Effects of Unrefined Marijuana – Drugs of Abuse

00:01 When you look at other forces all over the world, whether they be military, paramilitary or police, you see the similar kind of guidelines being put forward.

00:10 Where do they come up with these guidelines and what are they basing it on? Well, let's take a look at defined medically confirmed effects of unrefined marijuana which isn't, let's say a joint.

00:24 Between 30 and 120 minutes of ingestion, you'll have a change in perception.

00:29 Patients will often complain of a dry mouth.

00:31 There are decreased motor skills that are measurable in standardized testing.

00:36 Patients will have red eyes due to capillary dilatation in the sclera.

00:40 Patients will often have a heightened mood, so they feel better.

00:44 They are generally happier.

00:46 There is often an increased appetite.

00:48 So, this is something that has been seen as a benefit or a boon in patients who have cancer who are traditionally losing weight.

00:55 There's also a decrease in short-term memory which tends to be relatively transient.

01:01 After around two days to 12 days of ingestion, patients have measurable, definable, decreased mental processing.

01:10 They will also have decreased intelligence and problem solving on standardized testing.

01:15 And motor skill impairment will be much more prevalent, much more severe and can be permanent. So - and I want to stress this.

01:24 After 12 days of usage in de novo patients with marijuana utilization, they may have permanent motor skill impairment after only 12 days of use.

01:36 From 12 to 20 days, you start to see increasing paranoia and increasing anxiety.

01:41 This is despite the fact that some patients may actually have been using their marijuana to treat paranoia and to treat anxiety.

01:49 So after an initial benefit in anti-anxiety activity, there is an increase anxiety overall.

01:56 There is often seen an unmasking of schizophrenia.

01:59 And this is probably the worst aspect of marijuana consumption, is the unmasking of normal patients with schizophrenia.

02:07 And the schizophrenia can be quite severe to the point where they become violent.

02:11 I also want to point out that this unmasking may be permanent.

02:14 We don't know yet, but we have seen patients who have had normal lives up until the consumption of marijuana.

02:21 And after the consumption of marijuana, they become schizophrenic, and the schizophrenic has been permanent and it's absolutely ruined their lives.

02:31 We also have seen some unmasking of psychotic behavior.

02:34 So after the initial high - in between highs, these patients can be quite violent and can be prone to impulsivity.

02:43 We've also seen a tremendous increase in the unmasking of depression.

02:46 And in particular, we're seeing this in young patients under the age of 25.

02:51 Of course we see decreased mental activity.

02:53 There's a 20% reduction in information process - processing based on standardized testing using complex processing testing equipment.

03:03 Finally, there are reduced maladaptive responses.

03:06 What do I mean by that? If a patient experiences a death in the family for example, their ability to cope with that particular death is much more dramatic and much less reasonable than in a patient who doesn't smoke marijuana on a regular basis.

03:23 So the coping skills are actually reduced and there's maladaptive responses that are impaired in those patients.

03:31 Patients who are smoking for 20 to 720 days have selective attention reduction in their skill set.

03:40 And they also have concentration reduction so people are less able to complete complex tasks.

03:46 Light users. Not heavy users, but light years, defined as less than two joints a week have reduced hypothesis testing skills, have reduced conceptualizing of difficult tasks and ideas, have reduced inhibition, have reduced impulsivity. I'll explain those two in a second.

04:04 10 to 30% reduction in intelligence and 12% reduction in language processing.

04:11 Now, two of those seem to be a bit contradictory.

04:14 On the one hand you have reduced inhibition.

04:17 On the other hand, you have reduced impulsivity.

04:19 What does that mean? Reduced inhibition means that they are more prone to suggestion.

04:25 So if a person suggests, you know, "Let's go here or lets go there," there is reduced inhibition to doing so.

04:31 But on the other hand, the idea that they're going to get up and do it themselves is reduced as well.

04:36 So that impulsivity, that's self-directed means of getting up and doing something is reduced.

04:42 So it seems like a contradictory set of behaviors.

04:47 But when you realize that these are both due to a reduction in the same area of the brain, it starts to make a little bit of sense.

04:57 The very long term side effects of unrefined marijuana.

05:00 Psychosis, including the unmasking of those diseases. More schizophrenia and more unmasking.

05:06 More depression and an increase in suicide risk.

05:09 Some studies in the British medical Journal have shown a 3 to 5-fold increase risk of suicide in young people under the age of 25 with only one year of marijuana usage.

05:22 The use of low-dose pot when we're talking only once a week with discontinuation prior to age 25.

05:30 So what we did was we compared kids who had smoked pot, say for example between the ages of 16 and 21 and then stopped.

05:39 And we compared those kids to their age match controls who did not take part in smoking pot and we found some shocking evidence.

05:49 And this was reported in - also in the British medical Journal.

05:52 There was a threefold increase in depression rates.

05:54 There was an increase in anhedonia which means that they enjoyed things less.

06:00 There is a threefold increase in the risk of suicide and there is permanent reduction in brain development.

06:06 And in another study done in America, it actually showed a reduction in the folds of the brain on MRI scanning.