"Marijuana has a unique impact on the developing brain. It can prime your brain for addiction to other substances." — Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams.
Adams made the statement at a substance abuse conference sponsored by Oxford House, a recovery center network.
PolitiFact ruling: Half True. The implications are tricky, and it’s important to note the significant limitations on marijuana research, as well as how it compares to other drugs. It may have its own, unique mechanism of "priming" adult addiction.
Still, other substances have similar effects - even if they take a different brain path to get there. And since this idea about marijuana’s priming effect is central to Adams’ broader public health campaign, emphasizing that nicotine and alcohol also could function in this manner matters even more. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details and context.
neral’s emphasis comes just as many states are loosening restrictions around its medicinal and adult recreational use.
But marijuana research is limited, and this particular hypothesis is fairly controversial. But is his central thesis — marijuana has a "unique impact" on developing brains and can "prime your brain for addiction" — accurate?
Adams’ office directed us to statements from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. NIDA noted that marijuana may have a gateway effect, but that most people who use the drug don’t progress to other, harder substances; and that alcohol and nicotine appear to have a similar impact. But the surgeon general’s office was also unequivocal on a related point: "From a public health perspective, no amount of drug use is safe for the developing brain."
The idea that marijuana can "prime your brain for addiction" has some basis: namely, the results of some studies conducted with rodents.
There are findings to suggest that early exposure to the drug may "sensitize animals to the effects of other drugs," noted Joshua Isen, an assistant professor at the University of South Alabama, who researches adolescent marijuana use.
For instance, Adams’ office noted that preclinical studies indicate exposure to THC - marijuana’s main psychoactive compound - during a period roughly equivalent to adolescence in rats resulted in greater self-administration of heroin when the animals reach adulthood.
In addition, THC exposure yielded changes in their brains’ reward system - in other words, yes, priming the brain for the rewarding effects of opioids.
But, Isen said, it’s scientifically problematic to draw a line from the effects seen in rodents to what might be happening to a human. Ethical considerations about human research make it more or less impossible to do a randomized controlled trial - the gold standard of scientific research - that would measure how marijuana does or doesn’t affect a still-developing brain.
All the Credits - Source - Orignal Story - Houston Chronicle