Page 7 - My FlipBook

Cognitive Impairment
Several studies have found that marijuana use impairs not only
driving skills but also other types of cognition, or thinking. For
example, a 2019 study by researchers at the University Hospital
of Patras in Patras, Greece, found that long-term marijuana use
slows the speed of thinking and other cognitive abilities over time.
The study also found that cognitive abilities are also affected by
short-term marijuana use if a person uses the drug frequently.
The Greek study involved forty people ages seventeen
to forty-nine in a drug abuse treatment program in Athens. All
forty subjects were considered heavy marijuana users, since they
used the drug four times a week or more. Twenty of the study’s
subjects were long-term marijuana users, having used marijuana
regularly for ten years or more. Twenty were shorter-term users,
having used the drug for fi ve to ten years. The study also included
twenty-four people who had used marijuana at least once but not
more than twenty times in their lifetime and not at all in the past
two years. These twenty-four people formed the study’s control

33