TRENDS IN DRUG USE BY JOSEPH “PAPPY” CORBITT, GS TESTING, LLC Marijuana Trends:


The Adult-Adolescent Dialogue Te adolescent will seek gratification and


Tis definition fit the trends in use today to promote or defame marijuana perfectly. However, one trend that continues to be a failure is in identifying our audience and their level of sophistication. When speaking to adolescents, adults tend to forget they are addressing an individual with an immature and remodeling brain, a brain that is dominated by self-seeking and risky gratification. During childhood and adolescence there is an increase in risk-taking behavior followed by a decline in risk-taking behavior between adolescence and young adulthood. At puberty there is a dynamic remodeling of the dopaminergic system, the reward system (pleasure/gratification), and as we age there is a decline in these risky behaviors related to changes in the cognitive-control system-changes which support one’s self-regulation.1


T Tese


cognitive-control changes occur in the area of our brain known as the prefrontal cortex, where we form higher executive decisions, such as planning, initiating and stopping actions, seting goals, forming/maintaining relationships and managing progress. Any disruption in development of the prefrontal cortex and its connections to the limbic region, either functionally or structurally, results in the inability to think abstractly or adapt to changing plans or adjust to any interruption in goal seeking. We cannot change physiology but


we can change our approach in the explanation of the potential for functional abnormalities during the most critical time of brain development, childhood and mid- adolescence. We can change our dialogue from one of “marijuana is bad” to talking about the vulnerability to the effects of marijuana on a developing biological system.


42 datia focus


he word “trend” is defined as “in a general direction in which something is moving or changing.”


brain neurotransmiters, with their pleasure inducing properties, which are much stronger than reasoning skills. Two neurotransmiters with a huge impact on substance seeking and using are dopamine and glutamate. Tey are an example of “bad cop”/“bad cop” in the brain. Dopamine is the substance that brings pleasure and bad cravings and is released in response to most substances of abuse and other activities that cause pleasure. If dopamine could speak it would say, “that feels good, I like it and I want more of it, now!” Glutamate, on the other hand, functions in learning and memory and if it could speak it would say, “okay, I will remember that” or “I do remember that, so let’s go get some more, now.” No mater whether the pleasure is from healthy or unhealthy activities, glutamate will learn it and record it all. Terefore, as far as use/abuse goes, dopamine and glutamate are the cornerstones, dopamine creating bad cravings and glutamate creating bad learning.2 Te human brain being a composite


of neural tissue that has evolved over millennia still retains a portion of our primitive brain whose mantra is “kill it, eat it, procreate with it.” Tomas Paine wrote in Common Sense “[t]


ime makes more converts than reason.” So it seems our communicating reason is not geting through with sufficient force and time aſter time no one is receiving the message. Or maybe it’s just the immature wiring of the adolescent brain that translates your verbal concerns into what it wants to hear, i.e. “they are saying don’t do it, therefore, there may be something to it. So, I’m gonna do it.” Te first and foremost precept to


remember is adolescents are tuned in to peer pressure, peer opinions and peer beliefs. Tey are bombarded by a party line that promotes a decrease in the perceived harm and disapproval of substance use in


general with an increase in the “cause de celebre” of marijuana use, either medicinal or recreational, where the lines between the two are oſten blurred. As with alcohol, any use of a mind-


altering substance during adolescence greatly increases the likelihood that a substance abuse disorder may develop later in life and/or worsen preexistng mood disorders and a decline in IQ of eight points.3,4


Current studies on the effects of


marijuana have focused on morphological changes, but they do not address functional changes. Tis type of reporting further enhances the decrease in the perceived harmful effect of marijuana use and fosters an increase in risk-taking behaviors.5 No mater the bias—pro or con—


substances that interfere with the development of any biological structure or function should be viewed with caution. Let’s put it this way, if I built a pond and stocked it with immature fish, do you think I would insert toxins in their environment daily, ever other day, weekly or even monthly? Te introduction of false neurotransmiter- altering compounds will not serve as sustenance for a developing brain. Te argument against the use of substances at a time of heightened developmental vulnerability, or even a possible vulnerability is simple; to argue otherwise is risky and reckless behavior on our part. No one is capable of changing every person’s mind or opinions; we do not have that power. A wise person will change their mind but a fool never will. Let those who are prudent speak to the idea of caution, Common Sense and facts. Although we are seeing a decline in drug


use among 8th, 10th and 12th grade students6 the trending of soſtened atitudes related to the untoward effects on the developing brain will only send a message to our youth that marijuana is innocuous. It is not. A recent


summer 2015


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