College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades | Hacker News Reader

College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

washingtonpost.com

95 pointssndean117 comments

It's sad to see such a brigade of hate/insecurity around any pot study. It's a shame. Every time there is some inkling of negativity the panic sets in, they criticize the study (which is valid, but how often is the criticism valid), they bring up how alcohol is worse, when this wasn't even a comparison to alcohol.

Marijuana should absolutely be legalized. But we can't just ignore its effects. I get it-weed helps a lot of people out, and it isn't that bad of a drug. But you can't just simply dismiss everything that you don't like that comes out.

I mean, who would have thought a distraction would affect grades? Video games, alcohol, parties, weed, whatever - you think any of these benefit your grades? Of course not.

The results of this study aren't surprising, but the potential for it to be used as political ammo rightfully annoys pro-marijuana advocates. Personally, I'm all for legal weed - but trying to shuffle this study under the deck doesn't benefit anyone, we just need comparative studies on the effects of other activities because chances are it's little to no worse than any of them when it comes to impact on GPA (and if it is, then deal with it).

It's a study. It should be released regardless of agendas or politics or if it didn't agree with someone's worldview. If there are any negative effects from weed, I (and everyone) should want to know about it first or as soon as possible.

We need more studies on everything to expand our knowledge. But this study compared people who smoked pot and people who didn't. I imagine many of them played video games, partied, or were drinkers. Yes, everything should be studied, but just because something else is bad, doesn't make everything else okay, and this is my main concern with this line of thinking.

My main point is that highly politicized issues cloud science and fact. Another example is climate change. It's just frustrating to see both sides of this argument use anecdotes, logical fallacies, etc, just because something somewhat threatens their worldview.

> It's a study. It should be released regardless of agendas or politics or if it didn't agree with someone's worldview

Not if the study is politics itself and a weapon to support someone's agenda. Studies and researchs don't grow wild in nature, you know.

that makes no sense - how can you be sure that any paper isn't somehow political? Any psychology paper could be argued to be political because there is a left-right opinion divide on the human mind. The only reasonable approach in my opinion is to publish everything and let the replication studies and meta-analyses sort the wheat from the chaff.

> he only reasonable approach in my opinion is to publish everything and let the replication studies and meta-analyses sort the wheat from the chaff.

The only reasonable approach would be to finance research from both sides of spectrum which never happens because most if not all companies and corporations have a "right-wing" mindset.

And most studies from public bodies are influenced by academia's hard left leanings. Universities are very well funded and produce the vast majority of scientific papers.

It's not their worldview that's being threatened in the case of climate change...

Does this study tell us anything about the reason for the fall in grades? Can we assume it's due to "distraction" or is it possible that there is a detrimental effect on learning ability? It's a big cause for alarm if the latter is true.

How would one conduct a double-blind study of long-term learning ability effects? You'd need to find a control group and a test group with prcisely the same learning ability, which already sounds like a stretch.

Honestly, the major problem when talking about "weed" is that considering the amazingly wide array of effects, depending on the variety/strain and dosage (from mild relaxant to big high, passing by stone and huge social-bubble alteration), any point based on the generalization of "weed" as a single substance/effect is pretty much moot from the get go.

Most studies and discussions focus on the "high"/"stone", which are already two vastly differing effects, the former may help one work/socialize at low dosage, whereas the latter would generally hinder these activities. Conversely, most people who speak of a positive experience with regular weed consumption refer to milder effects usually based on the genetics of the strain they use and the kind of dosage they apply to themselves. Apples and carrots...

Then there's the matter of whether students or any party-going demographics is better off smoking weed or drinking alcohol, as a matter of public health, when discussing the legalization of these substances. Considering that alcohol is the #1 death factor in the world, not even counting collateral damage (e.g. most violence/abuse done to women and children happen correlatingly to alcohol use; most alcoholics suffer from dire social issues), I, for one, am pretty sure legalizing weed makes sense to a large degree, if we're gonna have other, more dangerous drugs such as alcohol, legal still.

The negative effects of weed, as any drug, are also better contained through education and public health infrastructures rather than morality (subjective) or justice (punitive).

I'm surprised in the sense that I wouldn't think excluding access to one intoxicant would have such a big impact when it can be readily substituted for other legal substances.

Once weed is legalized, as it should (obviously), these kinds of studies will be less political. Until then, you can't blame people.

