Percentages of persons who smoke marijuana at least once a month
Posted on 03/13/2006 6:23:52 PM PST by Moonman62
Memory, speed of thinking and other cognitive abilities get worse over time with marijuana use, according to a new study published in the March 14, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study found that frequent marijuana users performed worse than non-users on tests of cognitive abilities, including divided attention (ability to pay attention to more than one stimulus at a time) and verbal fluency (number of words generated within a time limit). Those who had used marijuana for 10 years or more had more problems with their thinking abilities than those who had used marijuana for five to 10 years. All of the marijuana users were heavy users, which was defined as smoking four or more joints per week.
"We found that the longer people used marijuana, the more deterioration they had in these cognitive abilities, especially in the ability to learn and remember new information," said study author Lambros Messinis, PhD, of the Department of Neurology of the University Hospital of Patras in Patras, Greece. "In several areas, their abilities were significant enough to be considered impaired, with more impairment in the longer-term users than the shorter-term users."
The study involved people ages 17 to 49 taking part in a drug abuse treatment program in Athens, Greece. There were 20 long-term users, 20 shorter-term users and 24 control subjects who had used marijuana at least once in their lives but not more than 20 times and not in the past two years. Those who had used any other class of drugs, such as cocaine or stimulants, during the past year or for more than three months throughout their lives were not included in the study. Before the tests were performed, all participants had to abstain from marijuana for at least 24 hours.
The marijuana users performed worse in several cognitive domains, including delayed recall, recognition and executive functions of the brain. For example, on a test measuring the ability to make decisions, long-term users had 70 percent impaired performance, compared to 55 percent impaired performance for shorter-term users and 8 percent impaired performance for non-users. In a test where participants needed to remember a list of words that had been read to them earlier, the non-users remembered an average of 12 out of 15 words, the shorter-term users remembered an average of nine words and the long-term users remembered an average of seven words.
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The American Academy of Neurology, an association of more than 19,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to improving patient care through education and research. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, autism and multiple sclerosis.
For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit www.aan.com.
if they had started out ten years ago, tested everybody, then tested the same people now, you might get a valid study.
It seems to me that it's very possible that the "dumber or slower" someone is, the more likely it is they'll be a heavy user, and that's what this study detected.
Really? And you know that, how? Documentation? I've known many pot users whose memories are poor to bad (small sample, but they all have memory problems--can memory loss be a possible consequence?). Is it paranoid to imagine there is a big conspiracy against pot users? Just asking...
Back in the 80's there was a superb anti-drug commercial.
A young man 20ish is smoking grass with his friend watching TV in his room. They see an anti-grass commercial.
"I'm tired of all this stuff about how marijuana messes you up. We've been smoking it for 10 years. I never got into other drugs. I didn't go out robbing people. It didn't make me do anything different. Nothing happenned. In fact, I'd say I'm the same as when I smoked my first joint."
Then we hear his mothers furious voice from downstairs.
"DID YOU EVEN LOOK FOR A JOB TODAY !!! ?"
"Uh, no, Ma"
Voiceover.... Marijuana can make nothing happen to you, too.
Other studies have not found a cognitive decline associated with cannabis use.
Another study just being published, Long-term effects of frequent cannabis use on working memory and attention: an fMRI found that:
"Results Cannabis users and controls performed equally well during the working memory task and the selective attention task. Furthermore, cannabis users did not differ from controls in terms of overall patterns of brain activity in the regions involved in these cognitive functions. "
Gerry Jager1 , Rene S. Kahn1, Wim Van Den Brink2, Jan M. Van Ree3 and Nick F. Ramsey1
Percentages of persons who smoke marijuana at least once a month
2. This is just an abstract at Neurology.org. The article cites the study at the American Academy of Neurology. The study is not at the American Academy of Neurology. I want to read the study, not an abstract.
LOL. Keep pretending the egg isn't all over your face.
Apparently dope adversely affects memory, honesty and temper.
What was this article about again?
Rut Roh.
I think it ought to be legalized, it is safer than alcohol (legal) and cigarettes (also legal).
What was I saying?????
Dude, like, why do I have this bag of Cheetos? Dude, like who am I? Uh, what were we talking about? Duuuuude!
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