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Comment by bweitzman | Hacker News Reader

No, the study said that the subjects (who were either dependent on marijuana or non users) were given the amphetamine to elicit a dopamine response. The users did not smoke for a week prior to the experiment, so you would expect that if there were no dopamine deficits than they would have similar response to the amphetamine. I'm no brain scientist but it seems like a reasonable experiment.

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Sure, but the half life of cannabinoid metabolites is weeks, so this is possibly still an active combinatory effect rather than a residual one.

I do notice that if I smoke crazy amounts (ounces per week) then I do end up with latent cognitive deficits, such as substituting homophones in my writing and losing my train of thought mid-sentence, but they vanish with a few weeks of abstinence.

I'm not ruling out the possibly of cumulative, long term effects, and I'll vouch that massively overdoing it over a long period will make you REALLY ill (read up on Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome... It's worse than death), but from my idiopathic stance I'm not seeing long term cognitive effects. I started as an adult, my only childhood vice was drink.

Yeah I'm not commenting on the results. The sample size was way too small to be a reasonable study and yeah, weeks is not enough to talk about long term results. But the basic principle of the experiment is sound I think.

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