I live in Oregon where it's legal, and if reddit posters on /r/portland are any example, legalization doesn't (at least instantaneously) stop this instinctive bias against anything negative. You'll see minimization, denial, and "it's better than alcohol" on every thread whenever a study even hints marijuana isn't a 100% universally beneficial, no-side-effects, perfect drug. It's fascinating to behold.

It's not technically legal in any US State, since it's still illegal at a federal level, and so exists at the discretion of the current federal governtment.

>Every time there is some inkling of negativity the panic sets in, they criticize the study

Source? Is there any empirical evidence that this is happening or is this just what you're telling your self? IMHO, it's quite the opposite -- anytime cannabinoids are shown to have medical value people claim "correlation does not imply causation" and "we need more studies" and "this only works in a lab!!1".

I think the parent poster is just referring to negativity in this thread, not claiming a statistically significant sentiment trend in comments sections about marijuana studies.

I agree that among policy makers, unfounded anti-cannabis bias is predominant, despite the studies you mention.

Seems like you're only supporting his point, mate.

>Source?

The bottom half-dozen comments on this article?

Weed is not a panacea. Some people foolishly think otherwise. It should still be legalized, but we have to be realistic about its negatives

Humans: still acting like humans, film at 11.

It also shouldn't need saying that this is hardly unique to pot. Also, it won't change. How many millennia have been spent since someone figured out fruit ferments into something that makes you feel good? And yet people continue to slide into alcoholism every day, in every culture. Even the ones where it is illegal.

That said, sure, I can see a temporary effect where legal pot is "new" (really, very old, but that's a different discussion), and so trendy, and the media feedback-loop kicks in so certain kinds of parents have something vaguely novel to upset themselves with. We'll be past that in a generation.

> And yet people continue to slide into alcoholism every day, in every culture. Even the ones where it is illegal.

This is a strange thing to "even". You'd expect alcohol to be illegal where it was more of a problem, not where it was less of a problem. In cultures where nobody succumbs to alcoholism, why would alcohol be prohibited?

You know, this isn't a question of philosophy. We're not reasoning from first-principles. You might consider looking to the googles for an answer as to which nation-states currently ban alcohol, and then consider what commonalities they might share.

I'll save you the first half of that effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_alcohol...

Those are Islamic countries. Do you think there's a reason the prohibition was made? Do you think there might be a reason it stuck?

Alcohol is also frequently prohibited on Indian reservations. Why do you think that is?

Middle East countries used to have a huge problem with drinking and later caffeine. somewhere around early Medieval era. It so happens that alcohol ban got written into a religion that grew to be dominant and was even more brutally enforced than the coffee ban. Guess which one stuck.

Nobody believes weed will make you better at studying.

Nobody.

There can be no opinion so wrong that no one will hold on to it.

https://www.quora.com/Does-smoking-weed-help-studying

Nothing is absolute - I'm a medical user (with anxiety/ADHD/depression) and it's been a complete lifesaver for me, working where pharmaceuticals did not. I did not respond well to traditional stimulants (they only made me more anxious and racy) but medical cannabis is literally the only reason why I was able to function through my PhD program which I had completed two years ago at a top-tier U.S. institution.

FWIW, I am very selective with my strains - only certain types actually help, and my dosage is mild enough to not have strong psychoactive effects (higher CBD-strains). Medical cannabis has truly had a significant impact on the trajectory of my life.

Same here. Anxiety + ADHD + depression made college extremely difficult for me. It wasn't until I began smoking regularly after college that I began to gain perspective and control over my life and surrounding environment. Had I started a little sooner college could have been a much more positive experience for me. Agreed that only certain strains have a positive impact, still trying to figure out what works for me but it's difficult when local options are so limited...

only certain types actually help

Out of curiosity, what are those? I'm not an expert and I'm really only aware of the sativa/indica divide.

From the GP: "higher CBD-strains"

Here's a description of how CBD differs from THC: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/whats-the-deal-with... and I can attest to what it says. I don't like feeling high, but I do like feeling mellow. It's sort of like the difference between having a glass of wine and pounding shots to me.

Not directly, but many people take weed to relax or relieve anxiety and believe that those things are helpful for their studies.

> many people take weed to relax or relieve anxiety and believe that those things are helpful for their studies

They believe it's helpful to their life in general, which this study isn't measuring. Nobody in their right mind smokes weed to improve their GPA.

You haven't spent much time in /r/trees. If there's a nutty belief about weed, more than a few somebodies there buy into it.

Undergrad here.

Plenty of people believe this.

