POT MAY BE BOOST TO OLDER BRAINS

Stoners who spent the 1960s and '70s in a haze could find themselves
surprisingly lucid in old age: the marijuana they smoked helps
protect against Alzheimer's disease, a new study found.

Anti-inflammatory compounds in pot deflect the memory loss associated
with the illness and could ultimately slow its progression, said
psychology Prof. Gary Wenk of Ohio State University.

Wenk gave old rats - who, like humans, tend to get lost as they age -
a synthetic form of marijuana. The ones given the drug found their
way through a maze more easily.

"That's not going to cure Alzheimer's disease, but it's going to help
a lot because by reducing inflammation we're going to rescue some
neurons - we're going to help you not decay so fast," said Wenk, who
presented his findings yesterday at the Society for Neuroscience
meeting in Atlanta.

But scientists still need to find a compound that reduces brain
inflammation without triggering a high, said Wenk, whose research is
funded by the federal government, which has long criminalized marijuana.

"You can't add a high onto a dementia. You're just going to make the
person more impaired," he said.

The drug was effective in older rats with modest memory impairments,
but it's not yet clear when humans would most benefit from taking a
nonpsychoactive form of it.

Grateful Dead-era potheads offer a clue, though.

"There's this fear as the Baby Boomers get older that there's going
to be more and more people with Alzheimer's," Wenk said.

"It may be we're surprised by the fact that this illicit compound
used decades ago might alter how many people get diagnosed."