BiblicalInsights.net

There is a strong push to legalize marijuana in the United States.  However, the dangers of this drug are not completely known.  We are still in the process of discovering all of the detrimental aspects of its use.  A recent study published March 12, 2015 in the journal Hippocampus revealed that teens who were heavy marijuana users–smoking it daily for three years–had an abnormally shaped hippocampus and performed poorly on long-term memory tasks.
The hippocampus is that part of the brain important to long-term memory (also known as episodic memory), which is the ability to remember autobiographical or life events.  Young adults who abused cannabis as teens performed about 18 percent worse on long-term memory tests than young adults who never abused cannabis.  “The memory processes that appear to be affected by cannabis are ones that we use every day to solve common problems and to sustain our relationships with friends and family” (Dr. John Csernansky, the Lizzie Gilman professor and chair of psychiatry and behavior sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital–a senior author of the study).
The study is the first to say the hippocampus is shaped differently in heavy marijuana smokers and the different looking shape is directly related to poor long-term memory performance. Previous research by the same Northwestern team showed poor short-term and working memory performance and abnormal shapes of brain structures in the sub-cortex including the striatum, globus pallidus and thalamus.  Marijuana is detrimental to brain function.  Decriminalization will inevitably lead to greater abuse.  In the United States, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug.  Young adults have the highest and growing prevalence of use.  Young adults who abuse this drug are damaging their brains and  mortgaging their futures.
The study also found that young adults with schizophrenia who abused cannabis as teens performed about 26 percent more poorly on memory tests than young adults with schizophrenia who never abused cannabis.
The study is titled, “Cannabis-related episodic memory deficits and hippocampal morphological differences in healthy individuals and schizophrenia subjects.” The other Northwestern authors include: senior authors Lei Wang and  Hans C. Breiter and coauthors Derin J. Cobia, James L. Reilly, Andrea G. Roberts and Kathryn I. Alpert.  The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health. (The details of the study were reported at www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015).
While we are concerned about the physical effects of obesity among our young people and spending large sums of money to improve their health, we, at the same time, are pushing to legalize marijuana which is damaging to their brains!  Such hypocrisy is tolerated only because we are driven by greed and desire to indulge the flesh.  The lusts of the flesh war against the soul (I Peter 2:11).
The Christian virtue of temperance is sorely needed today (II Pet. 1:5-8).  Temperance is self-control.  Every Christian should strive to bring their body under the control of God’s will and wisdom.