PARENTING WITH IMPACT PODCAST
The Truth About High-THC Cannabis And Complex Kids with Dr. Yasmin Hurd (podcast#248)
Is cannabis really harmless for teens? Neuroscientist Dr. Yasmin Hurd reveals what parents need to know about today’s high-THC products, brain development, and the real risks of early use. Learn how addiction can form, why anxiety and psychosis are rising, and the signs parents should watch for. Press play to hear the truth behind the science and how to protect your teen with facts, not fear. Download a free tipsheet "Top 10 Ways to Stop Meltdowns in Their Tracks" to stop yelling and tantrums from everyone! What to expect in this episode: BThe Truth About High-THC Cannabis And Complex Kids with Dr. Yasmin Hurd Amazon Music | iHeart | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Youtube About Yasmin Hurd, Phd Related Links: Get your FREE copy of 12 Key Coaching Tools for Parents at https://impactparents.com/podcastgift Connect with Impact Parents: Sponsors Do you recognize current ADHD interventions fall short? At DIG Coaching, we’ve developed a groundbreaking field of engineering called Cognitive Ergonomics from the Inside Out. Discover a fresh approach to ADHD care that looks beyond traditional methods. Learn more at www.cognitive-ergonomics.com Yasmin Hurd I’m very much interested in the fundamentals of how the brain works, but my research is translational in terms of what are the things that we really see and what we need to impact. So, for example, I started studying the human brain of people who had substance use disorders on a molecular level, which meant unfortunately studying people after they had died, because those are the techniques we use at that molecular level. But it helped me to understand and to help guide our preclinical animal research in terms of what questions we should be asking. Similarly, in studying our human population, it was always about what brought someone to this adult behavior, this adult disorder. I started looking at the developmental effects of different substances. I should start by saying opioid users, because there is a high mortality with heroin, and now fentanyl, for example. So the majority of the people I was studying had opioid use disorder. A lot of them didn’t start off with opioids. They started off with alcohol or tobacco, and those were being investigated, but they also talked about cannabis. Very few people were looking at cannabis from a developmental perspective, at the potential developmental effects. I started looking into that. Even my colleagues told me, “Why are you looking into something that’s not addictive?” It was difficult to get some of our papers published at first, but that’s the thing about trying to understand the trajectory to many disorders that we often think of as adult disorders. Especially in psychiatry, we now know that most psychiatric disorders are developmental in nature. What does that mean? It means they start during development. There is an early disorder, but it may not be fully expressed until later in life. It’s about the early steps in how the brain is laid down. And I don’t mean just prenatal development, but childhood and adolescence, because the brain is developing very rapidly until about our mid-20s. A lot of things get integrated into the normal genetic blueprint that we inherit from our parents. A number of environmental factors can also overlap there. That’s how I started looking into the developmental effects of cannabis. So in studying the human brain and trying to understand the developmental environmental factors, I was really trying to gain insight into what neurobiological systems we might be overlooking. This helps us understand what sets vulnerability, but also what might help us develop treatments. That’s where a lot of my research focuses today. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Studying the human brain is very important on a molecular level because psychiatric disorders are different from neurological disorders. With neurological disorders, you can see structural changes in the brain. For example, cells may die, shrink, or change, as we see in neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. But when we think about many psychiatric disorders, the reason people say, “Oh, you should have figured this out already,” is because we know it’s not that something is literally missing in the brain. It’s that the function of the brain is different, and certain circuits in the brain are more compromised. We know that this occurs on a very molecular and cellular level. That’s why, to me, studying the brain on a microscopic, molecular level is critical. If we study the human brain in this way, we can better understand what the brain looks like in specific psychiatric conditions and then try to develop treatments that are more precisely targeted. That’s one aspect of what my team studies. We also do clinical trials based on our molecular studies, testing whether these new strategies work. On the other hand, I also look at the developmental trajectory that brought someone to that point. Elaine Taylor-Klaus So let’s talk about that a little bit. What I hear you saying is that some of this is about what’s happening in the brain, and some of it is about how the brain responds to what’s happening in its environment during development. Not just prenatal, but once the child is here, right? So I’ll use myself as an example. I’m an adult with ADHD. My brain is wired in a certain way. It’s a neurobiological condition, so my brain functions differently from what might be considered neurotypical. I like the way you described it—that sometimes the circuits of the brain are different or even compromised, especially when it comes to memory. Definitely compromised. And yet, it’s also about what happened in my environment while I was developing that may influence my relationship with, or challenges around, substance use. Is that correct? Yasmin Hurd So we know the prenatal period is important for later behaviors as well. For me, it’s the entire developmental trajectory. Often, as neuroscientists, we look at development in different time windows, but yes, it’s the whole process. