A recent study concludes that quitting drugs like marijuana is not easy as it results in withdrawal symptoms. Risk of addiction depends on how early in life the usage started.
Marijuana, a mixture of flowers, stems, seeds, and leaves of the hemp plant, Cannabis sativa, is smoked as a cigarette or in a pipe. THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) is the main active chemical present in it.A study called 'Monitoring the Future,' conducted by the University of Michigan, showed that use of marijuana by teenagers in the U.S. decreased from 2005 to 2006. However, the same 'Monitoring the Future' study claims that in the past 15 years, marijuana use has become more common.
According to Harrison Pope, Director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at Boston's McLean Hospital, who studied addicted marijuana users for 14 years, habitual smokers who smoked pot once a day got poor scores in their verbal IQ tests.
Recent research on chronic marijuana smokers and alcoholics performed in 2006 by psychiatry professor, Ronald Kadden, who runs the Health Center's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center, showed that marijuana was more addictive than originally thought.
A study on the connection between alcohol and smoking marijuana revealed that, 'the more alcohol someone drinks, the more likely they will be to want to smoke marijuana. We also found that 100% of the people who reported marijuana use were also drinkers. The first drug used by the majority of people who smoke marijuana was alcohol, 67%.'
Marijuana is considered a 'gateway' drug as it supposedly prods users to try harder drugs. However, most people don't realize that alcohol is the 'gateway' drug to the 'gateway' marijuana drug.
Source-Medindia
ASH/B
