Families in Recovery

Following up on the story from yesterday, we have another example of less than perfect information coming from the government. In this case, the Office of National Drug Policy (ONDP) has come out with findings that marijuana causes depression in teens.

This finding goes against the majority of research that finds no link, no evidence for this. There are a lot of behaviors that go with depression including drinking and smoking pot, watching too much tv, lack of physical activity, social-isolation, and on. In addition, children of alcoholics are more likely to drink alcohol, use drugs and be depressed, all factors that complicate this further. From Join Together:

"When you start convincing young people and their parents that marijuana is the cause of problems rather than the symptom of them, you can get into real problems," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "It may cause people, parents, teens and counselors to overlook the real cause of the problem."