Marijuana use during college and its effects on life outcomes Elizabeth Wong St. Edward’s University Introduction Attitudes about marijuana usage are dynamic amongst college-aged individuals. Additionally, marijuana use is influenced by many outside factors, such as timing and rate of exposure, familial factors, educational goals and expectations, and social norms and influences. Emerging medical claims about marijuana’s potential medical benefits further influences the climate around marijuana usage. These factors are contributing to an increased need to understand how college students perceive marijuana usage and also the effects potential marijuana usage may have on them and their life outcomes. Theme X: Marijuana …show more content…
The researchers designed this experiment to overcome issues associated with previous studies by using data that spanned a seven-year period. The goal of the study was to assess post-college health as a measure of health outcomes for college marijuana users. 1,253 first year college freshmen were recruited for the study. These participants then had an interview with researchers each year for seven years to assess their health status over time. Impairment caused by injury, emotional/mental health issues, quality of life, and illness were assessed to measure health outcomes. Researchers created 6 trajectories to categorize participants (non-use, low-stable, late-increase, early-decline, college peak, and chronic). Calderia, et al., (2012) found that non-users displayed the best health outcomes while late-increase users and chronic users showed the worst health outcomes among participants. Differences among trajectory groups were not noticeable in year one but post-college trajectories differed significantly. The results demonstrated that heavy marijuana use in college can produce negative health outcomes in post-college life. The data suggests that the more frequent marijuana usage is, the more likely someone is to experience negative health …show more content…
(2009). Adverse health effects of non-medical cannabis use. The Lancet, 374, 1383-1391. Hara, M., Huang, D., Weiss, R., & Hser, Y.-I. (2013). Concurrent life-course trajectories of employment and marijuana use: Exploring interdependence of longitudinal outsomes. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 45, 426-432. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2013.05.011 Lev-Ran, S., Le Foll, B., McKenzie, K., & Rehm, J. (2012). Cannabis use and mental health-related quality of life among individuals with anxiety disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 26, 799-810. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2012.07.002 Macleod, J., et al., (2004). Psychological and social sequelae of cannabis and other illicit drug use by young people: a systematic review of longitudinal, general population studies. The Lancet, 363, 1579-1588. Moore, T., Zammit, S., Lingford-Hughes, A., Barnes, T., Jones, P., Margaret Burke, & Lewis, G. (2007). Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review. The Lancet, 370, 319-328. Swain, N. R., Gibb, S. J., Horwood, L. J., & Fergusson, D. M. (2012). Alcohol and cannabis abuse/dependence symptoms and life satisfaction in young adulthood. Drug and Alcohol Review, 31, 327-333.
In closing, drugs and alcohol can have ameliorating properties when initially ingested, however individuals risk the chance of becoming dependent. While cannabis is not nearly as addictive as nicotine or alcohol, it’s use still leaves damaging repercussions on the
“Long term marijuana use can be addictive for some people” (CQ Researcher 531). For those
Marijuana is one of the most commonly used drugs in the Nation and the world. In an article by Gray (2007) he states that “42% of high school seniors have tried marijuana, 18% have used it in the past 30 days, and 5% use it daily. Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, 3.6% met criteria for cannabis use disorder (abuse or dependence) and 2% met criteria for cannabis dependence”. Gray (2007) also explains how easily adolescents say it is to obtain marijuana these days. The article also states that there is evidence to prove that marijuana use may lead to “hard” drug use, academic failure, and more. With those who use marijuana chronically it may lead to impairing of the immune
Hall, P. W., & Degenhardt, P. L. (2009, October). Adverse Health Effects of Non-Medical Cannabis Use. The Lancet, 374(9698), 1383-1391.
Within Friese and Grube, they state that Marijuana is the most commonly used drug among teens in the US and with the access to medical marijuana, teens have only increased their use (34). Research also argues that with legalization, recreational use would suggest to adolescents that marijuana is safe and normal (Friese and Grube 34). This finding suggests teen use might increase (Friese and Grube 34). Therefore, since research shows a defeat in executive functioning and processing with use of cannabis (Battistella et al.), it is essential that adolescences decrease their use since the teen brain is still maturing (Crean et al. 5). As well, there is evidence that teenagers who use cannabis in early years have more significant cognitive problems than their peers (Crean et al. 2). Furthermore, in Friese and Grube findings, they argue that a typical drug free environment is crucial for teens’ development (37) since an environment with accessible marijuana will encourage marijuana use and increase risks of negative consequences in their adulthood and health (Friese and Grube 33). Therefore, legalizing the recreational use of cannabis could potentially have a large harmful effect on
Armand, Wynne. "Marijuana: Health effects of recreational and medical use". Ed. Armand,Wynne.Research.2016.Armand provides research information that recreational marijuana can cause health issues in one's life in the forms of long-term and short-term use ranging from battling one's memorization skills, cognitive skills, to how damage to the lungs like bronchitis and asthma. Armand expresses that recreational marijuana is a common use among teenagers to young adults. That how among that age bracket, marijuana consumption is the highest in the nation. That among this bracket when marijuana is consumed in the body, it creates short term effects that can damage these developing brains, which could lead them from growing at the regular pace for
The use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana within America throughout the twenty and twenty-first century has been heavily disputed within our own government as well as shaped many of our leaders lives. Even currently, the argument for legalized marijuana is heavily debated and brought to the American public eye through vast media sources. The health risks involved in partaking of tobacco, marijuana, and alcohol can be very consequential, or not at all. Many current political acts, such as Colorado legalizing recreational marijuana, have brought the eligibility of past studies on the health risks of marijuana to the surface as well as the health factors involved with other legal substances. This act followed by many other states has forced the government to reevaluate their stances on the legality of mind altering substances.
