Shops cloud truth about pot, says expert
Use can affect brain development, he cautions
Medical marijuana shops popping up all over Metro Vancouver are giving parents and their children the wrong impression about weed, says an addictions specialist.
“Using the term ‘medical’ is giving a false impression to people — parents and kids,” says Dr. Siavash Jafari, who works out of several Vancouver Coastal Health clinics in Vancouver and also the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction.
“To say ‘medical’ means it is supported by the medical community. It is not. That’s a misconception among the public.” he says.
“Parents feel that it’s not dangerous so they don’t talk to their kids about it.”
The scientific evidence is simply not there for most health claims made by dispensaries, he says, with the exception of its use for patients in palliative care.
Jafari says he routinely talks to patients with health problems who don’t even think to mention how much marijuana they smoke — or how often — because they have been convinced that it’s a natural, harmless herb.
“They don’t even consider the health issues. It affects them from brain to toe.”
Far less addictive than heroin or tobacco, notes Jafari, studies show 10 per cent of people who use it regularly will become dependent on it. Problems increase with the amount consumed over time, he added, with little risk to someone who smokes weed once or twice a year, for instance.
Confusion over what’s safe and what’s not is the topic of a public forum being held Tuesday for parents and teenagers. It is sponsored by the Vancouver school board, Vancouver Coastal Health and SACY, the school board’s substance use prevention initiative.
The forum was prompted by the lack of information for parents and because one of the largest celebrations of cannabis culture in North America takes place outside the Vancouver Art Gallery every April 20: the 4/20 “smoke out.”
Panelist Joy Johnson, vicepresident of research at Simon Fraser University, says teenagers want to hear factual information about marijuana but often have a hard time finding it. First off, it’s still illegal — a fact that gets lost as dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries have opened across the city in the last year.
“I’ll be frank, we’ve lost our credibility because young people go home and see their parents smoking it,” says Johnson.
The ‘just-say-no’ approach doesn’t work, she says, and should be replaced with a rational conversation about the effect cannabis can have on the human brain, which continues to develop into the early 20s.
“We’ve had pretty good public health messaging in terms of alcohol consumption. We tell kids not to drink and drive, to not binge drink, to watch the amount they’re drinking. I don’t think we’ve had very good messaging about marijuana, in part because we don’t have a lot of great evidence. But one of the things we do know is that you should delay use because of brain development.”
A study by researchers from Harvard Medical School published this month concluded that participants who started smoking marijuana regularly before the age of 16 had lower scores on a test used to determine brain damage than subjects who started later and people who had never smoked.
Teens and Cannabis, a free public forum, will be held Tuesday from 7-9 p.m. in the auditorium of Vancouver Technical Secondary School at 2600 East Broadway.
Parents feel that it’s not dangerous so they don’t talk to their kids about it.
DR. SIAVASH JAFARI ADDICTIONS SPECIALIST