I attended a meeting with police leaders, county attorneys and the U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis today about our state-wide heroin problems and heroin dealer round up (dubbed Operation Exile). The heroin problem has exploded and in a high percentage of cases it is young adults who begin with prescription opiate abuse.
Duluth PD has been working non-stop to bring those profiting from the sale of heroin to justice. A good portion of the total number of state-wide arrests in this round up were made by the hard working officers at DPD.
Using marijuana a few times a week is enough to physically alter critical brain structures, according to a new study published Tuesday in The Journal of Neuroscience.
"Just casual use appears to create changes in the brain in areas you don't want to change," said Hans Breiter, a psychiatrist and mathematician at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, who led the new study.
There is actually very little research on the potential benefits and downsides of casual marijuana smoking — fewer than four times a week on average.
In his study, done in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University, scientists looked at the brains of 20 relatively light marijuana users and 20 people who did not use it at all. All 40 were college students in the Boston area.
The study found volume, shape and density changes in two crucial brain areas — the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala — involved with emotion and motivation and some types of mental illness. "This is a part of the brain you do not want to mess around with," Breiter said.
The more marijuana the students smoked, the more their brains differed from the non-users, the study found.
The brain continues to develop well into the 20s, and even into the 30s, said Breiter, who is concerned about the long-term impacts of marijuana use on the developing brain.
Staci Gruber, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research, said Breiter's findings are consistent with her own, although she has focused on somewhat heavier users.
"There have been a growing number of studies that suggest that marijuana use in emerging adults is associated with differences in brain structure and cognitive abilities," said Gruber, also the director of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core at McLean Hospital outside Boston. "I'm not saying (pot smoking) is analogous to shooting heroin or cocaine, but it's also not quite the benign substance people thought it was."
Responding to a study that found a decline in IQ points among people who used marijuana regularly, Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told USA TODAY recently that people should be more aware of these potential brain impacts.
"Perhaps it would be better if ... there was a little bit more recognition of that particular consequence," he said.
Gregory Gerdeman, a biologist and neuropharmacologist at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he has no reason to doubt the new study's findings but worries generally about marijuana research funded by federal agencies, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is charged with limiting drug use. (The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health as well as the Office of National Drug Control Policy and Northwestern Medicine's Warren Wright Adolescent Center.)
"If you're getting money from the drug czar's office, that money's not going to continue if you don't end up publishing something that at least supports the general story of the danger of drug abuse," Gerdeman said.
He said it doesn't surprise him that heavy pot smoking might make it difficult for students to reach their intellectual potential. But still, he said, "if it were my child, even with this study, I'm more comfortable with young people having a casual marijuana habit than drinking regularly."
Police continue to be the first responders on mental illness issues in our community. They are on the front line. Unfortunately our criminal justice system is too often the place where those suffering from mental illness end up. Our jails are becoming the institutions that the state hospitals used to be. I am amazed at the increase in mental illness-related police calls when I am working the street.
The cuts to state and federal mental illness treatment over the last 30 years are astronomical. Often local government and nonprofits are left to absorb the problems. Police officers are the mental health workers of today. I am concerned any time an officer is sent to a mental illness call instead of a psychologist or mental health worker. The current state requirements for police officer training do not contain any mental illness education.
As I follow this issue nationally, I often read about unfortunate incidents involving police while dealing with a mentally ill individual. There are often two elements associated with the contact that involves lack of training and mental health resources in the community. Recently we found an opportunity to prepare several of our officers as trainers in a national model for police response to people in crisis. In turn, these officers will train our entire department on crisis intervention. This project will be done with our community partners with probation, social services, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and other service providers in Duluth. While we have had a select group of officers trained in crisis intervention, this opportunity will allow us to train our entire department.
We also have a very strong collaborative effort between local judges, prosecutors, public defenders, street outreach, police, probation and social services that works to help chronic, mentally ill offenders. This program receives no funding and is the product of dedicated public servants that see the importance of the issue in our community. We are always looking for funding opportunities to improve our crisis response.
We are fortunate to have caring and compassionate police and service providers in our community who make a positive impact for those suffering from this illness and their loved ones.
