Barcott, Bruce; Scherer, Michael. “The Great Pot Experiment.” www.web.b.ebscohost.com. Time. 25, May. 2015. Web. 19 Jul. 2015.
Barcott is a journalist who has written for the New York Times, National Geographic and many other publications and is the author of “Weed the People, the Future of Legal Marijuana in America.” Scherer is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. This particular article comes from Barcott’s book where he talks about an experiment done by Yasmin Hurd, the Director of the Center for Addictive Disorders and a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She studies the effect of marijuana on humans and animal models and how it can lead to addiction.
Hurd began an experiment to see how the dosage of marijuana ultimately affected the brain and how it would affect their offspring. She began with a pair of rats and would present to them daily dosages of marijuana, in time she mated them, which is where she began to answer her question of: “Could parental marijuana exposure pass on changes to the next generation, even to offspring who had never been exposed to the drug?” She tested the rat with the THC-exposed parents with a one of a clear health history, to see which rat would work harder to get to a dosage of heroin. Not only did they perform differently, the rat with the THC-exposed parents worked twice as hard as the other rat, “when she analyzed the brains of the rats, she also found differences in the neural circuitry of the ones with drug-using parents. Even the grandkids have begun to show behavioral differences in how they seek out rewards.” With these results Hurd begins to question if the usage of marijuana affects not only the user however, the offspring and the generations to come.
With that, there have been numerous of studies that have shown that the usage of marijuana has helped many cases as patients with pain, nausea and many other symptoms, however, for those who are wanting to use it for recreational purposes, it has shown that the percentages of addiction are increasing. Also including the usage of young adults, increases the percentage of becoming addicted and of destroying cells in the brain. They use this example to visually represent how dangerous it can be for young adults to be exposed to marijuana without the need for it medical. “If the brain were a house, the childhood years would be spent pouring the foundation and framing up the walls. Adolescence, is when the wiring and plumbing get finished.” If during the childhood year’s it is being wasted on killing brain cells and the chances of becoming an addict to the substance, the brain will never be given a chance to develop, because of, how they put it “the house would have poor foundation and walls”.
Using marijuana without the need for it medically can cause many permanent damages to the brain. Although, Hurd would agree, that marijuana has shown to help patients with pain, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, if not used when needed, it can cause many dangerous symptoms to the brain and “also play a role in the regulation of pain, mood, appetite, memory and even the life and death of individual cells.” It is explained how although the usage of marijuana can have its benefits for patients in need, those who are not can suffer from dangerous consequences especially for young adults.
This article was helpful for me because even though it shows a bit of both the positives and negatives and clearly shows how the use of marijuana recreationally is not healthy. I believe that this article would help for those who are looking for studies on children and addiction. It really blends those two aspects really well and it was quite helpful for me.