Uncovering the Long-Term Side Effects of Heavy Marijuana Use

Since the legalization of cannabis for medicinal and recreational use in several US states, there have been many stories about growth in the cannabis market. Estimates put the growth at close to 70 percent in 2014 with an estimated market of $2.7 billion, with some forecasts suggesting that the market will grow to $11 billion over the next few years.

It isn’t just the supply market that is going to grow. A recent Bank of America report forecast that the cannabis testing market will also grow rapidly and have a value of $100 million by 2020 — although other analysts put the figure at $900 million. Chromatography is one of the key elements in the cannabis testing market with many techniques lending themselves to cannabis analysis. One technique that has been shown to be useful is HILIC — hydrophilic interaction chromatography. This relatively new technique is discussed in the article, A Simple, Generally Applicable HILIC Method Development Platform Based Upon Selectivity.

Don’t smoke for too many ‘marijuana years’

A growing market and investment from corporate organizations are prime indicators that cannabis use is growing. But a recent study published in the Journal of American Medical Association suggests that there might be cognitive implications from long term marijuana use.

The team, led by Professor Auer of the University of Lausanne, looked at the marijuana use of almost 3400 people over a 25-year period and investigated their ability to perform several cognitive tasks. They determined the marijuana consumption by using what they termed marijuana years. Put simply, if you smoked cannabis every day for a year — that is one marijuana year. Similarly, if you smoked once a week for seven years you have been exposed to ‘one marijuana year’.

Remembering your words

They found that people who had smoked marijuana every day for five years or more — five marijuana years — had a poor verbal memory in middle age when compared to people who smoked less or not at all. Even when the researchers took into account other factors including educational level, age and use of other substances — the verbal memory lapse remained.

Although the differences were only small, the team report that the relationship is linear — meaning that the more marijuana exposure the worse the cognitive impairment. Admittedly, only a small number of people in the study group (311 out of 3385 people) had smoked for more than five marijuana years — but with the legalization of marijuana the percentage of heavy users is likely to increase.

Although verbal memory was affected in this study — other cognitive functions were not. The ability to focus on a task and to quickly process information both seemed unaffected by marijuana use. It should also be noted that as yet no causal link between marijuana use and cognitive impairment has been reported — so it is possible that other factors are involved.

Everything in moderation still seems favourite.

Image from Wikimedia commons