A Columbia study finds that adolescents who use cannabis recreationally are two to four times as likely to develop psychiatric disorders then teens who don’t use cannabis at all.
"Oxytocin changes social behavior, changes attention to a face, changes your desire to be near another person or interact with another person," Dr. Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele says.
Clinicians evaluating adolescents and young adults who have engaged in self-harm should carefully assess them for a history of other forms of violence, noted Dr. Mark Olfson.
Recently, our government has drastically diminished experts’ abilities to advise policy and has called into question its need to fund science research... Dr. Abigail Kalmbach weighs in.
“It’s a drug that seems to act at a wide range of brain sites so in terms of anxiety, one of its potential mechanisms could be acting at one of the serotonin receptors," said Dr. Margaret Haney.
“Getting to measures that matter for improving patient care without creating unnecessary administrative burdens is a balancing act," noted Dr. Harold Pincus.
“If you increase the prevalence of users, you are going to increase the prevalence of people who have adverse consequences,” said lead author Dr. Deborah Hasin.
Research shows that that both illicit cannabis use and cannabis use disorders increased significantly in those states that had passed medical marijuana laws...