Weed: A Gateway Drug Across Generations?

If you haven’t seen marijuana in the news lately then you haven’t been paying attention. This week lawmakers in Maryland, Maine,Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington, Kentucky, and Georgia are all talking about weed. The posts on https://highergrounds.ca/ show how some doctors are using the drug to treat epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain. Journalists are finding stories of marijuana lobbyists and marijuana job fairs and multi-day cannabis tours.Most of these news stories mention that little is known about the long-term effects of marijuana use. But I bet the average Joe is much more likely to make jokes about weed than fret about its potential harms. I was in the joking camp last week. My perspective is beginning to shift, however, thanks to a new rat study suggesting that steady marijuana exposure causes brain and behavioral problems not only in the animals exposed, but in their future ratlets.“When I was in school you were taught that the only thing you pass on to your kids is your DNA sequence. Now we know that what you do in your lifetime impacts the next generation more than we thought,” says lead investigator Yasmin Hurd, a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. “It’s important for people to think about that as we have these public discussions about marijuana.”Read more at...Only Human, March 2014.