The marijuana screening inventory is an individually administered test. It was developed as a psychometrically reliable and valid tool for clinical use in general health and primary care settings. This is a thirty-one question assessment that assess the participant need for marijuana. The assessment is completed with paper and pen and takes approximately ten minutes to complete. Participants have the ability of answering yes or no to each question. After the participant has completed the assessment the scores are added calculating yes as one point and no for zero points. Seven or more “Yes” responses suggest a “High Risk-Problematic” pattern of marijuana use; four to six “Yes” responses suggest a “Moderate Risk” pattern; one to three a “Low
It seems every decade marijuana studies show that it has no side effects on users, in turn it become more available like when some states in America had legalized it. Dr Kevin M. Gray believes that the only side effect of smoking weed is the physical addictions it causes, he believes that over 51% of all teens have used weed at least once and the biggest problem we are facing with this rapidly growing drug use is only addiction. Dr Marshall M. Gay believes that the health effects of weed isn’t that much as smoking cigarettes and doesn’t see it a threat to people’s health. “More than half (51%) of adolescents reported that marijuana is fairly or very easy to obtain.2 this ease of availability may have contributed to a recently reported "reverse gateway" from cigarettes use to marijuana”. The more ignored belief is that marijuana can lead to a variety of developmental, mental and physical side effects. The effects of smoking weed can extend to those of smoking cigarettes “studies show regular marijuana use can lead to many of the same
Marijuana is considered in popular culture to be a widely accepted mainstream recreational illegal drug used in the United States; its use comes with severe adverse side effects that are often overlooked. Long-Term use of marijuana 'sis shown to have negative effects on physical, mental, and environmental health. Studies have shown that in the United States, up to 20% of daily marijuana users become dependent (Marijuana and Lung Health) showing a physical or emotional need for the drug. Marijuana use has the potential to affect every aspect of a person 's physical and mental wellbeing negatively. Its use also comes with potentially life-altering risks to one 's future including an individual’s likelihood of obtaining a degree, impacting their future earning potential and decreasing their overall reported life satisfaction. Once dependent on marijuana, people stop caring about their schooling. Long-term use of smoking marijuana can result in the inability to learn, retain information and think critically.
Kuepper et al. (2011), the study referred to above, reported that cannabis use is a risk factor for the development of incident psychotic symptoms (short-lasting individual symptoms). They found that cannabis users were almost twice as likely to report incident psychotic symptoms (adjusted odds ratio
Marijuana is a contrast to tobacco and alcohol when addiction characteristics do not show with the use of marijuana while addiction shows with legal tobacco and alcohol. It shows that less than one in ten marijuana smokers convert to consistent consumers of the drug, and most intentionally terminate their use after age 34, by comparison, 15 percent of alcohol users and 32 percent of tobacco smokers display indicators of drug dependency. Cannabis withdrawal indicators are uncommon and do not need replacement medication to stop the habit. When smoking marijuana comes to an end of an intake, the vast majority of smokers do not feel subjected to uncomfortable withdrawal indicators commanding restarting the use of marijuana.
The question, therefore, would be just how big is this danger? The truth of the matter is that in car accidents, alcohol and other intoxication have a 10-fold increase while that of marijuana nearly doubled with cannabis intake. Others associate it with greater schizophrenia (Hickman et al.,2009) although the magnitude of the effect is small (Gage, Zammit &Hickmann, 2013). In fact, the finding reveals that preventing about 9000 people from the use of cannabis only protect one case of schizophrenia (Hickman et al., 2009) implying that the effect of marijuana is minimal. More recent studies reveal that the last thoughts linking it to psychosis reflect more in tobacco use than marijuana (Gage, Zammit & Hickman, 2014). Regarding risks, marijuana ranks eighth out of twenty possible substances that produce personal problems than MDMA, ketamine, anabolic steroids among other hallucinogenic drugs compared to amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, crack and
The method was to take about 74 patients and divide them into three separate groups according to the amount of cannabis they consumed within a year (non-users, medium users, and heavy users) and test them based off of neurocognitive tasks such as: verbal and visual memory. By doing so, researchers suggested that the negative consequences caused by cannabis used in healthy people resemble those cognitive impairments (Solowij and Michie 2007) and negative symptoms (Castle 2013) seen in schizophrenia. They also discovered that within first psychotic episode patients’ cannabis allowed their verbal and visual memory to perform better than the non-user patients. Researchers couldn’t establish any difference between decision making amongst first episode users and non-users. Between short-term and long-term effects of cannabis amongst those who suffer from schizophrenia and those who don’t, the results are about one in the same. The long-term heavy cannabis users forgot more words after interference or delay, compared to short-term or light cannabis users. They also learned fewer words and recalled fewer words. (Solowij and Battisti 2008). When tested with other disorders such as: dementia, cranioencephalic trauma, or depression; the effects measure differently depending on the population that is consuming
Marijuana used as a recreational drug, was the subject along with fifty-seven other participants within an experiment. Four Northern Colorado graduates conducted a two-week experiment that requested its participant to smoke as they regularly would, then answer text messages sent at random times. The purpose of this experiment was to see the correlation between marijuana use and cravings. Then, how these factors might interfere with academic motivation and effort through college students. The aim was to see the consequences marijuana caused through the time spent studying, academic performance, and effort (Phillips, Phillips, Lalonde & Tormohlen 2015).