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd That’s why, on a molecular level, I study epigenetics. Epigenetics is a term that even the regular layperson may have heard by now. You inherit your DNA sequence from your parents, and it gives the blueprint, but the environment can change which genes are turned on or turned off. A gene that was supposed to be turned on may now be turned off, and vice versa. The environment drives that change. So they work together, and we saw that developmental exposure to THC, for example, changed epigenetics in a way that we can still see in the brains of adults who had developmental exposure to THC. These epigenetic mechanisms set the stage. For example, in our animal models, we can give prenatal exposure to THC to rats and study them in adulthood. They look normal. You apply even a minor stressor, and their behavior changes. The only difference is that they had prenatal exposure to THC. This is maintained by epigenetic tags that we can see in the brains of these adult animals with prenatal THC exposure. So it’s not nurture versus nature. We have to put them together. We are holistic beings, and as holistic beings, we have to appreciate that we did not come into this world with a blank slate. We came into it with factors that give us either risk or resilience. We are not weak beings. We are not strong beings. We are all here with different strengths and quote-unquote challenges. Recognizing both is critical. For example, if someone knows that their uncles, aunts, and extended family had alcohol problems, they don’t need a DNA test to know they may be at risk for alcohol use disorder. They came predisposed, but that does not mean it’s deterministic. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd The majority of us are not in that category. We often lump people together without recognizing the holistic nature of disease risk and treatment outcomes. Not everyone will respond to the same treatment, even if they meet the same diagnostic criteria, because the underlying biology can be different. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Today, we’re talking about cannabis products where you can even have flower that is over 24% THC. The flower. When you’re smoking joints and so on. Or I should actually come to the concentrates — the vaping, the dabs — that can give you even 90% THC. It’s not the same drug. There is no way that the products teenagers are using today are the same as what their parents might have experimented with. Many parents were experimenting in college, or smoking a joint in high school, giggling together, sharing one joint. That is not what’s happening today. These high-potency, high-impact products get into the brain rapidly. They overwhelm the brain. This is not the original plant in terms of THC content. Teens are consuming whole products by themselves — edibles and so on. We have more kids going to the emergency room today than we’ve ever had. We have higher rates of cannabis-related psychosis and increased mental health issues. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd There are also synthetic and semi-synthetic products marketed as “not THC,” such as Delta-8. These are still addictive. In states where THC cannabis is illegal, the industry has created alternatives that are highly potent and very addictive. It breaks my heart that teens today are being misled using outdated cannabis information. Today, in dual-diagnosis units across the country, a large percentage of teens and young adults are experiencing cannabis-induced psychosis. In emergency departments, we see people coming in with hyperemesis — severe vomiting — from cannabis. We see toxicity cases in children due to cannabis exposure. This is not the same drug. And when teens say it is, parents need to encourage them to look at current research. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yeah. So, um, I feel like I could talk to you for hours. We need to start wrapping this conversation, y’all. We’ll get some more resources for you. Again, Dr. Yasmin Hurd is with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She’s promised me she’s going to send me some links so we can have a place to direct you to if you’re concerned or want to learn more. And I know that in our community, parents come to us with lots of concerns. This is certainly one of them—“They’re smoking so much weed, and I don’t know how to get them to stop,” or “I don’t know how to talk to them about it.” We do a lot of work with parents around how to get to the point where you can have those conversations. And this is a reminder that, as you said, lecturing them isn’t going to do anything. But being in a collaborative conversation, where there’s trust and safety, allows you to begin to challenge and have different kinds of conversations. So that’s just a reminder for the community. Before we wrap this conversation, is there anything else you feel like we haven’t talked about that you want to make sure we include before we close? Yasmin Hurd CBD has a different effect than THC. CBD might decrease anxiety, but we still need research. We are not at a point where CBD is FDA-approved for anxiety disorders. Cannabis is a complex plant, but THC is the culprit for the mental health and even physical disorders that we see. And we also see that the younger people start using cannabis, the more mental health challenges they face. Even delaying use—having conversations about starting later—makes a huge difference to the brain. The data does not lie. More and more studies show this. A recent longitudinal study in Canada showed the same thing. Early cannabis use is the culprit. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd But we do know that when they stop using cannabis, they get back to, quote unquote, a normal life—of some normality. And it takes time. Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Yasmin Hurd Elaine Taylor-Klaus Maybe there’s one conversation you want to think about—how do you want to have it more constructively than you have in the past? And as always, friends, remember—you make a huge difference. What you do matters. How you think about it, how you talk about it, how you be with it—it matters profoundly. So thanks for being here, for being part of this conversation, for carrying it forward. I’ll see you in the next one. Take care, everyone. Download a free tipsheet "Top 10 Ways to Stop Meltdowns in Their Tracks" to stop yelling and tantrums from everyone!
