TEENS USE CANNABIS FOR RELIEF, NOT RECREATION

When legal therapies let them down, some teens turn to cannabis, says
new study by UBC Oknagan.

The study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and
published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Substance
Abuse, Treatment, Prevention and Policy, suggests that around a third
of teens who smoke cannabis on a regular basis use it as a medication,
rather than as a means of getting high.

UBC Okanagan Professor Joan Bottorff, Chair in Health Promotion and
Cancer Prevention and Director of the Institute for Healthy Living and
Chronic Disease Prevention, worked with a team of researchers from UBC
to conduct in-depth interviews with 63 cannabis-using
adolescents.

Of these, 20 claimed that they used cannabis to relieve or manage
health problems.

"Marijuana is perceived by some teens to be the only available
alternative for those experiencing difficult health problems when
legitimate medical treatments have failed or when they lack access to
appropriate health care," said Bottorff.

The most common complaints recorded were emotional problems (including
depression, anxiety and stress), sleep difficulties, problems with
concentration and physical pain.

The teens' experiences with the medical system were uniformly
negative.

"Youth who reported they had been prescribed drugs such as Ritalin,
Prozac or sleeping pills, stopped using them because they did not like
how these drugs made them feel or found them ineffective," the authors
said.

"For these kids, the purpose of smoking marijuana was not specifically
about getting high or stoned."

The authors emphasize that the unmet medical needs of these teens are
of key importance in these findings.

In contrast to the unpleasant side effects of prescribed medications
and long, ineffective legal therapies, cannabis provided these
adolescents with immediate relief for a variety of health concerns.