cannabisnews.com: More Youths Turning To Pot! 





More Youths Turning To Pot! 
Posted by FoM on August 03, 1999 at 06:35:01 PT
By Doris Sue Wong, Globe Staff
Source: Boston Globe
Bored with small-town life and craving to be like the older boys, Christopher Bolton took his first tentative tokes of marijuana at age 12.
Three years later, he says, that early dalliance turned into a $100-a-day habit that kept the Auburn teenager shrouded in a hazy stupor from morning until night.He found the drug's allure so powerful, he didn't feel any shame when his struggling single mother confronted him about stealing $700 she had painstakingly squirreled away to buy a used car. She had stashed the money inside a wall for safekeeping.''She had tears running down her face,'' recalls Bolton, who used the savings on a week's supply of marijuana. ''That meant nothing to me.''Bolton, who was caught with marijuana in his high school locker, is on probation for four years and undergoing substance abuse counseling. Now 17, he has been drug-free for eight months.In growing numbers, youngsters like Bolton have become ensnared in the lingering perception of marijuana as a relatively benign drug, even though many of the plants grown today are especially potent and researchers have begun documenting damaging effects from the drug.''That means if Johnny or Mary is smoking one joint a day now,'' says Jerry Manny, a substance abuse psychotherapist at the Worcester Youth Guidance Center, ''that would be the equivalent of smoking eight or 10 joints a day when the teens' parents were that age.''The result is thousands of children and adolescents in the United States are smoking marijuana so compulsively that they are being forced by the courts, schools, and their families into drug treatment programs.In 1996, the latest year for which data are available, more youngsters received treatment for abusing marijuana than any other substance, including alcohol, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Of the 182,000 people under age 20 admitted to substance abuse programs, 48 percent were treated primarily for marijuana use and dependence. It's a phenomenon that crosses racial, ethnic, and gender lines.''There is sort of an implicit acceptance, that it is no big deal,'' says Jerry Duberstein, a psychologist and director at Team Coordinating Agency in Haverhill.''But the consequences are serious in terms of kids. It gets them off track. They struggle in school. They are not able to hold onto jobs. They get into trouble in their relationships with their families and friends.''Over the years, enhanced cultivation methods have yielded marijuana plants with higher levels of the mind-altering ingredient THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, say public health and law enforcement officials, although they concede that hard data are hard to come by.In addition, while their parents' generation typically smoked marijuana rolled into cigarette-sized ''joints,'' some youngsters today favor smoking the much larger ''blunts,'' which are hollowed-out cigars filled with marijuana.Children and adolescents today, as a result, are taking in bigger doses of THC, which recent research has found lingers in body fat cells for days. That means even after the initial effects have worn off, the drug continues to impair judgment.As the potency of marijuana has been rising, youngsters' perceptions of the drug's harmfulness have been eroding, resulting in a tripling of marijuana use among adolescents between 1992 and 1995, according to state and federal reports.Teens and substance abuse specialists say society's vacillating views - reflected in cycles of expanding and relaxing penalties and decriminalization and recriminalization of marijuana in some states - have led to misconceptions and complacency.Amy Harris, director of the Chelsea Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program, says her difficulty finding quality educational materials about marijuana brought home the scant attention society has been paying to the problem.In Massachusetts, the state Public Health Department spends $7 million a year on substance abuse prevention. It has had public service campaigns to discourage the use of tobacco, alcohol, and inhalants, but no similar campaign targeting marijuana use.In 1995, the federal government launched an antimarijuana campaign, which included funding for research on the effects of the drug and development of materials parents can use to educate their children about its dangers.H. Westley Clark, director of the US Center of Substance Abuse and Treatment, acknowledges that despite the federal effort, ''clearly the message is not sinking in in the manner we would like it to sink in.''But Clark also sees another factor behind the large numbers of youngsters being treated for marijuana use. Parents might be quick to send their children into treatment, Clark says, because they envision them traveling to dangerous neighborhoods to get drugs.Often, however, youngsters have to venture no farther than their own neighborhoods and schools to get the drug.Peter Ducharme, 18, of the South End recalls how casual his introduction to marijuana was at a party with teenagers seven years ago.''It was just there,'' he says. ''It wasn't planned. It was just something people did and didn't have a problem with.''Ducharme began dealing drugs to classmates to support his marijuana habit, and he says that at its worst, it amounted to $200 a day. He is now in court-ordered substance abuse counseling program and has been off drugs for eight months.Ducharme and Bolton, who have been in trouble with the law more than once because of substance abuse, say their drug use might have been averted had there been more to keep them occupied after school.But Clark says many youngsters find plenty of activities to do to keep away from drugs, and those who abuse them might be self-medicating because of underlying emotional problems.''I thought I was helping myself,'' Bolton says of his marijuana use. ''All it did was put everything on pause.''It was ridiculous,'' adds Bolton, who credits his fiancee with inspiring him to turn around his life. ''I wasted time. I wasted money. Trust is the biggest thing I lost, the trust of my family and teachers. You can throw it away in a millisecond. But it can take years to get back.''This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 08/03/99. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. 