I believe what's currently known is that some amounts of THC lead to lower "default mode network" activity in the frontal core. The default mode network - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lsd-may-chip-away... - is associated with daily activities we think of as distracting - anxiety, worrying about the future, going over the past failures, incessant needs to check e-mail, Instagram or respond to a push notification.

Subduing default mode network provides a pathway to concentration, if one's mind is set on it, like reading the book or going over the test question bank. But it could also be squandered on other activities unrelated to learning.

Due to it's impact on short term memory I'm not sure it's the best thing for "studying"...but I knew of some med students who would smoke then write R code on datasets until the wee hours of the morning. I guess they were using it as an Adderall substitute of sorts

But anti-weed will make you better at studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant (nootropic but can cause suicide, CB1 inverse agonist)

I do, by personal experience.

This. I am for legaization, but it feels people start to think it's no drawback drug when it's not.

I hear it can affect spelling.

I believe it. However, there's more to life than squeezing maximal efficiency and productivity out of human beings.

Exactly. You could probably do the same thing for alcohol. Or video games.

This is not data, but in my peer group there is a strong connection between those who dropped out and those who had self control issues with any of those.

Wasnt the article comparing pot users with non pot users? Presumably the control group included people who drink same play video games as well?

This is one of the problems with recreational drug studies. Its hard to find people who only do one drug and then people who live similar life styles to them but sober. I remember and MDMA study that looked at ravers in Utah because a large number of them were sober to study the effects of MDMA while accounting for the raver lifestyle of staying up for many hours dancing and often dehydrated.

Probably pot users also drink an play video games, so they don't affect the difference in performance.

Or novels, or nonfiction.

Would love to see the same experiment repeated somehow, but for alcohol / partying. Then compare the two.

In college I was a residence hall advisor in a dorm that was advertised as being more studious, including a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol (students could be kicked out if seen even holding an empty beer can). I'm sure the grades in the dorm were higher, but hat dorm tended to attract students who were going to be more studious/less drunkenly already.

Same, except the only people in that dorm were kids who had super strict parents and who often were placed there because their parents were worried...

The 'drug and alcohol free' floor was probably among the worst in terms of drug use, alcohol use, partying, and worst of all, floorcest.

I have an anecdote about a religious college that bans alcohol, and students would get drunk outside and drive back drunk, so there's a lingering question about whether the policy saves more lives in sum.

I don't see the same complexities or side effects with banning video games, TV, or even weed.

The similar complexity with weed is that you push people to find it through illegal channels, dealing with drug dealers of various levels of severity

If it were possible to go back and dig up historical data, there was a time period when the drinking age in the US shifted from 18 to 21, thus reducing access to alcohol for high school students. Anecdotally, my mom noticed that her students were coming back from lunch sober. It might be a chance for a similar study.

I didn't try marijuana until way past the age when it could be considered rebellious. But in my experience with friends, smoking pot seemed to just leave them unfocused and unmotivated, which may have been the point.

But people (leaving alcoholics aside) drink alcohol for relaxation and for stimulation. For example, some see it as "liquid courage" and after a buzz, do things that they wouldn't have sober, some of these things even end up being a net positive. And then there's the culture of drinking, in which people work hard and play hard. Removing alcohol from that situation might give people more headache-free Mondays, but might have a negative effect on morale.

I'm sure many of us who drink can also say that some of our best memories/experiences happened after a few beers/shots. Again, I wasn't a pot smoker, but I'm having a hard time thinking of anytime I've done anything exciting with people who were stoned.

Yeah. I've actually never tried recreational narcotics, however have taken up the (now rather moderate) use of alcohol in the later years.

I would rate drinks + a good sleep as better for my work performance as higher than no drinks / poor sleep. So many factors. Having a baby certainly tested the sleep thing; I've been far more productive with a serious hangover than some of the nights where I've been up most of it looking after the baby. In fact, sleep deprivation was rather harsh on my cognitive abilities at that time.

Some of my best memories come from stuff of extreme adrenaline, and they far surpass anything on alcohol. Such as riding a motorbike at Phillip Island, being able to make a pass on a guy with a far better bike than the one I had at the time. Or a really good mountain bike ride where I really nailed a particular section.

Heh came here to say this. Take away legal alcohol and see what happens to grades.

That's a good point, if the drinking age was moved to 25, I think it'll be a bigger effect

I'll just reiterate what a great deal of other sensible folks have already said: I think it's quite silly to try and use this study to draw or support any overarching conclusion about whether weed should be legal or not.

