Thanks Janet. I emailed a few times without a reply earlier in the year. I've since got a response saying your team will investigate it, alongside the council & highways team - thank you. I also look forward to discussing it at the constituent meeting on 26th September.

Quitting weed, in teenagers and young adults, is associated with dramatic drops in psychotic-like symptoms and depression.

All LMM analyses adjusted for relevant. genetic and environmental factors.

Publication expected later this year.

Top-line findings: (1) cannabis use frequency predicts CUD, psychotic-like symptoms, and depression, (2) teenagers have persistently higher CUD severity, (3) additively, using cannabis frequently and being a teenager leads to highest psychotic-like symptom severity.

These ongoing collaborations with secondary schools are highly rewarding as I am able to deliver important, scientific, health-related information directly to adolescents and subsequently recruit teenage participants into research studies about substance use.

The London Drugs Commission 2025 report and the WHO 2024 report both called for improved cannabis and drugs education for adolescents. Hopefully my credible, cannabis-specific assemblies can be a very small part of this.
www.london.gov.uk/programmes-s...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The new RA will deliver many more assemblies across the South East and make assembly materials openly and freely available online for all other UK schools to use.

And if Sentia did produce GABA-induced anxiolytic effects, might it not be a relapse-promoting risk for those who are trying to completely abstain from alcohol?

Instead, they report EEG results from a small open label study. The levels of GABA altering chemicals, first pass metabolism, bioabsorption, and ED50s for real subjective effects don't check out. It's misleading branding and poor science.

Better than some articles but still too generous! Sentia is very expensive. Noone I know who has tried it thinks it has made them more relaxed (inc me). The creators of Sentia could easily do a blinded experiment on subjective effects, but don't.

It refers to the correlation between brain activity and strength of preference for buying the reward. A parametric neural correlate of 'I really want it and I will pay lots for it'.

Really interesting work, thank you. Do you mind sharing why you think we see these negative consequences of these whole school interventions? (I'm sure you cover this well in your papers, bit I'm a bit lazy sorry!!!)

Thanks to co-authors: Xuejun Hao, Paul Glimcher, Margaret Haney, Anna Konova, Ziva Cooper, Nicholas van Dam

More research needed now with a control group of people who drugs infrequently and without problems, to clearly explore the relationships between problematic use and value signals of drugs and non-drug rewards.