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Dr. Yasmin is the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai. A world-renowned neuroscientist, her groundbreaking research explores the neurobiology of addiction and related psychiatric disorders through a multidisciplinary, translational lens. Dr. Hurd’s work bridges molecular neuroscience with real-world impact, focusing on how genetics and early exposure to substances like cannabis influence brain development and vulnerability to addiction. Her team also leads pioneering clinical trials aimed at developing new therapies for opioid use disorder.
Connect with Dr. Yasmin
https://impactparents.com/blog/adhd/addiction-adhd-medication-fighting-fire-fire/
https://impactparents.com/blog/adhd/adhd-addiction-part-2-adhd-treatment-in-recovery/
https://impactparents.com/adhd-and-addiction
https://impactparents.com/helping-young-adults-get-back-on-track
“Cognitive Ergonomics from the Inside Out” – A New ADHD InterventionOur Discussion
So for me, I have always loved the brain. I was a weird child, and I didn’t grow up in a family of physicians or scientists, but the brain was an essential part of our being and our behavior, and I just became fascinated with that. Today, I am a neuroscientist, and I study the neurobiology of substance use disorders. Another important thing about my work is how my research has evolved. It’s really about what is relevant to the human condition.
Alright. So many directions we could go here. I’m always attentive to breaking it down and making sure we’re following the thread. So what I think I heard you say is that your fascination with the brain brought you into this arena, and that looking at what happened in the brain after people died helped you look for markers or indicators that we could learn from in terms of substance use problems.
Well, it’s also to help understand whether we are developing treatments that are actually impacting the neurobiological systems that are characteristic of the brains of people who may have opioid use disorders or cocaine use disorders, and even for non-substance use–related psychiatric conditions.
Absolutely. And I will say I’m not going to ignore prenatal exposure, because we know prenatal exposure matters. We study prenatal exposure to cannabis, for example, and we see increased anxiety in children and different behavioral outcomes that we can replicate in animal models.
OK, so there’s this influence. This is quintessential nature versus nurture, right? And you’re looking at what is the nature, how is that influencing the fundamental brain that you’re dealing with, to see how that relates, it sounds like, to addiction specifically, and more particularly to cannabis use.
Well, actually many substances. In the context of development, I’ve focused on cannabis, but I don’t look at it as nature versus nurture. They work together.
Right.
There are certain disorders, obviously, like Huntington’s disease, where if you have the genetic variant, you will develop the disease regardless of environment. I’m not talking about disorders that are 100% penetrant like that.
Beautiful. OK, and we’re going to take a quick break. What I’ve heard so far is that the notion of nature versus nurture is almost obsolete. We can’t look at nature without nurture or nurture without nature. They are integrated, and to look holistically at someone’s health, trajectory, patterns, behaviors, and processes, we have to consider both. My guest is Dr. Yasmin Hurd, and we’re talking about the science of neurobiological conditions and substance use. Let’s move into the work you do related to cannabis and what we call complex kids, complex brains, and neurodiversity. What have you learned that’s important for families and providers to understand?
I overuse this word, and I feel bad about it, but it is complex. I don’t study all comorbid disorders associated with cannabis use, but we do know that many teenagers who feel they have ADHD or other disorders believe they are quote-unquote self-medicating with cannabis. This has become a huge issue because there is a lot of misinformation suggesting that cannabis can treat ADHD, depression, or anxiety. Cannabis as medicine may exist in specific contexts, but medicine means extensive research, FDA approval, known dosing, and known side effects. Today, many people are experimenting on their own using products that are not regulated by any federal organization. There are a few cannabis-related products that are approved, but not for these disorders. Young people face many challenges, and cannabis today is much higher potency than in previous generations. In the 1970s, THC levels were around 2% to 4%. Later, it became 5% to 10%—
So let me interrupt you for a moment, because you’re debunking a lot of myths, but I don’t want people to lose the construct here. What I think I’m hearing you say is that we’re not raising kids in the world we were raised in. The cannabis they’re using is not the cannabis of the ’70s and ’80s. You and I were talking earlier about how this came into the market and how difficult it is to manage because this is a business. I remember when my kids were in high school and trying to have cogent conversations with them about what cannabis is today versus what it was. And for every argument I could find about the dangers, they could find an argument about the benefits. At least I had them doing some research.
