1) Many medical marijuana dispensaries in Metro Vancouver are making exaggerated and misleading claims about marijuana's medical benefits, despite a lack of scientific evidence. 2) Studies show that long-term marijuana use, especially when started during adolescence, can increase the risk of addiction and negatively impact brain development by impairing neural connections and potentially lowering IQ. 3) While marijuana may have benefits for some medical conditions, its sale requires greater regulation to prevent overstating health claims and protect public health, especially among young users.

1. The dangerous over-selling of medical marijuana
Even though researchers have found benefits to marijuana use for some ailments, Metro
Vancouver's 60 new marijuana outlets are making exaggerated, to put it politely, claims about the
medicinal value of their pot, which a strong story in The Vancouver Sun shows is often obtained
illegally.
The Metro Vancouver medical marijuana scene is becoming surreal -- with dispensary signs
suggesting pot can cure, heal or otherwise be the salvation of people struggling with everything
from cancer to psoriasis, anxiety to multiple sclerosis, chronic pain to depression.
One of the most irresponsible signs was (until a few days ago) blazing for all to see outside a
marijuana dispensary at Broadway near Alma, which calls itself the Cannabis Cellar Medicinal
Dispensary (the outlet replaced the much-lamented Jazz Cellar.)
Oddly enough, a couple of days after I photographed the sign (featured above), it disappeared. Why?
The Cannabis Cellar Medicinal Dispensary is on Broadway. It's one of
about 10 unregulated outlets that have cropped up in the past year in Kitsilano.
Other Metro Vancouver journalists have done a great job of exposing the lack of regulation of
everything associated with the way the federal government's confusing response to marijuana is
suddenly causing the number of outlets to mushroom.
Read the links below to get more background on the strange legal territory these places operate in -
as do the naturopaths and others who are, without much fuss, handing out approval to people to use
marijuana for all their perceived ailments.
RELATED: Vancouver marijuana dispensaries aren't getting pot legally, by Bethany Lindsay and
Tara Carmen
Medical marijuana: Easy to get, by Mike Hager (Vancouver Sun)
Buying "medical marijuana"
My point with this posting is simple: To remind readers that -- while marijuana has some medicinal
value in some cases -- it's worth noting how scientists are also discovering many downsides to
marijuana use, especially among the young.
I expect you won't hear many of those marijuana-related cautions -- including about addiction or
lower IQs -- expressed at many of Metro Vancouver's 60 dispensaries.

2. Here's an excerpt from a piece by neuroscientist Josh Gowin in Psychology Today, headlined "Long
term effects of marijuana on the brain:"
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, recently wrote a summary in the New
England Journal of Medicine of the scientific findings on the lasting effects of marijuana use.
1. Risk of addiction
Smoking marijuana won't set an irreversible course for addiction, but you must start using
marijuana to become addicted. Almost one in ten people who use marijuana will eventually become
dependent on it, according to findings from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and
Related Conditions. Half of the people who eventually met criteria for marijuana dependence did so
within four years of their first use.
A little under half of people who seek treatment for marijuana dependence experience withdrawal
when they try to quit, becoming anxious, irritable or depressed. These symptoms can precipitate
relapse, making it harder to quit.
2. Alterations in brain development
The brain can be molded and developed throughout our lives, but since it is particularly malleable
from the months before birth to our twenty-first birthday, researchers have wondered whether
smoking marijuana during adolescence could change the brain's development.
A New Zealand study found those who started smoking
marijuana in their teens had lower IQs in their thirties compared to their childhood. {Photo:
Dispensary on Hastings in Vancouver)
A team led by Andrew Zalesky from The University of Melbourne, Australia examined this question
by performing MRI scans on regular marijuana users who started smoking in adolescence and a
comparison group who never smoked. They found that the neural connections between the brain's
left and right hemispheres were impaired in the marijuana users relative to the non-users, which
could mean that smokers' brains have poorer internal communication.
Zalesky's study, like much of the human work, compared people who already smoke to those who
never smoked, so it doesn't show that brains changed after the person started smoking. Smokers'
brains may have been different to begin with. The earlier someone started smoking, however, the
more pronounced the impairments were, suggesting marijuana may cause changes.
Zalesky's study is hardly unassailable proof, but the suggestion is powerful. Especially considering a
study in New Zealand that followed over a thousand individuals from birth to age 38, showed that

3. people who started smoking marijuana in their teens had lower IQs in their thirties compared to
their childhood.
The IQ declines were not associated with personality, socioeconomic status, current drug use or
presence of psychiatric diseases. The people who started smoking youngest and who smoked most
heavily showed the greatest drop in cognitive performance.
The deficits extended beyond laboratory tests. People who lived with the study participants filled out
questionnaires about the memory and smarts of participants. The participants who started smoking
marijuana as teens had more memory troubles in daily life, according to the people who knew them
best.
All of this is not to suggest that the sale of marijuana should return exclusively to street dealers and
organized crime, as is largely the case now. But the Wild West approach to the sale of medicinal
marijuana cries out for more serious regulation, perhaps somewhat like alcohol.
MORE RELATED: Why marijuana is boring
Medical marijuana outlets hit by setbacks
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/02/03/the-dangerous-over-selling-of-medical-marijuana/