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Comment #6 posted by linda on September 14, 2001 at 23:44:33 PT:
weed
You are so wrong. The kids here are correct! I am 38 years old. Pot is very addictive. I only smoked daily for two years. I smoked an ounce or more a week. Coming off has been pure hell. It is a nightmare. ns. 
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on August 05, 1999 at 13:56:22 PT
It Sure Doesn't Seem Correct
Maybe people should write a rebuttal to the paper. That's how these untruths get changed. If it gets printed I will gladly post it.
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Comment #4 posted by Axl on August 05, 1999 at 09:58:42 PT:
response to "More Youths Turning To Pot!" 
There is no way in hell the kids in this article had a one and two hundred dollar a day marijuana habit. That is just stupid. That is one of the reasons kids smoke bud ..... they read lies like this and just don't take the article serious, so they keep toking the reefer.QUIT PRINTING LIES TO TRY AND SCARE PEOPLE ABOUT WEED!!!!
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Comment #3 posted by kaptinemo on August 04, 1999 at 18:50:00 PT:
Myths? *Who's myths?*
Based upon the obviously propagandistic claims made in this article, it would seem that the authors have not opened a scientific journal in the last 20 years, and have preferred to base their story on the handouts of the American Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP); hardly an unbiased source of information, given the enormous amount of money (16 Billion dollars US this year alone)it receives for continuing to regurgitate such tired old fictions of cannabis being a 'gateway drug' or that today's cannabis is x times more powerful that that consumed in the 1970's.Indeed, when the ONDCP and it's leader, Mr. McCaffrey were challenged in a lawsuit to prove their claims, they sought the American Institute of Medicine's help to study the matter. Much to the Drug Warrior's chagrin, the IoM in their final report laid waste to nearly every one of the Drug Warrior tenets that had been expounded as Gospel truth for the last 62 years. So the question must be asked: Just who's myths are we talking about here? And for how long can a purportedly civilized nation continue to incarcerate non-violent people, savaging their rights, absconding with their property without due process, and sundry other horrors, all based on the myth of "Reefer Madness"?
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on August 03, 1999 at 10:43:01 PT:
Weeding Out Myths About Pot 
August 3, 1999Chicago Sun TimesBy Bryan Smith and AlexStaff Reporters Rodriguezhttp://www.suntimes.com/Joshua, a 17-year-old Steger teen, can certainly empathize with former Bear Rashaan Salaam.On Sunday, Salaam admitted the devastating effects his marijuana addiction has had on his career, his outlook and his life.Joshua (a pseudonym), who began smoking cigar-size joints at 13, said has suffered his own troubles from heavy use of the drug.He went from consistently earning A's in virtually every subject to consistent F's. And when he wrestled at Bloom Trail High School, he found he "couldn't wrestle as long as I wanted to. I fatigued very quickly."He's now enrolled in a six-month drug rehabilitation program at the Gateway Foundation's West Side Treatment Center. When he gets out in November, he vows he'll never smoke again. "I won't touch it no more."It may not be as obvious as crack, as dark as heroin or as common as alcohol. Even referring to pot as an addictive substance sometimes brings smirks and snickers or even rolled eyes.But experts who see the destructive force of being addicted to the drug say that--in ways more subtle and insidious perhaps--its chronic use eventually can be just as devastating on careers, family relations, self-esteem and even physical health."It's true that the consequences of marijuana addiction aren't as dramatic as some other drugs, where you can die from overdose or withdrawal," said psychologist Sarah Warren, who treats addictions and consults with businesses and schools on drug abuse."But when your primary relationship is with the drug at the expense of everything else," it can destroy lives, she said.Salaam, a first-round draft pick of the Bears who went bust, admitted as much in a television interview Sunday, saying his addiction to the drug came close to ending his career. It made him sluggish, sapped his motivation and, he believes, may have accounted for his fumbling because of lack of concentration.At the very least, he said, "I wasn't the kind of person I was. I