Teen Marijuana use is something different, their belief systems tell them that it is something to be explored, and nothing will happen to them. What are the side effects? How will it affect teens short / long term?
Teens, Adults, all should question the use of marijuana at all ages. There are costs and risks to every action, think before you act. As teens, we all have make not so good decisions, this is one that should be avoided.
Here is what professionals have found out (from an article first published at onlinelibrary.wiley.com:
Researchers found that young adults who'd smoked pot heavily as teens performed worse on memory tests than their peers who'd never used the drug regularly. And on brain scans, they tended to show differences in the shape of the hippocampus — a brain structure involved in forming long-term memories.
However, the findings, reported in the journal Hippocampus, do not prove that marijuana is the culprit.
That's partly because the study participants were assessed only once, which leaves the chicken-and-egg question open, said lead researcher Matthew Smith, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.
What's more, the young adults in this study had been marijuana-free for an average of two years.
That suggests that if heavy use alters teenagers' brain structure, or dims their memories, the effects do not quickly go away, Smith said.
Excessive marijuana is a problem, and causes cannabis related memory issues. While more research is needed to fully understand how long these affects can / will last, the perspective is here, safety matters (short and long term). As more and more experience and studies develop our medical understanding of cannabis use, it looks more clear that undeveloped brains (children and teens) are at risk.