At the age of 15, 20% of Quebec teenagers have used cannabis at least once, the Statistical Institute of Quebec revealed on Thursday. These data date from before the legalization of cannabis, which set the legal age for consuming it at 21 in Quebec.
This analysis is drawn from data from theLongitudinal study of the development of children in Quebec (ELDEQ), which follows a cohort of young people born in Quebec in 1997-1998. They are now 25 years old.
Among 15-year-olds, there were mostly occasional users (9.1%), while 6.9% of them were regular users, and 4.1% were “experimenters”, i.e. that is, they had used only once “to try”.
Starting to use cannabis at age 15 or earlier is ‘hasty’, says Drr Nicholas Chadi, pediatrician and researcher specializing in adolescent medicine and drug addiction at CHU Sainte-Justine.
“These are really young people for whom we have to keep an eye out to find out if we can offer interventions to try to reduce consumption or delay the onset of behaviors that could be associated with the consumption of other substances”, explains the Dr Chadi.
The head of the psychiatry department at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, Dr.r Martin Gignac, explains that the earlier you start using cannabis, the higher the risk of experiencing “adverse effects”.
There are fairly clear studies on young people who used cannabis before the age of 15. Their risk of having psychotic symptoms between the ages of 15 and 25 is 10%. In the general population, among those who use cannabis, the risk is 3%. We triple the risk.
The Dr Martin Gignac, head of the psychiatry department at the Montreal Children’s Hospital
The proportion of young people who had used cannabis during the 12 months preceding the survey increases unsurprisingly with age: it rises to 39% at 17 years old and 43% at 20 years old.
“We discovered that there are several who have tried [le cannabis] at 15 or 17 and who have not continued. It’s not because someone consumes during adolescence that consumption is important afterwards”, explains Mai Thanh Tu, project manager for the ELDEQ.
The study also demonstrated that smoking initiation, heavy drinking, and the presence of hyperactive behaviors in early adolescence are associated with cannabis use later in adolescence or early childhood. ‘adulthood.
A link has also been observed between young people who seek thrills and those who consume a little cannabis at the age of 20.
Products with a high concentration of THC
The data released Thursday predates the legalization of cannabis, but in recent years there has been an increase in the concentration of cannabis products.
“Young people today consume joints, but also vaping or edible products, which contain many more active cannabis molecules than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. It is not yet clear how much more negative long-term consequences there will be for young people who use much stronger cannabis products,” says Dr.r Chadi.
The Dr Martin Gignac also notes that young people cannot obtain cannabis from the Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC), where the THC content of the products is known.
Young people “are going to trust the person doing the traffic on the street, and there’s all kinds of things going around, forms of cannabis that are contaminated with other drugs,” says Dr.r Gignac.
Parents should talk about cannabis with their preteen kids, says Dr.r Chadi. And watch for “red flags”, adds the Dr Martin Gignac.
“Someone who is able to say: I use drugs every week in such a context, with such friends, for such a reason, it’s a pattern of addiction that is taking place, and there will be problems associated with that. that will emerge”, he illustrates.
Behavioral changes, withdrawal symptoms (aggressiveness, for example), affected sleep are signs to watch out for.
“In the interventions we do, we no longer really aim for abstinence: we aim for harm reduction. We try to get people to have responsible consumption, whether it’s alcohol or cannabis,” says Dr.r Gignac.