This is your brain on propaganda

>> Drugs and noggins at Brain Awareness Week

by DOMINIQUE RITTER

You should already know that you have a brain. What Brain Awareness Week (March 14­20) would like to promote is a better understanding of that mysterious melon commanding your body.

Drug addiction is a staple feature in the Montreal Neurological Institute's Brain Week public lecture series; it will also be the subject an elementary and high school classroom tour. Emma Spreekmeester and Neil Berger, two graduate students at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre, are bringing their neuron awareness message to 40 Montreal-area schools.

So what's the latest in substance abuse theory? Well, the model being used is a familiar one.

"The frying egg is a good analogy," said Spreekmeester of the famous "This is your brain on drugs" ad. "But it doesn't tell people what is really going on."

Spreekmeester and Berger want to paint a more vivid and realistic picture for the kids of what's going on inside their heads. Their message: drugs--be it cannabis, cocaine or nicotine--are bad because they mess with your neurotransmitters. Just like an egg fries when it comes into contact with a sizzling frying pan, your brain "burns" from drug intake as over-stimulated neurons keep transmitting chemical impulses, thus changing the basic physiology of the cells.

In the case of cannabis, the active ingredient--THC--acts as a brain chemical which causes neurons to transmit impulses. As a result, the brain will reduce the amount of that chemical it produces naturally and the number of receptors that receive it. So when the high wears off and THC levels fall below normal, the user is left with neurons that are under-reacting.

"Marijuana is definitely less addictive than other drugs like cocaine or heroin," said Berger. "But that doesn't mean it's not habit-forming."

However, not everyone agrees with the message being spread by Spreekmeester and Berger.

"To lump marijuana into the frying egg drug category is irresponsible," said Marc "Boris" St-Maurice, leader of the provincial Bloc Pot party. "Education is important in marijuana use, but their message should be a little more clear."

St-Maurice maintains that marijuana use only causes addiction in a small minority of users, and that the majority of users are moderate, responsible people.

According to Allen St-Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), studies conducted in the 1970s by the U.S. government showed that even people who used large daily quantities of marijuana (up to 15 grams per day) experienced no long-term brain damage. "If marijuana causes any brain damage, it's only because people hold their breath when they toke and cut off the flow of oxygen," says St-Pierre.

Figures compiled by NORML show that only one per cent of all marijuana users are addicted--meaning they smoke on a daily basis.

Replies Berger, matter-of-factly: "Everything that feels good can be habit-forming, be it sex or TV. We just want to show people the science of what's really happening."

The Brain Awareness Week public lecture series will be held from March 14-16. For more information, please call 761-6131 ext. 22769. For more information on the Bloc Pot check out their new web site at www.blocpot.qc.ca