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Literature Review Of Marijuana And The Teen Brain

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Literature Review The article, “Marijuana and the Teen Brain”, from the Scientific American journal, Claudia Wallis, argues that marijuana negatively affects the teenage brain. Wallis begins her argument by stating her viewpoint on the drug and then proceeds to provide information to support her stance. Multiple studies by scientists/researchers are cited in this article including those based on x-rays of a marijuana user’s brain and others that tested marijuana users on their cognitive skills. Wallis additionally mentions a study on rats which tested the effects of THC. The author provides background information on marijuana to give the reader a better understanding of the concept. This source supports the argument that marijuana use has negative impacts on the human brain because the author also stands behind that argument. Wallis discusses these negative impacts and provides evidence to support her claim. This source cites various studies in which researchers tested the effects of marijuana on the brain which reinforces the argument that marijuana has abnormal effects on the human brain. An additional article which focuses on the topic of marijuana, “National Substance Use Patterns on Twitter”, is written by a group of four researchers studying the patterns of legal and illegal drugs in the United States. The purpose of the researchers’ study was to identify the most popular drug tweeted about on Twitter in order to pinpoint the most effective way to campaign against substance abuse. The group gathered a total of 79,848,992 tweets that were related to substance abuse. After sorting the tweets out by substance, the researchers came to the conclusion that alcohol was the most tweeted about substance. Marijuana was the second most tweeted about drug. The authors ended the article by concluding that online discussions have a tendency to glorify and normalize substance abuse. This source supports the argument that people are often influenced by their friends to use marijuana. The statement that the authors made about ‘Twitter users glorifying marijuana use’ is a direct example of people influencing their friends to try the drug. The article reinforces the argument that marijuana users are influenced by their

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