There’s been an ongoing debate about whether marijuana actually changes the brain, but recent evidence has suggested that it is linked to changes in the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex. Marijuana may change brain structure and function.For people who began in adulthood and eventually stopped using, a reduction in IQ was not seen a year later. One study found a reduction in IQ of 8 points in long-time users, the greatest decline being in people who'd started using as teenagers and continued daily into adulthood. It hasn’t been entirely clear whether these effects persist after a person stops using the drug, but there’s some evidence that it does. In particular, the drug is linked to reduced learning, memory, and attention. Marijuana use is linked to adverse cognitive effects.Withdrawal syndrome is also a real phenomenon, with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and appetite disturbance being the main symptoms, which can often be severe enough to have an effect on daily life. About 10% of all users seem to develop dependence syndrome, and for those who start in adolescence, the number is more like 1 in 6. But the authors have gone to great lengths to separate causation from correlation, combing the data for studies that point strongly to cause and effect. It’s important to point out that in epidemiological studies, it can be very difficult to tease out whether cause and effect is actually at play, or whether there's something else going on. ![]() Over the long term, things get a little worse. These particular side effects seem to have risen over the last 20 years, which may be due to the fact that the THC content in marijuana has also risen over that time. Otherwise, acute effects mainly include anxiety, paranoia (especially among new users), dysphoria, cognitive impairment, and psychotic symptoms (especially in people with a family history of psychosis). Marijuana has been linked to low birth weight when it is used during pregnancy. This is not true for synthetic marijuana, which can be very dangerous.) Driving while high on marijuana does seem to double the risk of a car crash, which is of course heightened if there is also alcohol in the system. The acute effects aren’t so bad: No one has ever died from a natural marijuana overdose, the study found. But the researchers suggest that with increasing legalization should come increasing public awareness of the sometimes-serious effects of chronic use. What’s not so clear is how policy should be informed by the science. ![]() What’s clear is that marijuana has a number of adverse effects over years of use – in certain people, anyway. The new study maps out exactly what marijuana does and does not do to the body and brain, both in the short and long terms. Though researchers have been studying the effects of marijuana for decades, the science has really exploded just in the last 20 years, due in part to better study methods, and also spurred by the growing interest in legalization. A new study in the journal Addiction lays out what the vast research on marijuana has revealed over the last 20 years, highlighting the drug’s adverse effects, both acute and chronic.
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