Just when you think the reefer madness couldn’t get any sillier – the latest salvo from the prohibitionists is a new study that claims that heavy marijuana use shrinks your brain.
Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain parts: study | Lifestyle | Living | Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Long-term heavy use of marijuana may cause two important brain structures to shrink, Australian researchers said on Monday.Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers, the researchers said. The men had smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for an average 20 years.
Wait a minute. Five joints a day? Let’s do the math – a joint (by US Government standards) is ¾ gram, so that’s a little less than four ounces a month. Where are they finding these guys who smoke a quarter-pound of weed every month, and how is this relevant to the 99% of cannabis users who might smoke a joint now and then on the weekend?
The study, published in the American Medical Association’s journal Archives of General Psychiatry, also found the heavy cannabis users earned lower scores than the nonusers in a verbal learning task — trying to recall a list of 15 words.
Which provides plenty of justification for locking up cannabis users. “Flute, dingo, asparagus, violet, running, fedora, Zimbabwe, truculent, football, chrysanthemum, stainless, chinstrap, oxidize, uh, what’s that fourteenth word again?” Aha! An obvious danger to society! Lock him up!
The marijuana users were more likely to exhibit mild signs of psychotic disorders, but not enough to be formally diagnosed with any such disorder, the researchers said.
And when my eyes are closed, I exhibit mild signs of blindness. What exactly does it mean to show signs of a disorder, but not enough to actually be diagnosed with it? According to the study, they “assessed for subthreshold psychotic symptoms and verbal learning ability in this otherwise psychologically healthy sample.” So, these guys smoked a quarter-pound a month for 20 years and you can’t find anything psychologically wrong with them?
The researchers used some common tools in schizophrenia diagnosis: The Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) and The Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS). These are a series of questions the diagnostician asks, like “How much energy do you have?”, and scores for the diagnostician’s judgment regarding whether the subject has good grooming habits, uses hand gestures when speaking, takes lots of time before answering questions, and doesn’t make eye contact.
Sorry, but I think that a person smoking a quarter-pound a month of a substance that brands him a criminal and threatens him with a five year felony and a quarter-million dollar fine would act differently than someone with no such law enforcement issues. Especially when being questioned in a clinical setting by a stranger.
Among the 15 heavy marijuana users in the study, the hippocampus volume was 12 percent less and the amygdala volume was 7 percent less than in 16 men who were not marijuana users, the researchers said.
The researchers acknowledged that the study did not prove it was the marijuana and not some other factor that triggered these brain differences. But Yucel said the findings certainly suggested marijuana was the cause.
Fifteen test subjects? That’s a very small group to study to come up with the fact that you can’t prove marijuana shrinks the brain. That won’t stop the reefer madness media from running with the “Pot shrinks your brain!” headline, though.
While about half of the marijuana users reported experiencing some form of paranoia and social withdrawal, only one of the nonusers reported such symptoms, Yucel said.
When the federal government is actively seeking you and your kind out for your use of cannabis, and will lock you up if they catch you, you can get you will be a little paranoid. When your use must be hidden underground and any public knowledge of it brings the possibility of arrest, you might just be a little anti-social.
Year after year, the drug warriors desperately search for the new justification for arresting over 800,000 Americans for their unpopular choice of recreational intoxicant. However, even if they do discover that extreme marijuana use maybe perhaps might lead to this or that pseudo-disorder, that still does not justify locking people up for their use of it. If we want to use harm to self as the yardstick for determining the legality of drugs, then we’d better prohibit cigarettes and alcohol right away!
You’re wrong, but regardless – even if it is harmful, do you think I should be imprisoned for using cannabis?
I am really just awestruck at the depth of denial that you guys are all in. There are tremendous lengths that some of you fanatics will go to in order to deny the legitimate scientific studies of today. Sure, there was a single rhesus monkey study that was inadequate and should be disregarded for it’s results, but there has since been a wave of finding that legitimately point to a correlation. Now, it is true that a correlation is not always causation, but is people have known the effects of cannabinoids on the brain are harmful for almost one hundred years. Currently, scientists are faced with an issue of pinpointed the exact changes to the brain but studying the brain is such a complex and profound task. However, breakthroughs in accurate knowledge is on the brink on coming through. Until then, it’s important to not underestimate the mental dangers from this drug. It should not be made used just because it isn’t yet “proven” to be harmful, it should be abstained from until it’s proven to be safe, but the studies are currently leaning the other way.
Well put, Jesper, it’s something Dr. Mitch and I tackle all the time. Does pot cause X in people, or does X in people steer them toward smoking pot?
Admittedly it sounds scary to be told that some brain parts might be smaller, but we should all notice – as RR said about the list of words – that the real-life effects of such findings remain unclear. Most people don’t even have the faintest idea what the amygdala and hippocampus is supposed to do.
Let me give an example. It has also been found that people with a high level of anxiety have LARGER amygdalas than the control group. So here a TOO BIG brain part is associated with actual mental disorder.
Though the study is kinda crap due to the small sample size it one could argue that the heavy users are perhaps people who are less likely to experience anxiety than their peers, hence their experience with pot is so much better because they hardly ever get anxiety attacks.
In other words these people may have self-recruited themselves to pot smoking, and that means their initial brain was the cause of their pot smoking and not the other way around.
Figuring out the causal error is hard work, but too many people don’t realize that because they are woefully untrained in the scientific method.
Interesting article, however, the conclusion reached is bit backwards. The study found smaller brain parts and a possible link to marijuana as the causitive agent. Since marijuana causes neurogenisis (regrowth of new neurons) in the hippocampus it is more than likely that these users were self-medicating themselves and that the cause of these smaller brain parts was due to other factors. The most likely culprits are environmental toxins especially lead and mercury. Lead and mercury pesist in the environment and have many primary (burning gasoline and coal), and secondary sources (rain and water supplies).When lead and mercury poisoning occurs in the womb when the fetus is small and more susceptible it will affect the brain (ie. smaller hippocampus).