
What happens when you get stoned every day for five years - aburan28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/01/what-happens-when-you-get-stoned-every-single-day-for-five-years/
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zzalpha
The conclusion of this article is bizarre. After essentially admitting that
pot elicited no serious long term cognitive side effects, in a strange attempt
to resuscitate the idea that pot is bad for you, they go on to cite the
dangers of long term alcohol abuse as somehow undermining these results,
despite their being completely different drugs with completely different modes
of operation and effects on the body.

The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.

~~~
vixen99
Clearly you must be reading an entirely different set of peer-reviewed
articles from the ones I've just been looking at.

"Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to
midlife" www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1206820109

"Cannabis use has been shown to impair cognitive functions on a number of
levels —from basic motor coordination to more complex executive function
tasks, such as the ability to plan, organize, solve problems, make decisions,
remember, and control emotions and behavior. These deficits differ in severity
depending on the quantity, recency, age of onset and duration of marijuana
use. ". J Addict Med. 2011 Mar 1; 5(1): 1–8.

Plenty more where these come from.

~~~
zzalpha
Uhh... you mean this part of the article, which flat out contradicts your
claims, and is based on the results of this most recent study?

 _On the other hand, it 's also quite surprising that you can smoke weed every
single day for five years, and not have it impact your problem-solving
abilities or your ability to focus at all._

The part right before the part where he brings up the spectre of alcohol
abuse?

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qewrffewqwfqew
> Auer and his team measured lifetime marijuana exposure in a fantastic new
> unit of measurement they call "marijuana-years." Essentially, if you smoke
> pot every day for a year, that equals one marijuana-year of use. Ditto if
> you smoke every other day for two years, or once a week for seven years.

That sounds highly suspect.

Interesting study though - the original is linked below for anyone that has
access or cares to buy it (bugs me no end that I have to google for the source
from articles like this)

[https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2484...](https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2484906)

~~~
developer2
I was thrown off by this definition of "marijuana-years" seemingly being used
as the base of the study, when we then read this:

>> Few people actually smoke this much pot. Among the 3,385 study subjects,
only 311 (8 percent) had more than five marijuana-years of exposure.

The article makes an assumption about how much one's memory would be affected
by 45 years of smoking... but if only 311 participants have smoked for even 5
years, it is logically unsound to even pretend to extrapolate that to 45
years.

Why do studies (or perhaps the study itself makes none of these conclusions,
and it's just the article) try to overreach on their conclusions? :/

