Recently, the NIDA Blog Team brought the science of marijuana to life in a series of posts about the drug’s effects on your brain, perception, pets, driving, and more. Here are a few highlights!
1. Marijuana use interferes with attention, motivation, memory, and learning. When used heavily during the teen years, it can lower grades and your IQ.
Wait...What?
2. Exposure to secondhand marijuana smoke rarely results in a contact high.
Phew.
3. Serving sizes for marijuana edibles are confusing—it’s easy to eat much more than a person means to, with bad side effects.
For real?
4. Marijuana doesn’t make you more creative—it just makes you think you are.
Dude, this is my masterpiece.
5. Marijuana can make dogs ill, causing serious medical issues such as injury, dehydration, anxiety, lethargy, impaired balance, vomiting, or diarrhea. A few dogs have even died from eating it.
No bueno.
6. Drugged driving is dangerous, illegal, and happening more and more. The risk of being in an accident doubles after marijuana use.
Do you know why I pulled you over?
7. Over three-quarters of the students surveyed in the "Monitoring the Future" study (and four-fifths of 8th graders) said they disapproved of people using marijuana regularly.
Do better.
8. Spice, also known as K2, is not fake marijuana. In fact, some effects of Spice are much more intense than those of marijuana and have even been linked to deaths.
Scary.
9. A small number of medications that contain THC are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They are used for treating nausea and appetite problems caused by cancer chemotherapy and AIDS. Marijuana’s other chemical—cannabidiol or CBD—also is being studied for potential medical uses, including treatment for seizures.
Because…science.
10. Ancient healers used cannabis in religious ceremonies—not as a party drug.
That’s old school.
