32 Hey, don't you know that marijuana drops testosterone levels in teenage boys causing [various physical and developmental problems]?
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This article is from the Hemp / Cannabis / Marijuana FAQ, by Brian S. Julin verdant@twain.ucs.umass.edu with numerous contributions by others.
32 Hey, don't you know that marijuana drops testosterone levels in teenage boys causing [various physical and developmental problems]?
Marijuana does not turn young healthy boys into lanky,
girlish looking wimps, no. This scare tactic (call it
homo-phobic if you will) was a common device used in early
anti-drug literature. It attempts to scare boys away from
marijuana by telling them, essentially, that it will turn
them into a girl. Young men probably should not use
marijuana heavily (see the section on amotivational
syndrome), but the risks are not horrendous.
Anti-marijuana pamphlets used this claim often during Reefer
Madness II, but the studies which are cited are mostly
faulty or misinterpreted. This is not to say that marijuana
use does not affect childhood development at all, just that
the effects are not as drastic as some people would like
them to sound. In fact they are pretty much unknown.
``Behavioral, Neurochemical, and Neurohistological Effects of Chronic
Marijuana Smoke Exposure in the Nonhuman Primate'' by William Slikker
Jr. et al. in ``Marijuana Cannabinoids Neurobiology and
Neurophysiology'' pp. . Laura Murphy, Andrzej Bartke ed. pub. CRC
Press Boca Raton, FL, 1992.
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