Marijuana
Smoking pot can lead to anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and paranoia-and those problems don't improve over time. Also, sixty percent of teenagers in drug treatment programs are there because of marijuana.

Health Effects
Marijuana abuse is associated with many detrimental health effects. These effects can include frequent respiratory infections, impaired memory and learning, increased heart rate, anxiety, panic attacks and tolerance. Marijuana meets the criteria for an addictive drug and animal studies suggest marijuana causes physical dependence and some people report withdrawal symptoms.

Someone who smokes marijuana regularly may have many of the same respiratory problems that tobacco smokers do, such as daily cough and phlegm production, more frequent acute chest illnesses, a heightened risk of lung infections, and a greater tendency toward obstructed airways. Cancer of the respiratory tract and lungs may also be promoted by marijuana smoke. Marijuana has the potential to promote cancer of the lungs and other parts of the respiratory tract because marijuana smoke contains 50 percent to 70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke.

Marijuana's damage to short-term memory seems to occur because THC alters the way in which information is processed by the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. In one study, researchers compared marijuana smoking and nonsmoking 12th-graders' scores on standardized tests of verbal and mathematical skills. Although all of the students had scored equally well in 4th grade, those who were heavy marijuana smokers, i.e., those who used marijuana seven or more times per week, scored significantly lower in 12th grade than nonsmokers. Another study of 129 college students found that among heavy users of marijuana critical skills related to attention, memory, and learning were significantly impaired, even after they had not used the drug for at least 24 hours.

Of an estimated 106 million emergency department (ED) visits in the U.S. during 2004, the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) estimates that 1,997,993 were drug-related. DAWN data indicate that marijuana was involved in 215,665 ED visits.

DAWN also collects information on deaths involving drug abuse that were identified and submitted by 128 death investigation jurisdictions in 42 metropolitan areas across the United States. Cannabis ranked among the 10 most common drugs in 16 cities, including Detroit (74 deaths), Dallas (65), and Kansas City (63). Marijuana is very often reported in combination with other substances; in metropolitan areas that reported any marijuana in drug abuse deaths, an average of 79 percent of those deaths involved marijuana and at least one other substance.

Treatment
From 1995–2005, the number of admissions to treatment in which marijuana was the primary drug of abuse increased from 171,344 in 1995 to 292,250 in 2005. The marijuana admissions represented 10.2% of the total drug/alcohol admissions to treatment during 1995 and 15.8% of the treatment admissions in 2005. The average age of those admitted to treatment for marijuana during 2005 was 24 years.

Arrests & Sentencing
There were a total of 1,846,351 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States during 2005. Of the drug arrests, 4.9% were for marijuana sale/manufacturing and 37.7% were for marijuana possession. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported 5,599 marijuana-related arrests during 2005. This is down from 6,252 in 2004 and 6,216 in 2003.
According to a 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of state and Federal prisoners, approximately 12.7% of state prisoners and 12.4% of Federal prisoners were serving time for a marijuana-related offense. This is a decrease from 1997 when the figures were 12.9% and 18.9%, respectively. During FY 2006, there were 6,423 Federal defendants sentenced for marijuana-related charges in U.S. Courts. Approximately 96% of the cases involved marijuana trafficking.

Note:
More young people are now in treatment for marijuana dependency than for alcohol or for all other illegal drugs combined.


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