Of course your grades will be affected if you smoke when you ought to be studying.

Of course your grades will be affected if you drink when you ought to be studying.

Of course your grades will be affected if you study (the wrong course material) when you ought to be studying.

Basing decisions about legality and restraints on individual freedoms on things like average academic performance reduces individualism and pushes, by default, a sort of nationalistic view. "No you may not do X because it makes you a less valuable asset to the nation state, and you are meant for nothing more than service to the nation state."

Even innocent studies like this hide dangerous potential ideologies and subterranean reductions of individual freedom that politicians will try to push.

Of course, the largest flaw with any sort of marijuana-based study is that the effects of marijuana on the user vary based on the strain and THC content. The authors admitted that the level of THC content in Maastricht’s strains of marijuana tend to be around double that of the US.

Unfortunately any real controlled studies are going to be difficult as long as Marijuana remains such a vilified topic, which results in studies like this being used as ammo rather than another point of data.

I agree. Not real strongly opinioned on either side, but I encourage data based research and rational discussion. A specific semi-common irrational opinion I've noticed with the growing percentage of states to legalize marijuana: The mentality that we must change regulation in order to keep 'stoned' drivers off the road (be able to issue DUI's). It's my understanding that marijuana had a negligible impact on the motor-cortex and reaction timing wrt operating a motor vehicle. Many professional athletes testify to using it before performing some of the most coordinated, reaction timing dependent physical activities of anyone on earth. DUI's were a result of the fact that drunk people tend get in more car wrecks, especially fatal ones.

This the main reason I quit use of THC for pain relief. It wrecks your memory recall abilities. You lose a good 10 IQ points. Not good for devs.

Source? Or did you forget?

I'm talking from personal experience. Your ability to keep a train of thought is impaired, you struggle to build the house of cards in-memory to do any kind of extended analysis, the cards you put down simply vanish from memory. You feel empirically dumber.

At its worse, you start to talk about a topic, branch into a subtopic, and are unable to find your way back. You find yourself asking people "what was I talking about?" all of the time, imagine doing this in the middle of a presentation or while talking to a client.

Relevant Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3931635/

I find I am just like this if I'm sleep deprived. In general my memory is incredible, but I occasionally have terrible recall outside of my current train of thought. I used marijuana quite heavily for some periods of time in high school and college and it did have some effect, but not as great an effect as sleep-deprivation. For me, the two are correlated.

You mean, while you're actually intoxicated? No kidding!

Or do you mean while NOT impaired, as a result of regular "after-hours" use?

Not only while medicated. The memory issue is cumulative, it is slow onset and stays with you until at least 3 months after complete abstinence.

It might be interesting for them to keep track of how long it takes the black market to reappear, and see whether the negatives that come along with allowing criminals to monopolize the business of dealing drugs to people in the area reappear also.

Come to think of it, given that they state in the article:

  drug tourism was posing difficulties for the city

I wonder if they take into account the fact that these "problems" could've been affecting students and their grades as well. What happens if only the "drug tourism" disappeared?

This was controlled for by the native students, who also experienced any improvement in the city's environment, but did not experience the ban.

Not entirely.

The students who were banned were those visiting from out of country so it's possible to argue that the students performance is increased by preventing them from being drug-tourists. Not sensible, but possible.

Still less detrimental to a life than prison, because let's face it - legal or not, students will smoke pot.

Doesn't this study maybe suggest otherwise? (That these students didn't replace it with illegal stuff)

I don't think you go to prison for smoking pot. The only way I can imagine you end up in prison is if police catch you with some massive amount of weed which means you are a big time dealer / manufacturer.

A student with few grams of pot on him/her will not go to prison for sure.

Probably depends on your background.

I'm pretty sure people are regularly imprisoned for marijuana possession due to 'three strikes' laws (in many states, possessing what I would consider to be a reasonable quantity for personal use would qualify as a felony).

Students don't go to prison for smoking pot.

Here's the study in question:

http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MS20610manu...

I bet banning refined sugar products would have a more significant effect.

Honest question: is there any evidence that refined sugar has a deleterious effect on brain function? I can find this: [1], but I'm not sure how to interpret it.

Yes, weed and sugar are both addictive, but it is my understanding that the reduction in performance is not due to the addiction itself.

[1] http://neuro.hms.harvard.edu/harvard-mahoney-neuroscience-in...

