Just How Much Cannabis Can Teens Safely Consume?
While cannabis has been legalized for medical and recreational use in most of the United States, one must be an adult, or at least 21 years of age, to legally partake.
However, many young teenagers begin experimenting with marijuana at an age much younger than that. One of the major reasons why weed was legalized in the first place was to make it more difficult for the youth to access it, since regulating weed, in effect, replaces the black market.
Additionally, legalizing the drug diminishes the novelty behind the forbidden nature of weed. Whereas, once it’s legalized, it’s no longer considered taboo, making it less attractive for teenagers to consume. While legalizing cannabis wasn’t all about protecting teenagers from illicit drug consumption, surely, limiting access to it was a major goal of public health in a regulated marijuana market.
Thankfully, it’s worked: many studies show a correlation between legalization of weed, and a drop in teenage marijuana consumption.
But weed’s supposed to be good for adults, right? So why are people still making a big fuss about teen consumption, when they still - somehow - get their hands on it?
How Much Weed Is Safe For Teenagers?
There’s an important reason why the minimum age to consume weed is 21 years old.
Primarily, the driving force behind this is the fact that the human brain is still developing until around the age of 21. Science shows that the brain is the last organ in the body to fully mature, and it even continues to grow through the age of 25. That’s why placing restrictions in place, for young adults not to be allowed to legally consume weed until 21, helps prevent any damage to the developing brain.
Yet, some individuals may believe that a small amount of cannabis wouldn’t be as harmful to the brain. The short and simple response to this line of thinking is that there is no amount of weed that is safe for adolescents to consume.
In a Johns Hopkins Medicine study, researchers analyzed adolescent mice which possessed a type of gene that was linked to human psychiatric illnesses. They believe that through the study, they were able to understand how cannabis was able to cause brain damage in human adolescents.
According to the researchers, exposure to cannabis results in inflammation for a certain type of brain cell in adolescent mice. This leads to a genetic mutation that has been associated with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, as well as other psychiatric disorders. “The inflammation we saw in oru mice is probably activated in many people who smoke marijuana, but our results may help explain why and how some mice - and some people - are genetically predisposed to experience an enhanced inflammatory response and brain damage,” explains Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine psychiatry and behavioral science professor, Mikhail ‘Misha’ Pletnikov, MD, PhD.
Since some individuals are naturally born with a gene variation that can make them more susceptible to mental illnesses when exposed to external stimulants, including, but not limited to, cannabis, this can make teenage exposure to weed much more dangerous. In addition, teenage brains are still working on their cognitive as well as emotional circuits, which can cause long-term risk when damaged by exposure to THC. On the other hand, mature brains can metabolize and absorb the cannabinoids in weed, without having to risk suffering from the same consequences as a teenage brain would.
Because cannabinoids greatly affect the developing brain, it can lead to further damage such as:
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Diminished brain function: Consistent cannabis use among adolescents can result in impaired executive function, memory, and attention. This can also severely impact learning, especially during the early teen years.
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Safety: Teenagers using cannabis are much more prone to accidents and injuries. This is because their coordination skills, judgment, and reaction time are seriously compromised.
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Mental health risks: When the brain’s health is compromised, teenagers’ mental health is also at risk. As we pointed out earlier, if there is already an increased risk for mental illnesses, cannabis use can exacerbate them, not cause them.
Does The Dose Make The Poison?
Unfortunately, even small amounts of THC can be dangerous to a teenager’s brain. The compounds in marijuana can mess with the circuits and chemistry that the brain is still developing.
Keep in mind that during the teenage years, our brains are hard at work, getting rid of unused connections while strengthening critical ones. This is a very important process that fine-tunes decision-making, thinking, emotional control, and other significant processes in the brain. Since marijuana interacts with the endocannabinoid system, which typically has an impact on these changes, adding THC to the mix when the brain isn’t ready, can lead to a mess-up of the neurochemistry in the growth process.
Conclusion
While there are many other ways we can say it, the bottom line remains: because of their developing brains, adolescents must stay away from cannabis until they are at least 21 years old. We need to understand that there is a good, logical reason behind choosing the age of 21 as the legal age for marijuana consumption. The teenage brain is much more plastic and thus sensitive to external influences, including those that are chemical in nature, so the negative impacts of early exposure can be much more long-lasting.
As we enter our 20s, the human brain can then grow strong and healthy enough to withstand the effects of THC as well as other cannabinoids in the plant without compromising neural development, especially in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. It’s the role of educational systems, parents, and guardians, as well as the government, to ensure that we uphold these standards. We need to do our part for kids to delay cannabis consumption until they are adults. Early use just isn’t worth the risk.
TEEN BRAIN CANNABIS, READ ON...
