MARIJUANA MAY IMPAIR MEMORY

Do people endanger their memories by smoking a lot of marijuana? A new
study suggests they do, although it may be just for the day after they've
smoked.

Nadia Solowij of the University of New South Wales in Sydney and colleagues
compared 51 people who had been smoking marijuana almost daily for many
years, 51 people who had been using marijuana for a much shorter period,
and 33 non-users. The long-term heavy users scored significantly worse than
the short-term and non-users on tests measuring memory and attention, the
researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In an editorial accompanying the study, however, Harrison G. Pope Jr. of
Harvard Medical School cautioned that the findings needed to be evaluated
carefully. Other studies have reached conflicting findings, and the new
study only evaluated the subjects 17 hours after they had last smoked,
which means the effects could diminish with time, he said.