Worried about all that weed you smoked in high school? Maybe you shouldn’t be. According to a new study, cannabis has less effect on young brains than once believed. This report compiled data from a host of previous studies on chronic use. Their findings offer encouraging findings on teenage and young adult cannabis use. Here’s what we know so far about cannabis’s effect on brain development.
Marijuana’s Short-Term Effect
This research, published by JAMA Psychiatry, took data from 69 previous studies into account. All these studies considered significant marijuana use’s influence on brain function. According to study author Cobb Scott, “this is the first one [study] to be done specifically in adolescent and young adult samples.”
How does marijuana affect cognitive function? The subjects that self-identified as frequent cannabis users had slower processing speeds, and experienced more difficulty learning, remembering, paying attention and conceptualizing than those who did not smoke marijuana.
The study focused on the subjects’ executive functioning skills. Assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Cobb Scott explained to CNN, “We basically showed that the largest effects—which was around a third of a standard deviation—was in the learning of new information and some aspects of executive functioning, memory and speed of processing.”
Cognitive Function Reduces Only For 72 Hours
However, after stopping marijuana use for 72 hours, the difference in cognitive function between heavy cannabis users and non-users is no longer discernible. These findings contradict earlier studies that could distinguish between frequent marijuana consumers and non-consumers after the 72 hour period.
Scott hypothesizes, “some of the effects found in previous studies may be due to the residual effects of cannabis or potentially from withdrawal effects in heavy cannabis users.” This means