wasn't outgoing like I was. I was just to myself. All I wanted to do was go home and do what I wanted to do. I wasn't a social person. I was just an outcast."Everybody thinks getting high is cool, you can let it go when you want to let it go," he added. "But it's just as potent as alcohol. It's just as potent as cocaine."Salaam is now trying to revive his career as a running back with the Oakland Raiders.For many, marijuana use conjures images of the 1960s and 1970s--of a drug that is relatively harmless, certainly not addictive.Indeed, experts say, a relatively small percentage of those who use the drug become addicted, unlike crack or heroin. But there's little scientific debate that people can become dependent on pot. And for those who do, the consequences can be harsh."People experience the same realities in their personal, professional and spiritual life, regardless of what their drug of choice might be," said Paul S. Board, medical director of Hazelden Chicago, a drug and alcohol recovery center. The problem is "it's not perceived that way in the public eye," he said."Where [marijuana] may have had its heyday as kind of safe and benign . . . the addictive potential of what's smoked today has become much greater."That's because through engineering the drug has become 10 to 20 times more potent than it was decades ago, Board said. Marijuana also is sometimes cut with other drugs.And far from being out of style, experts say pot is increasingly popular among city and suburban teenagers.First-time use of the drug, for instance, has risen particularly dramatically among youths, according to an Illinois Department of Human Services study. The survey found, for example, that the number of eighth-graders trying the drug rose 75 percent between 1993 and 1997. Among 12th-graders, it shot up nearly 50 percent.Overall, about 2.4 million people started using marijuana in 1995.And as may be the case with Salaam, a buildup of on-the-job stress often becomes the conduit to adult marijuana addiction, said Dr. Sheldon Greenberg, medical director of the Lifeline Chemical Dependency program at Louis Weiss Memorial Hospital.Greenberg routinely treats lawyers, doctors--even surgeons--who use pot to cope with the workday.What those individuals eventually find out, Greenberg said, is that regular pot smoking can lessen concentration and dexterity, and inhibit ability to process information and think quickly."There are people--athletes or businesspeople--who go through a degree of high-intensity work but then want to give themselves a treat where they are thoroughly able to escape," Greenberg said.Greenberg, who also treats drug-addicted pro athletes, says in any given year he deals with a handful of athletes addicted to marijuana. One was a top NFL draft choice who smoked pot before practices and games and is now out of football altogether.If there is a link between Salaam's fumbling and his pot use, it could be a matter of the marijuana affecting his long-term concentration "and capacity to be aggressive," Greenberg said. What's especially peculiar about Salaam's revelation is that his addiction went undetected."I'm a big Bear fan, and the thing that got to me was how it could have not been known," Greenberg said. "Was this man drug-tested?"How he wasn't flagged remains unanswered.Generally speaking, marijuana is considered a banned substance by the National Football League. The NFL requires all players to submit to a drug screen once a year.The drug testing can take place during a three-month period around training camp. Any player who tests positive is required to participate in the league's drug treatment program and becomes subject to unscheduled testing.More important than blaming the person for becoming an addict is helping them recover, said Mari Bernhardt, clinical services manager for Breaking Free in Aurora and Naperville."A lot of people think you're a bad person who needs to get good rather than a sick person who needs to get well," she said. "I don't think anyone starts out using a substance saying `I can hardly wait until I get addicted.' "Contributing: Mark Brown, Associated Presshttp://www.suntimes.com/output/news/dope03.html
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Comment #1 posted by rainbow on August 03, 1999 at 07:59:44 PT:
potency up again
Did I figure wrong or did this article say the potency is up 80 to 100 percent what it was in the 60's?They indicated that kids now have to smoke 1 j and would have to smoke 8-10 j's of their parents mj. Humm the parents smoked too.CheersTom
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