Study Finds Recreational Cannabis Use Is Associated With Abnormalities In The Brain. A study investigating recreational marijuana use in young adults has found that users had differences in two areas of the brain, the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens, when compared with non-users.
The study has been published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease. Cannabis, or marijuana, is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States, but relatively few studies have investigated how it affects the brain. Although some animal studies have demonstrated changes in regions of the brain involved in learning and memory, attention and decision-making after exposure to the main psychoactive component of cannabis (THC), only a handful of similar studies exist in humans. The few studies that have been carried out also show contrasting results, which may be due to differences in methodologies. WHO Report - Conclusions. WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use There are health risks of cannabis use, most particularly when it is used daily over a period of years or decades.
Considerable uncertainty remains about whether these effects are attributable to cannabis use alone, and about what the quantitative relationship is between frequency, quantity and duration of cannabis use and the risk of experiencing these effects. On existing patterns of use, cannabis poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies.
NORML.org - Working to Reform Marijuana Laws. WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson. The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. Mescaline.com : The Molecular Biology of Paradise. Erowid.