BUSH OFFICIALS CAMPAIGN ABOUT MARIJUANA DANGERS

Administration Claims Smoking Pot Can Lead to Mental Illness In
Teens

WASHINGTON -- Smoking marijuana can make teenagers mentally ill, even
suicidal -- at least that's the message behind a nationwide campaign
announced Tuesday by the Bush administration.

"Marijuana can be dangerous for our children's mental health," White
House drug czar John P. Walters told reporters at a news conference.
Neil McKeganey, a Scotland-based researcher joining the administration
for the announcement, said that while it was long assumed teens with
psychological problems gravitated to marijuana to self-medicate,
growing evidence indicates "the marijuana use itself is on some level
causing the problems."

But some researchers and advocates of legalizing marijuana say the
latest international findings suggest only that this might be true for
a fraction of teens with a history of psychotic disorders in their
families. They say the administration seems more interested in sending
a broad-based political message, as Congress and a growing number of
states consider medicinal marijuana and decriminalization policies
that could affect millions of users, than in targeting the far smaller
subset of teens most at risk.

"Our position is, absolutely, young kids should not be smoking
marijuana," said Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project.
However, Mirken said, "there are real doubts about how definitive some
of this information is, whether the evidence for causality is as
strong as they're making it out to be."

The campaign by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including
ads slated to run next week in newspapers across the country, tells
parents that youth are twice as likely to develop depression later in
life if they smoke marijuana on a weekly basis and that marijuana
users ages 12-17 are more than three times as likely as non-users to
have suicidal thoughts. The American Psychiatric Association and a
variety of other medical, behavioral and school groups have signed
on.

Critics say parents who discover their teens abusing marijuana should
look into counseling and perhaps treatment for depression, but
addressing the marijuana use and leaving it at that is not the answer.

"Just because pot comes first doesn't mean pot is the cause --
depressed teens have a whole lot of things going on," said Mitch
Earleywine, an associate professor of psychology at the University of
Southern California and decriminalization advocate who wrote the 2002
book "Understanding Marijuana."

The campaign also cites an increased risk of schizophrenia among teen
marijuana users.

A well-regarded study out this year does show such a link, but
Earleywine said the same study also suggests that only a small
proportion of teens might be susceptible.

First, he said, they must inherit a certain gene from both parents;
that rules out about three of every four people. Second, they are
chronic marijuana users. Of them, about 15 percent develop psychotic
symptoms apparently in connection to the brain's reaction to marijuana.

"If a subset of folks have psychotics (schizophrenics or those with
other personality disorders) in their family, like a brother or a
parent, you should steer clear of marijuana," Earleywine said.

"And that's what they should say, not, 'Oh my God, you're going to go
psychotic if you smoke pot.' Because what happens is, if they say, 'If
you smoke pot you're going to go crazy,' and kids know people who
smoke pot who aren't crazy, then when the drug czar says something
that's true, like 'Methamphetamine is dangerous,' the kids don't
believe that, either."

He also said several studies suggest high schoolers and those younger
simply lack the ability to control their drug use. The younger kids
are when they start smoking marijuana, the more likely they are to
become dependent and the more likely they fall behind in school.

McKeganey acknowledged many gaps in what scientists know about the
cause-and-effect relationship between mental illness and marijuana
use.

"What we need to know is what is the physical mechanism within the
brain that is actually causing that to occur, but if we wait until we
understand that mechanism we will have watched many, many thousands of
young people go on to experience serious adverse outcomes and in some
cases tragic outcomes," he said. "So the important public health
message has to come out prior to that examination of the genetic or
biological mechanisms."