Marijuana impairs adolescent brain function
And, goodness knows, adolescents need all the brain function they can muster.
[C]hronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence – a critical period of ongoing brain development – is associated with poorer performance on thinking tasks, including slower psychomotor speed and poorer complex attention, verbal memory and planning ability.
Recent studies also indicate that teenage girls have a higher risk than boys of negative impact on brain function from marijuana use.
I have seen other studies that show the same thing – pot is NOT good for a growing brain, which grows until around age 25.
I even heard some social workers saying that teenagers should NOT smoke pot (“even” because many social workers are left-wing, if it feels good do it types).
It must be REALLY bad stuff for social workers to say that.
That was my take on it, too, Scott.
Forty years ago the possession of it was deemed to be “the next most serious crime to rape and murder”…that is what the police who had me in custody for possessing it said. One of them also said that if I wanted to attempt escaping, he would be delighted to shoot me.
I think, forty years later, that it is high time (no pun intended) that people should give up the notion that you can make bad habits disappear by arbitrarily declaring them to be a crime. It never has worked and it never will.