Happy Thursday! I’m starting a new series called Substances. In this series, I plan to tackle all different types of substances, specifically targeting their effects on teens. As a teenager myself, I think educating myself about all of the substances out there is definitely important – and my hope is that for all of the readers out there, these short blog posts will help them learn a little more about substances too.

The video linked above will give you a brief overview of possible side effects of marijuana in teenagers. For more information, this article by the CDC goes more in-depth about effects; I’ll also be summarizing the takeaways from the article here. The teen years (ages 13 – 19) are a time where teenage bodies are rapidly changing, both mentally and physically. On average, female teenagers experience puberty between the ages of 8 and 13, and growth spurts between 10 and 14. Many reach their adult height by age 14 or 15. Meanwhile, male teenagers have their growth spurts between ages 10 to 16, on average about 1-2 years after female growth spurts. Male puberty is generally considered to begin around the ages of 9 to 10. Teen years are a time of massive change – and these changes are known to lead to a teen desire to learn more about the adult world.

Unfortunately, unlike adults, the teenage brain is constantly changing and growing – considered not to be fully developed until age 25. Because of this, marijuana can have a much more harmful effect on teenagers than on fully developed adults. Some of these effects include:

• Inability to remain attentive
• Trouble solving problems
• Trouble thinking
• Struggle to remember things or learn new skills
• Decreased physical coordination

By now, it’s possible you’d think, well, a few years isn’t that long to wait; I bet most teenagers don’t start using marijuana until their bodies and minds are fully developed. That’s what I would assume too…until I saw this scary statistic. It turns out that 38% of teenagers admit to having used marijuana at least once in their life. And, knowing teenagers, it’s likely that many more aren’t reporting marijuana usage. Marijuana usage also has a known tie to dropping out of school, increased mental health conditions (e.g. depression, anxiety, psychoses), addiction, and impaired driving. From my Driver’s Ed class, I know that the legal limit for marijuana for individuals under 21 is 0.0 ng/ml and for those over 21 5.0 mg/ml. Legally, people under 21 aren’t allowed to have any marijuana in their body because marijuana has been known to impair drivers for up to 5 hours – and the effects of smoking marijuana are much more quick than alcohol because when you inhale, the marijuana goes straight into your bloodstream and damages your lungs, whereas with alcohol, while it’s definitely dangerous and impairs a driver’s judgement and skill, a person’s BAC (blood alcohol concentration) is calculated using a number of other factors (the effects aren’t as immediate as marijuana – but we’ll go more in depth about alcohol in a later post).

To summarize…so what’s the point? I’m not here to give medical advice; I’m just here to state the facts. The CDC has told us that the effects of marijuana in adolescents are much more severe than in fully grown adults. Why? Because teenager’s bodies and minds are still growing. If you want to learn more, here are a few resources that talk a bit more about marijuana in teens:

• Marijuana and Teens by the American Academy of Child Psychology and Adolescent Psychiatry
• What is Marijuana? by Teens Health from Nemours

I hope you learned something new today! Thanks for reading.