Wednesday, March 23, 2005

New Zealand teens part of study into cannabis mental health risk  Story at Stuff - "Research carried out on New Zealand teenagers has confirmed cannabis use is a serious risk factor for schizophrenia. 'There is a small but significant minority of people who have a predisposition to psychosis and who would be well advised to steer clear of cannabis,' a Dutch researcher, Jim van Os, said in the latest New Scientist magazine, due to be published next Saturday. Dr van Os, a psychiatrist at the University of Maastricht, investigates the effect of marijuana on people's brains - particularly adolescents' brains. He and other researchers have been building a scientific case that, for some teenagers, smoking cannabis leads to serious mental health problems in later life, including schizophrenia. Dr van Os said claims that marijuana is responsible for up to 13 per cent of schizophrenia cases in the Netherlands. He said the figure will only increase because cannabis use among teenagers was increasing in many countries, the age at first use was falling and the strength of cannabis was rising. "