Posted on May 22, 2009

Marijuana use among teenagers continues to be a pressing problem. But, in order to effectively change behavior, it is important to understand why it starts in the thirst place. A recent Fox News report highlighted that teens for the most part are not smoking the drug to get high, but are instead using marijuana to cope with mental and physical problems.

According to Canadian researchers, teens who use marijuana for these reasons often report that they do so because they feel they have no other option. Dr. Joan L. Bottorff of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and her colleagues stressed the importance of paying attention to those teens that are experiencing concerns about their health and help them find another way to cope.

During a study of adolescent marijuana users, Dr. Bottorff and her researchers determined that the majority of users were inclined to do so to ease stress and anxiety. A close second was to help the teen sleep better. Others relied on the drug for pain relief and to ease depression.

Many of the study participants had been prescribed legal drugs to help manage these problems but found that they either didn’t work or had undesirable side effects. When adults or medical professionals were sought out to help, teens reported that their concerns weren’t taken seriously or the offered treatments didn’t help.

Others simply lacked a supportive environment. “The stories that the kids told us, some of the situations were kind of sad stories,” Bottorff said in the Fox News report. “Some of the kids that we interviewed didn’t have really strong family support systems behind them.”

The research team suggests that adults work with these teens to help them find other ways to cope with things in their lives they find to be difficult. They point to such options as counseling, stress management, social skills training, pain management and more. Although these methods were suggested, researchers also understand that the youth in the study had minimal access to such resources.