States allowing doctors with the power to recommend medical marijuana which normally requires patients to register for a state-authorized medical marijuana licenses prior to being allowed to possess marijuana for treatment. Many teenage marijuana users comply yet there is still a small percentage of them that go to the black market obtain their medical marijuana.
Published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, a new report displayed that teenagers using marijuana for medicinal reasons are 10 times more likely to say they are “hooked” on marijuana than teens who obtain cannabis illegally. The study’s authors couldn’t determine what the teens meant by hooked because they obtained data from the Monitoring the Future study, which is an ongoing investigative study conducted at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
Researchers investigated the legal or illegal medical cannabis use as it corresponds to different drug use in a nationally representative sample of almost 5,000 seniors in high school. The study’s authors categorized the students into three types of pot users; medical users; individuals who used different medical grade marijuana; as wells those who obtained marijuana from the black market.
The investigative studies also concluded that students who use another person’s medical marijuana have a greater risk for engaging in risky behavior, involving the drug more often to get higher and abusing alcohol and prescription medicine.
Head author Carol J. Boyd, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, said to Forbes in an interview that the bigger story is the diversion of medical marijuana. “The 17% of our sample that is using medical marijuana — without a card — means that people with medical marijuana are either giving or selling their medical marijuana,” she said. She added: “If they are selling the medical marijuana without a license, this makes them drug dealers.”
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