Smoking Pot: A Guide To The Benefits And Risks

WeeDOO March 21, 2024

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The Claim Smoking pot doesn’t make teenagers stupid, concludes a study in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contrary to other exploration that linked getting sharpened to disabled cognitive function in adolescents.

The Backstory Research on how marijuana affects the developing brain goes back decades, but has hotted up as further US states legalize or legalize the medicine for grown-ups. According to 2015 government data, 15 percent of 10th graders and 21 percent of 12th graders have used marijuana in the once month.

utmost studies have compared marijuana druggies smoking pot tonon-users at a single point in time, and so ca n’t assess how smoking pot changes brain function over the times; any observed differences might have always was, marijuana or not. And all the studies have been experimental — assigning some people to bomb marijuana and others to hesitate would yield cleaner results but is obviously unethical. Given those limitations, it nearly does n’t count what the studies have set up, but then’s a slice marijuana use is associated with dropped intelligence, a 2007 study from New Zealand set up; or with poorer memory, according to a 1996 study of Costa Rican men and a 2002 US study of long- term druggies; or with poorer attention and verbal chops, a 2010 study reported. Other studies, but smaller, find no long- term association between marijuana and Command, like this bone from Canada in 2005 and this 2004 exploration on halves by scientists at Boston University.

In a crucial paper from 2012 — it was the largest and longest- running study to date, testing 1,037 people at age 13 and 38 — scientists at Duke University set up a dramatic drop in intelligence among long- term marijuana druggies “ suggestive of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on the adolescent brain, ” they wrote in PNAS.

As is frequently the case, indeed estimable experimenters publishing in estimable journals run roughshod over the difference between correlation( two marvels go together) and occasion( one causes the other). One 2015 paper declared that “ regular cannabis use in nonage roughly doubles the pitfalls of cognitive impairment. ” No At most, similar use is associated with impairment. experimental exploration can not rule out the possibility that a third factor causes both cognitive decline and marijuana use.

First Take The new PNAS study is also experimental, but with an important twist It zeroes in on that “ third factor ” possibility by studying halves, 789 in California and 2,277 in Minnesota. The halves passed standard intelligence tests at periods 9 to 12 and again at 17 to 20, and reported whether or not they smoked marijuana( 60 percent in California and 36 percent in Minnesota did). In hundreds of cases, one binary smoked and the other did n’t.

Overall, druggies ’ IQ dropped 4 points relative tonon-users over the study period. But more frequent marijuana use was n’t associated with lesser Command decline, as you ’d anticipate if marijuana were poisonous to brain function. And measures of so- called essential intelligence, like problem- working, did n’t fall in druggies; on some measures, like mystification- working, scores actually rose. That also undermines the idea that marijuana impairs cognition. rather, saidco-author Joshua Isen of the University of Minnesota, it suggests that commodity was going on “ in how important information they were absorbing, ” which can reflect truancy, meticulousness, and other factors piecemeal from essential cognitive capability and brain function.

The strongest substantiation against the idea that marijuana is neurotoxic was that marijuana- using halves showed no lesser Command decline than theirnon-using siblings. “ This fails to support the recrimination of the( 2012) study that adolescent use of marijuana causes neurocognitive declines, ” the experimenters wrote in PNAS. rather, it suggests that any drop in brain function isn’t from the medicine but from “ factors that uphold both marijuana inauguration and low intellectual attainment ” and are present in both halves ’ lives.

That is, whatever prodded teenagers to start using also hurt their Command.

Alternate Take Although the findings challenge the idea that marijuana use hurts cognitive capability, it’s not the finalword.However, this study might have been too small to find it, If the medicine has only a minor effect. And since the experimenters did n’t measure working memory or superintendent function( judgment, decision- making capability, and other advanced cognitive chops), they could n’t rule out marijuana’s effect on those. Also, some halves dropped out of the exploration; if they were lesser druggies than those who stayed, the study would have missed a possible effect of heavy marijuana use.

The Takeaway This study ca n’t rule out the possibility that marijuana hurts teenagers ’ smarts, especially in ways that show up only after decades. But it undermines claims that it does.