The number of teens smoking and using weed is growing dramatically, and it is damaging their health and mental state. Researchers conducted 17 studies involving 200,000 young adults in the U.S. and Canada, all saying that the amount of teens using weed has doubled between 2013 to 2020, because of a shift in preference from dried herb to cannabis.
Cannabis was first used as medication to release pain from diseases, like arthritis and epilepsy, but people are now using and selling it more and more for a “desirable experience.”
Adolescent brains are still developing so they are still establishing their identities and exploring the world. In 2019, pre-pandemic, 37% of high-school students admitted to lifetime use of marijuana, and 22% reported use in the last month.
Scromiting is an illness that teens who use weed or marijuana daily get. The word comes from the combination of two words: screaming and vomiting. Some symptoms are exorbitant amounts of vomiting, stomach pain, dehydration, and weight loss. Over 33% of marijuana users have experienced this syndrome, and over 97% of those people say that they use weed regularly.
An example is Elysse, a teen who started using weed at 14, now 18. In 2020, Elysse began having mysterious bouts of illness where she would throw up over and over again. At first she and her parents — and even her doctors — were baffled. During one episode, Elysse said, she threw up in a mall bathroom for an hour. “I felt like my body was levitating.”
“Another time she estimated that she threw up at least 20 times in the span of two hours,” says author Christina Caron, from nytimes.com. “It wasn’t until 2021, after a half dozen trips to the emergency room for stomach illness, including some hospital stays, that a gastroenterologist diagnosed her with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition that causes recurrent vomiting in heavy marijuana users.”
Aside from the health issues, parents are desperately searching for ways to stop their child’s addiction. But teens have come up with new hiding places like putting weed in candy wrappers to sneak in schools or to hide at home.
“It looks like candy, but it is not what you might think because it has that THC (Tetrahydrocannabivarin, found in strains of cannabis) in it and they are getting it from places that are obviously very much of concern for us in law enforcement,” Officer Warren says on wfla.com. “Gummies, Skittles, Warheads – if you look closely you’ll be able to read somewhere on the packaging that it is not the typical candy that you might think.”
Nearly 20% of high-school students have been offered drugs on campus, exposing them to a bigger variety of dangerous drugs and weed. The dealers are also students who get the drugs using fake ID’s or on the dark web. Since technology is so advanced now, ID scanners often cannot tell the difference between a fake and a real one. That makes it very difficult to stop teen drug abusers and sellers.
Even for those who think that using less weed daily would be healthier, doctors do not know how much weed is considered safe. The strong addiction causes major mental and physical health problems, as well as being fatal if too much is consumed. Unless prescribed by professionals, weed should stay out of the reach of teens.
Cannabis was first used as medication to release pain from diseases, like arthritis and epilepsy, but people are now using and selling it more and more for a “desirable experience.”
Adolescent brains are still developing so they are still establishing their identities and exploring the world. In 2019, pre-pandemic, 37% of high-school students admitted to lifetime use of marijuana, and 22% reported use in the last month.
Scromiting is an illness that teens who use weed or marijuana daily get. The word comes from the combination of two words: screaming and vomiting. Some symptoms are exorbitant amounts of vomiting, stomach pain, dehydration, and weight loss. Over 33% of marijuana users have experienced this syndrome, and over 97% of those people say that they use weed regularly.
An example is Elysse, a teen who started using weed at 14, now 18. In 2020, Elysse began having mysterious bouts of illness where she would throw up over and over again. At first she and her parents — and even her doctors — were baffled. During one episode, Elysse said, she threw up in a mall bathroom for an hour. “I felt like my body was levitating.”
“Another time she estimated that she threw up at least 20 times in the span of two hours,” says author Christina Caron, from nytimes.com. “It wasn’t until 2021, after a half dozen trips to the emergency room for stomach illness, including some hospital stays, that a gastroenterologist diagnosed her with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition that causes recurrent vomiting in heavy marijuana users.”
Aside from the health issues, parents are desperately searching for ways to stop their child’s addiction. But teens have come up with new hiding places like putting weed in candy wrappers to sneak in schools or to hide at home.
“It looks like candy, but it is not what you might think because it has that THC (Tetrahydrocannabivarin, found in strains of cannabis) in it and they are getting it from places that are obviously very much of concern for us in law enforcement,” Officer Warren says on wfla.com. “Gummies, Skittles, Warheads – if you look closely you’ll be able to read somewhere on the packaging that it is not the typical candy that you might think.”
Nearly 20% of high-school students have been offered drugs on campus, exposing them to a bigger variety of dangerous drugs and weed. The dealers are also students who get the drugs using fake ID’s or on the dark web. Since technology is so advanced now, ID scanners often cannot tell the difference between a fake and a real one. That makes it very difficult to stop teen drug abusers and sellers.
Even for those who think that using less weed daily would be healthier, doctors do not know how much weed is considered safe. The strong addiction causes major mental and physical health problems, as well as being fatal if too much is consumed. Unless prescribed by professionals, weed should stay out of the reach of teens.
