Pubdate: Tue, 23 Oct 2012
Source: Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA)
Copyright: 2012 Ledger-Enquirer
Contact:  http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237
Author: Jim Mustian

Red Ribbon Week

WITH GREATER POTENCY, MARIJUANA USE RISES AMONG TEENS

Fake Weed' Poses New Challenges for Law Enforcement

With its widespread availability, marijuana is among the first drugs 
teenagers encounter, and more youngsters are lighting up these days 
than in years past. It's a trend that concerns experts and counselors 
who say teens grossly underestimate the risks of a psychoactive drug 
more potent than your father's marijuana.

"Marijuana is back," said Sgt. Donald M. Bush, who coordinates the 
Columbus Police Department's Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. 
"You may have an older person say, 'When I was young, I smoked 
marijuana and it didn't do anything to me.' But now you've got a much 
higher percentage of THC, and it's a whole different game."

As fewer teens perceive marijuana to be harmful, use of the drug rose 
among high school students in 2011 for the fourth straight year, 
according to Monitoring the Future, a nationally representative study 
of teen drug use. The annual survey, sponsored by the National 
Institute on Drug Abuse, found daily marijuana use reached a 30-year 
peak among 12th graders, with 1 in 15 seniors today smoking on a 
daily or near daily basis.

The drug remains among the easiest to obtain, teens say, with 82 
percent of 12th graders saying marijuana was fairly or very easy to find.

"It's so much easier to get now," said Jeniah Johnson, a 17-year-old 
senior at Hardaway High School in Columbus who abstains from drugs. 
"You don't have to look hard to figure out who's got it."

Experts who analyze marijuana sold on the street say it contains a 
more potent concentration of the psychoactive ingredient 
Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, than in previous generations.

"I can tell you categorically that there has been a tremendous 
increase in the potency over time," said Dr. Mahmoud A. ElSohly, a 
research professor at the University of Mississippi's National Center 
for Natural Products Research.

ElSohly, who has analyzed thousands of confiscated samples of the 
drug, said marijuana is at least 10 times more potent today than it 
was in the 1970s. Tolerance to the drug, he said, has driven 
cultivators to up the ante through genetic selection and advanced 
growing practices.

"The problem comes with adolescents and young people that are really 
naive," he added. "They haven't been using this material and they 
have not -- for lack of a better term -- graduated to the use of this 
high potency stuff. When they use this before they realize the 
material is really high potency, they have already consumed more than 
enough to cause them some trauma."

The push for legalization and the growing use of medical marijuana 
may have desensitized teens to the toxic effects of cannabis. Recent 
studies, however, suggest adolescents who start younger and smoke 
often subject themselves to neurological damage in addition to other 
detrimental effects.

"What a lot of the teenagers don't understand is if you get a 
marijuana arrest, that's a drug arrest," said Capt. Gil Slouchick of 
the Columbus Police Department's Special Operations Unit. "When you 
have a drug arrest on your record, you go to get a job and what you 
did when you were 18, 19 years old could come back to haunt you."

Synthetic marijuana

Posing a new challenge for law enforcement is the rise of synthetic 
marijuana, typically a mix of spices and herbs sprayed with a 
synthetic compound chemically similar to THC. Last year, 11.4 percent 
of high school seniors said they'd used synthetic marijuana in the 
prior 12 months.

Marketed as incense or "fake weed," the drug has been sold in 
convenience stores, head shops and online. Compounds commonly found 
in the designer drugs like Spice and K2 have been banned, and federal 
and state authorities have cracked down on synthetic marijuana in 
recent months.

A raid in Columbus in June netted 100 packages of the drug from Lucky 
Food Mart on 13th Street, and two men were charged this month after 
the Spice was determined at a crime lab to violate the Georgia 
Controlled Substance Act.

Teens are attracted to the drug because it produces a stronger high 
and won't register in routine lab tests. But its health implications 
aren't completely understood, and doctors have become increasingly 
concerned about its adverse effects, which can include convulsions, 
paranoia and abnormally high blood pressure.

"When the real thing is out there, you pretty much know what you've 
got," Slouchick said. "People smoking the synthetic don't know what 
they're smoking. This is really kind of an uphill battle for us."

Bush, the D.A.R.E. instructor, said he tries to keep his students 
focused on a positive goal so they aren't tempted to turn down the 
perilous path of substance abuse.

"Kids, unless they are just mummified, are still at the point where 
they have dreams, goals and aspirations," Bush said. "In all these 
years, I've never had a child say really I want to stay in fifth 
grade or I have no ambition in life. They always have something, so 
you have to grow from that point on."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom