Smoking Your Way to an "A" - Medical Marijuana in the Classroom

So we’ve all heard about medical marijuana ­­–– its definitely been in the news quite a lot lately as the option for legalization heats up in various states (thirteen as of last count). Medical marijuana is intended to help cancer or AIDS patients, as well as other sufferers of chronic diseases who are looking for help in dealing with intense and unabated pain. Therefore, it is mostly contained to medical offices, dispensaries, and patients’ homes…until now.  Suddenly getting a "high" off high school has become a reality for both students and school officials alike.

While we all know most high school students have tried marijuana at some point, limiting their exposure to it is now proving more difficult as some doctors are prescribing it to teens for everything from migraines to ADD. The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article on the inability of high schools to limit or police the possession of medical marijuana in its hallways. Currently, there have been no guidelines offered for school administrators on how to treat students using medical marijuana, so there's a HUGE concern as to how the students are obtaining it,  when they're using it (since most schools have a zero-tolerance policy on drugs), and if they're sharing it with their friends.

While the pain relief aspect has long been established, the idea of marijuana as a substitute for Ritalin and other ADHD medications as a more “natural” alternative is a new one - especially in young adults. The issue of dependency is a serious one. The New York Times quotes Dr. Edward M. Hallowell in an article on the topic of young medical marijuana use as cautioning against the substitution, saying “it can lead to a syndrome in which all the person wants to do all day is get stoned, and they do nothing else.” Um, we call these people stoners and we all know a few. Do we really want to create an environment in which an after-school snack turns into a massive bags of Sunchips and peanut M&M’s thanks to the marijuana munchies?

The flip side to this argument is that studies have shown that high school students who use medical marijuana have the potential to do better in school - as long as they have that “medical conversation” on responsible use first. Marijuana helps alleviate the anxiety that is often associated with ADHD and, according to a 2008 report in the journal Schizophrenia Research cited in the NY Times, adolescent marijuana users had less mental health issues than non-users. Ritalin is fast becoming a street drug that is bought and sold in high schools and colleges across the country - is it really so bad to consider marijuana as a safter alternative with less side effects?

It’s too early to tell if the notion of marijuana in the classroom will win out, but it does make for an interesting debate. While youth use of marijuana is nothing new (the University of Michigan found that 40% of high school students have used marijuana), do we really want to give young, impressionable students the "green" light to smoke up whenever they feel like it? How "high" are we willing to raise the bar to ensure that the next generation pulls straight "A's" and gets into a good college?

-- By Kylie Thompson, Harvard University