PUFF THE MAGIC DRAG ON –
Aug. 11, 2022 – “The word addiction means so many different things to so many people, and that makes it kind of a challenging question in that sense,” Dr. Aaron Norton, a mental health counselor who specializes in addiction, told Salon. “But what I can tell you is that if you look at really any authority in the field — whether it’s the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, under the US Department of Health and Human Services, and even the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) — all concur that marijuana is addictive — specifically, THC.” n the field of mental health and addiction, Norton said that it is a “very settled question” that marijuana is addictive.
“I think probably part of the confusion is that people, when they think of addiction, they sometimes think of more severe addiction presentations — like what we might see in a lot of people with opioid use disorder or with alcohol use disorder,” Norton said. “They think about cannabis, and when they think about the difference in terms of the impact on society and on people and they think, ‘well, it’s not as bad as those other things.’”
Dr. Adrianne Trogden, a licensed addiction counselor, agreed, but further clarified the complexity of the word “addiction.”
