© 2000 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors The issue of medical marijuana use has been on the forefront of public debate. There are indications that marijuana is sometimes used to alleviate pain from cancer, to reduce nausea from chemotherapy, to mitigate the wasting syndrome of AIDS, and for the treatment of glaucoma, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and a variety of other disorders. A f...

The chemical composition of tobacco smoke has been extensively examined, and the presence of known and suspected carcinogens in such smoke has contributed to the link between tobacco smoking and adverse health effects. The consumption of marijuana through smoking remains a reality and, among youth, seems to be increasing. There have been only limited examinations of marijuana smoke, including f...

For 5 millennia, Cannabis sativa has been used throughout the world medically, recreationally, and spiritually. From the mid-19th century to the 1930s, American physicians prescribed it for a plethora of indications, until the federal government started imposing restrictions on its use, culminating in 1970 with the US Congress classifying it as a Schedule I substance, illegal, and without medic...

O n November 6, 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington moved to legalize the use and sale of marijuana by adults 21 and older. The passage of Amendment 64, which amended the Colorado constitution, and Initiative 502, which amended the Revised Code of Washington, marked “an electoral first not only for America but the world.”1 In response to the legalization of recreational marijuana, Colorado ...

Characterizing the effects of alcohol and marijuana use on adolescent brain development is important for understanding potential alterations in neurodevelopment. Several cross sectional studies have identified group differences in white matter integrity after initiation of heavy alcohol and marijuana use, however none have explored white matter trajectories in adolescents pre- and post initiati...

PURPOSE There has been an increase in the abuse of prescription opioids, especially in younger individuals. The current study explores the association between alcohol, cigarette, and/or marijuana use during adolescence and subsequent abuse of prescription opioids during young adulthood. METHODS We used demographic/clinical data from community-dwelling individuals in the 2006-2008 National Sur...

As marijuana legalization begins to spread across the nation, policymakers and individuals are increasingly concerned with the consequences-positive and negative, intentional and unintentional. Currently, four states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana programs, and twenty states already have recreational marijuana measures on the ballot for November 2016. One pre...

This study explored the longitudinal associations of alcohol and marijuana use and violence over ages 11-20 in the youngest sample of males from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (N = 503). We examined trends in alcohol and marijuana use and violence, how they covaried both concurrently and over time, and whether frequent substance use predicted violence and vice versa in multivariate models controlli...

This is the first study to assess the associations between the trajectories of marijuana use and other predictors of violent behavior with the use of guns or other weapons as well as stealing without the use of weapons among inner-city African Americans and Puerto Ricans (N = 838). Logistic regression analyses examined whether the longitudinal trajectories of marijuana use compared with the tra...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this commentary was to briefly summarize the literature on the relationship between adolescent marijuana use and mental health and how policy changes surrounding marijuana decriminalization and legalization might impact this relationship.  METHODS  A comprehensive literature search on adolescent marijuana use, mental health, and the impact of decriminalization and leg...