Five Reasons Marijuana Should Remain Illegal – Ryan O’Bryan’s List – Reason Four

#4 - Weed Makes You Stupid

A guy I went to high school with was a heavy pot smoker. One of those guys who used any amount of spare time to blaze up. As the years went on, you could see the toll it had taken on his brain. He was "burnt". Even when he wasn't high as a kite, he spoke slowly, and had that stereotypical stoner-drawl to his speech. His eyelids were droopy like comedian and Saturday Night Live alum, Jim Breuer (pictured above), and he just became very sloth-like.

Google "effects of marijuana on learning and memory" and you'll get 6,000 results in 0.39 seconds (how's that for a mind trip?) including an article from The Office of Alcohol and Drug Education (OADE) which shares information from several studies dealing with how toking up essentially dumbs down the brain.

Within minutes of taking the first drag, THC enters the bloodstream and gets to work on a part of the brain called the hippocampus, the area responsible for memory function. Citing research from McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, the ODEA says that regular users of marijuana "had impaired skills related to attention, memory and learning for up to 24 hours after they last used the drug. These students had difficulty in sustaining and shifting attention and in registering, organizing and using information than the control group."

Another study cited by the University of Iowa College of Medicine states, "that people who used marijuana frequently (seven or more times weekly for an extended period) showed deficits in mathematical skills and verbal expression, as well as selective impairments in memory-retrieval process."

Basically, if a goal in your life is to make it on Jeopardy!, don't smoke the dope.