increased risk of regular use later on. Chronic use of marijuana may be tied to negative outcomes, such as psychosis and poor financial status.

The following is a round-up of news items compiled by the Hitched editors during the week of August 28, 2014.

Mellow Your Marriage With Marijuana?
Whether you're for or against the legalization of marijuana, an undeniable positive is that we're finally putting the resources toward marijuana to have a better understanding of its impact and effects. For example, researchers at the University of Buffalo studied 634 couples over nine years of marriage and found that couples who smoked marijuana were less likely to report "intimate partner violence" (IPV).

Help, my husband is a pothead! We started out together, but I gave it up a while back and he continued. People say, "It’s only pot," and I know it’s not that bad, but I don’t smoke it anymore and I see how unmotivated and lethargic he gets. He says he’ll stop, but he hasn’t. I don’t want to be a nag but it’s starting to get to me. Let me know what I can do.

Being a "child of the '60's," I can certainly appreciate the comment, "It’s only pot." But there’s really much more to this issue before one can easily dismiss it.