The problem, not the solution.
I have been saying for years that marijuana use has the potential to cause anxiety. I have worked with lots of teens who claim they are using to deal with anxiety but the more they use the worse the anxiety gets and them the more they use.
This article confirms that this is a significant issue.
Teen pot smokers develop anxiety
Kate Hagan
TEENAGERS who smoke cannabis weekly are more than twice as likely as non-users to develop an anxiety disorder in their late 20s, even if they stop using the drug, new research has shown.
The research, published in the journal Addiction, drew on the results of a landmark 15-year study of nearly 2000 Victorian secondary students. An analysis of data collected between 1992 and 2008 found teenagers who smoked cannabis once a week or more for a period of at least six months doubled their risk of having an anxiety disorder for up to a decade afterwards. About 12 per cent of teenagers in the study - or one in eight - smoked cannabis at that level.
The association between cannabis use and anxiety disorders persisted even when researchers took into account other possible explanations, including pre-existing mental health problems or other drug use.
Lead author Professor Louisa Degenhardt, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW, said the study showed cannabis use during adolescence had ''a persistent association with anxiety disorders'' that continued into adulthood.
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''Given that anxiety is the most prevalent mental health disorder in the Australian population ... we need to investigate the findings further because it is highly possible that early cannabis use causes enduring mental health risks,'' she said.
Co-author Professor George Patton, of Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute, said it was possible that cannabis use was causing lasting changes to the brain at a time when it was developing rapidly.
''During the teen years the parts of the brain that are involved in managing emotions are still developing rapidly and it is highly possible that heavy cannabis use at this sensitive point could have long-lasting effects,'' he said. Previous research using imaging techniques had shown long-term changes to the brain in heavy cannabis users, which appeared to support his team's findings.
''Some of the changes were in those parts of the brain, the limbic system, involved in emotional processing and that would be the kind of area that we would think would be implicated in problems related to anxiety,'' he said.
