Marijuana is an antidepressant at low doses, and parents know when kids use it

Research just keeps knocking drug war myths down.

This week, two different studies took on some of the warriors' sacred cows-- the idea that parents whose kids are using drugs are “in denial” about it and the notion that marijuana use always has negative effects on mental health.

The first study, published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse, followed 75 families in which the substance use rates of teens were known, but the teens mostly weren’t in treatment for it.

86% accurately reported their teens’ alcohol and marijuana use. 72% were aware of their children’s use of other illegal drugs.

This is a far cry from the notion that most parents are in the dark about teen substance use-- and suggests that significant majorities recognize that drinking and marijuana smoking are common amongst teens and don’t always require intervention.

It will be interesting to see how much coverage this study gets (those that disconfirm drug war ideas tend to get less play) and what kind (media tends to scold parents for not intervening immediately in teen drug use).

The second study, which looked at the effects of a synthetic analogue of the active ingredient in marijuana on rats, found that low doses had a “potent” antidepressant effect while high doses actually increased depression.

This was measured by looking at how long rats tried to swim before giving up-- all antidepressant drugs increase their persistence at this task.

Their brains were also examined and low doses of the THC-analogue-- like the popular serotonin-re-uptake inhibitor antidepressants-- increased levels of serotonin, while high doses lowered it even below baseline.

In 2005, the Office of National Drug Control Policy ran a series of ads claiming that “young people who use marijuana weekly have double the risk of depression later in life,” while not noting that the studies which found this could not tell whether this was because depressed people sought marijuana or because marijuana caused the depression.

The new research suggests that like alcohol, marijuana may have some benefits in moderation while doing harm in excess.

But I suspect we won’t be hearing much about them from the “drug czar” soon because defense of drug prohibition-- no matter what the science says-- is actually written into his job description.

Source: 60 Second Science