Right. And that’s exactly what you should do. We lecture to kids rather than empower them. It’s their bodies. It’s their brains. They need to be part of this conversation. But in our society today, cannabis has become so normalized that kids don’t even realize it’s a drug. They’ll say, “It’s better than alcohol, Mom.” Or, “It won’t give me lung cancer like cigarettes.” But cannabis has a bigger impact on adolescent mental health than either alcohol or tobacco. Mental health effects are the primary concern and what really needs to be addressed.
So let’s talk about that. Because in my day, the message was that you couldn’t get addicted to marijuana.
Right.
Now I understand it’s a different marijuana, but I also think the message today isn’t that you can’t get addicted — it’s that the addiction looks different. Can you talk about the relationship between marijuana and addiction? And then, since we don’t have a lot of time, what parents should be aware of.
That is the biggest myth — that you can’t get addicted to cannabis. That myth has been debunked by numerous studies. At minimum, one in six young people will develop a cannabis use disorder. And even among those who don’t meet the clinical diagnosis, many still experience impairment. That’s now referred to as non-disordered cannabis use, meaning there are still real consequences. They experience challenges in mental health, academic performance, and functioning compared to non-users. Addiction with cannabis looks like addiction with other substances. There is craving. There is loss of control. Many parents don’t realize this because they can’t smell these new products. Teens are vaping and dabbing multiple times a day, not once a day, and parents may have no idea.
So some of the symptoms parents should watch for include craving and excessive vomiting. What are other signs parents might notice?
One of the hardest parts is distinguishing cannabis use from typical teenage behavior — moodiness, isolation, staying in their rooms. What matters most is change. A change in behavior. A change in friends. A change in functioning. Early intervention and prevention are critical. The earlier you intervene, the better chance you have of preventing serious mental health comorbidities. We see increases in depression, anxiety, and psychosis. But it’s also important to give teens space. This requires open, non-judgmental conversations. Cannabis is legal in many states, so this isn’t about “you can’t do this.” It’s about sharing facts. Kids will come back with misinformation. They’ll compare cannabis to alcohol or tobacco. I always say, “Do you want to jump off the third floor or the fourth floor?” They’re all dangerous.
So earlier intervention increases the likelihood of preventing adverse mental health outcomes. You mentioned depression. What else?
Psychosis is one of the biggest risks, especially with these high-potency products—
What is psychosis? It’s a term that’s bandied around, but, you know, medical professional—what does it actually mean?
So people can think of someone who is delusional. They hear things. They have a disconnect from reality. We have young people who believe their parents are with the CIA and that they’re out to kill them. We have people who are suicidal, with suicidal ideation, and actually, unfortunately, suicidal completion. Yeah. Because a lot of times they’re paranoid that somebody is coming to get them. They’re trying to bring themselves to safety and will jump. It’s not that they were depressed at that time. So paranoia is a huge aspect of psychosis—the disconnect from reality, as I said, also the suicidal behavior. And what people don’t understand in young people is that often a lot of people with these atypical disorders have high-end anxiety and want to fit in with their peers. But the more cannabis they take, the more anxious they become. And so it exacerbates the anxiety disorder, which feeds into needing more cannabis. They think, “Okay, when I consume cannabis, it relaxes me,” but it does more than that. And this is the thing as well—sleep. Another thing is trying to help your teen in a healthy way to sleep. A lot of them start using cannabis to, quote, help with sleep. Parents don’t realize that’s what they’re doing right before bed. So before you even start the conversation about cannabis, what are some healthy ways to deal with sleep? Healthy ways to deal with anxiety? Those conversations should start even before they become teens.
One quick thing. Cannabis—we’ve used the term very generally. I mentioned Delta-8 THC before, but there’s a lot of misunderstanding about CBD, cannabidiol. People think, “Oh, hemp—that’s safe,” but hemp has been used to make intoxicating cannabinoids. CBD is actually something we’re studying as a potential treatment for opioid addiction. We started with animal models before CBD was widely known.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
When you say early, how—what are you talking about?
