Ask the Cannabist recently received a question from the mother of a 13-year-old who is getting high. The parent doesn’t consume at all, but “really recognizes that there are medicinal benefits to it,” explains Cannabist columnist Susan Squibb, who is better known as The Cannabis Maven at the Ask The Cannabist section of the news site.
This “cool mom” wrote in asking Squibb about her teen’s smoking of marijuana and what to do. “‘My child is just telling me I need to chill,'” Squibb says the mom wrote.
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The Cannabis Maven turned to Laura Borgelt, a pharmacist who is a professor in the Departments of Clinical Pharmacy and Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, to help provide answers on teen pot use.
Squibb says that the most significant thing Borgelt shared from a study is that “the younger that someone starts using marijuana and the more frequently, then there is a certain rate, a higher rate of having an addiction for any kind of drug as an adult.”
More information on the use of marijuana by youth will be available after the results of a ten-year major study currently underway called “ABCD” — Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development — which involves data collection every three months from 9 and 10 year olds, to discover the impacts of marijuana on youth.
For more advice on kids and drugs, Squibb also recommends Marsha Rosenbaum’s booklet “Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens and Drugs.”
