Smoking Marijuana Regularly 'Stunts Growth in Teens': Study

A new study has shown that younger people who smoked marijuana regularly were found to be 'shorter and lighter at age 20' than when compared to teenager who didn't use the drug.

For the research, scientists acquired blood samples from more than 400 boys between the ages of 13 and 15 over a five year period.

Half the participants were addicts who admitted to using cannabis along with tobacco twice or thrice a day while the other half did not use it.

Scientists noted that teenagers who used the drug attained early puberty and were also found to be an average, 4.6 inches than participants who stayed away from cannabis.

The research was conducted by Pakistan's Pir Mehr Ali Shah University. Boys who didn't use cannabis were also on an average 4 kilos lighters than their pot smoking peers.

 "Marijuana use may provoke a stress response that stimulates onset of puberty but suppresses growth rate," the study leader says, adding, "Early puberty is associated with younger age of onset of drinking and smoking, and early matures have higher levels of substance abuse because they enter the risk period at an early level of emotional maturity."

Most of the previous studies on the effects of marijuana, used adult rats and human as test subjects. This is the first time pre-pubescent boys were included in the study to see how pot smoking may affect teenagers.