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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."