Amid renewed national attention to the question of how high-potency cannabis products affect the developing adolescent brain, the Vermont Senate’s stripped down omnibus cannabis bill S.278 emerged from House Government Operations and Military Affairs last week after testimony in February from public-health officials, school prevention coordinators, and a Vermont medical center warned against potency increases, Compass Vermont reports.
The bill comes amid renewed national attention to the question of how high-potency cannabis products affect the developing adolescent brain. A Scientific American article this month surveyed multiple studies on cannabis and teen brain development, including a 2021 study led by Matthew Albaugh, Ph.D.’13, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine.
Albaugh’s study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, followed nearly 800 adolescents whose brains were imaged before they used cannabis at an average age of 14 and again five years later. The study found that reported cannabis use was associated with accelerated cortical thinning in certain prefrontal areas.