Yasmin Hurd
Usually, often, you know, people start before, uh, 15, 16 years old. But, um, the cutoff—sometimes they vary depending on what the study design was. But clearly, um, you know, early—by early, before mid-teens—and a lot of kids are starting 11, 12 years old today. So that is how strong it is and how young that is. It’s exactly—it’s scary. It should be scary for everyone.
But I heard you say—and this is really important to hit home—is what you’re really talking about that’s dangerous is THC, and that there are a lot of components to cannabis, some of which could actually prove to be useful over time. Yes, CBD can be—we might find out that that’s going to be a treatment to navigate the challenges of the THC. So it’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, if you will, but it’s really—we need more research. We need to understand better the nuances and the intricacies of what we’re dealing with with this.
Yeah. And the high THC will never be a medicine. It doesn’t—it just, um, knocks the brain and the body in a manner that will never be a medicine.
Is it, um—once these mental health conditions or challenges are generated, you know, whether it’s anxiety or depression—are they reversible?
So this is one of the great things about epigenetics. If it’s epigenetic, it has the potential to be reversible. You can’t change your DNA sequence, but the epigenetic tags that are put on—we know that they’re reversible. So yes. And you don’t need—um—there are many different things—we don’t have enough time—that can reverse epigenetic perturbations. But it can take time, depending on how early the person may have started. And there are things that will always trigger your brain, and we still haven’t yet figured out—especially, for example, those individuals who then ultimately have schizophrenia and so on—how to, you know, get back to zero.
Right. Well, and the only other thing I wanted—there’s so many other things I would love to talk about. The other thing I want to say here is that it’s very difficult to find places that will do treatment for cannabis. There are a lot of inpatient and outpatient treatment programs that will deal with all kinds of substance use problems, but it’s very difficult for parents to find resources to get support for cannabis use. So any thoughts, or is there anything you can share with us that we can share on that?
I think it’s improving. I think that many people—our field, both clinical and research—we underestimated how fast the cannabis industry would grow with limited resources to specifically target cannabis use disorder. And so many programs are developing. So today we know that behavioral interventions are the primary treatment for cannabis use disorders. It’s behavioral. We do not have any pharmacological treatments as yet. And a lot of these behavioral programs—they’re also in a process of figuring out what really does work. So it’s a process you’re talking about. It’s a process. And that is why this—we’re in, unfortunately, a really tough time where the perfect storm of—we don’t yet have the full resources in place clinically to address the barrage of cannabis-use medical issues that are coming up, especially among young people. Especially among young people. So, we need—a lot of unique programs with different coaching, therapists, and so on are being developed, but today it’s mainly behavioral, and there are few places that do it, you know, really well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we will pull whatever resources we can find, everybody. Those of you who are in the community, these are issues that we do talk about in office hours and in our Lifeline community because it does come up. And we have a lot of parents in our community whose kids have gone through it, have been dealing with it, have gone through programs. And as you say, one of the things I’ve witnessed is that when you’re able to interrupt—in our experience—you know, coaching is a great modality that can really help people re-center themselves, reground themselves, and be able— It doesn’t always have the same lasting damage, with exceptions of things like schizophrenia, obviously. So, you know, this sounds like it’s a scary conversation. I guess I want to leave us with a reminder that there’s also hope—that when we build trust, when we build relationship, when we get connected and in relationship with our kids, we can begin to have these really important conversations to begin to shift the nature of what’s happening when this is going on for them.
Absolutely. It’s funny, because now I think that one of my—not I think—one of my favorite quotes is The Alchemist. And there is a quote—there are many quotes—but one is that the secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. And so you can’t give up hope for your kids—for anything. So that is, I think, one of my favorites.
I love that—the secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. That speaks to this community so beautifully. Thank you. I love that. Excellent. Thank you for being here. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for taking the hits with colleagues when they don’t think it’s important and pushing to make sure that you’re doing the really valuable work, because it really is important and we need you out there doing that work. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks. Appreciate it. To those of you listening, take a minute. Check in. I know there’s been a lot of conversation here, some of which has probably been a little triggering or stressful for you. But, you know, take a deep breath. Let it out. And ask yourself—what were you paying attention to in this conversation? What’s the one—maybe it’s a particular kid, or a particular dynamic, or a co-parent—what are you paying attention to? And what’s your one insight? What are you taking away from this that you might want to bring forward with you into your life this week? Just one thing. Don’t try to overwhelm yourself. What’s one?Minimize Meltdowns!
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