Between 2005 and 2011, states that decriminalized marijuana saw a 30 percent increase per year in calls to poison control centers for children ages 9 and younger who consumed marijuana products,

The risk to child health is of particular concern, especially with edible products containing marijuana that are not regulated on the same levels as the food and prescription drugs Americans use.

se. “Physicians in particular can play a role in conveying to families that early marijuana use can interfere with crucial social and developmental milestones and can impair cognitive development.”

“It is important to alert the public that using marijuana in the teen years brings health, social and academic risk,” said Nora Volkow, MD, a review author and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse

Marijuana impairs driving skills and is often associated with motor vehicle accidents, particularly when combined with alcohol, said the review, which analyzed multiple studies on marijuana and its effects on health.

Young adults who use marijuana heavily as teens are more likely to become addicted, have altered brain development and perform poorly in school, according to a National Institute on Drug Abuse review published in June in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Others say, ‘We’ve worked for decades to fight against the scourge of cigarette smoking.

Decriminalization has been supported by many health equity advocates because of disparities in law enforcement and imprisonment for marijuana possession among U.S. populations. Unequal arrests “force people into the criminal justice system and those with convictions have a difficult time getting jobs and the related access to health insurance,”

scientific research attempt to stay in step with the trend.

States such as Colorado and Washington have gone even further — legalizing recreational use for adults 21 and older in 2012.

More than a dozen U.S. states have decriminalized the possession of marijuana, meaning it is no longer a criminal offense for someone to have small amounts of the drug, such as an ounce or less.

Sometimes we helpfully make room for unpleasant feelings. Other times psychological defenses kick in on their own like circuit breakers to protect us from emotional overload. Though psychological defenses can be problematic, such as when people use denial to ignore a painful truth, they are often healthy and can help us regulate how much of an upsetting situation we take on all at once.

When you are worried, sad, stressed, frustrated or anything else, trust that you are almost certainly having the “right” feeling. I say this because you have been raised in a culture that is unnecessarily fearful of unpleasant emotions and which may have given you the impression that emotional distress invariably signals fragile mental health. This is not true. In upsetting times, feeling upset proves, if anything, that your emotions are working exactly as they should. You are in touch with reality — a painful one though it is — and attuned to your circumstances.When your mood is good, trust that too. With the world off its axis, you might wonder if it’s all right to let yourself feel at ease. It is. Should you notice that calm emotional waters follow stormy waves of distress, don’t assume that you have somehow lost touch. In all likelihood, you have processed and moved past a painful mood, largely by allowing yourself to have it.

Many of us have a twisted notion of a productive life that revolves around pure work output. Some have little choice in the matter, but most Americans work more than they need to in order to meet their job responsibilities.