While I'm not aware of any study that ties intake of excess sugar to a decline in cognitive function, there was a study that linked diets with a high glycemic index to higher rates of depression, specifically post menopausal as the participants were new mothers:

http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2015/06/24/ajcn.11...

I bet not consuming refined sugar would help, but there's no way it would help more than not consuming marijuana.

At least for certain subjects. If you're doing fine arts then getting high is almost mandatory. If you're studying math or anything that uses math then getting high regularly will significantly degrade your performance.

What if you are coding a 3D demoscene program for your thesis, because it illustrates a beautiful mathematical proof?

What if pot makes people crave & consume more refined sugar products?

We get it you vape.

Seriously though, I don't get what we're supposed to take away from your statement. Your guess that there might be something worse than weed? Just because weed causes less problems than something else doesn't mean it causes no problems.

I am under the impression that refined sugar interferes with the optimal functioning of the brain, in addition to skewing a person's energy level, but I don't have citations or anything. It's a just info that I internalized as a child, from a family member who works with children who have learning disabilities.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but there is no Santa Claus.

I come from a place (Jaipur, IN) where weed is legal since a very long time, there are people I've met who are 90 and still consuming marijuana on daily/weekly basis and don't regret about it, I hadn't listen any incident/accident that happened because of weed. neither to folks are underachievers, they are respected professors, artists or daily wage workers. meanwhile, drink and drive accidents are very common here, and consuming liquor is considered a malignant.

The sole reason I don't smoke pot even when my friends are to is because in addition to my existing ADD, my memory span on pot is diminished significantly.

I've found the opposite - certain strains have been remarkable for my ADHD (although out of reach for anyone in a non-medical state). The strains I generally use have low psychoactive properties and alleviate anxiety without sedative effects.

Yikes. I wouldn't recommend working or studying on it, but I think it has it's place, like before a yoga session.

Thanks to scare tactics and the never ending publicity that wants us to believe it's a miracle drug. We've lost sight that pot really has it's downside. We need fact based education, no bs scare tactics, to emphasise that to users. Pot has its strong benefits but we can't lose sight of its bad side and users need to understand that. Specially now that it's being legalized in so many states.

Seems like no one's commenting that the study isn't actually about marijuana - it's regarding the access to the cafes. My instinct tells me that they're probably not entirely off on the conclusion but it seems like a more complicated relationship - if I couldn't get into the place where all my friends hung out, of course I'd have more time to study!

Appears they accounted for whether amount of study time increased as a result of the ban.

From the study:

  We find no change in reported study hours, which suggests
  that we can eliminate effort adjustments as one channel of
  our results. [1]

My thought on this is focused mostly on the fact that the city was apparently filled with "problematic drug tourism". In other words it appears they're saying the city was becoming (if not already) a "college party town". I'd be curious to know what kinds of "distractions" ended up leaving the city because of the ban.

[1] http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MS20610manu...

I knew a couple of semi-heavy users that were great students but they were probably the exception. Similar to alcohol, young people tend to fall into the 'more is better' fallacy and overdo it. Especially with things like concentrates or edibles. I think there is a bit of a 'ballmer peak' to help with certain tasks but it requires some diligence around strain and dosage and it's not for everyone.

There are obviously exceptions - the last bit of the article kind of explained that.

>But what the Maastricht study can do is provides highly credible evidence that marijuana legalization will lead to decreased academic success — perhaps particularly so for struggling students

Basically good students will continue to.be good, but the bad students will suffer.

Another anecdote from personal experience. Smoking pot decreased my cognitive abilities quite dramatically (not only while intoxicated but for days/weeks after).

I am certain it is detrimental to your intellectual abilities at least temporarily. It would definitely lower your grades and I think it is also detrimental to any job where you do mental labour (e.g. software engineering).

so the study compared international students who didn't have access to pot legally versus students who were citizens? Am i misinterpreting something? It seems more likely that international students are simply better students. I doubt it would be that hard for them to get weed anyway.

No, it compared individual students' grades before and after they lost access to recreational marijuana. They mention the local students because it was a group where no event happened so it helps show that there wasn't some other factor that brought up everyone's grades over that time.

My friend who wanted to become a doctor was blowing it in his undergrad science classes.

He took my suggestion to turn the music off while studying for his next test.

And got an A.

Just saying...

Huh, I'm surprised they could do it, ban EU-citizen while still allowing Ditch nationals. I thought they aren't allowed to do that within the EU.

It is allowed, see EU court results here:

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?pro=&lgrec=nl&nat=or&...

Does anybody know if you can take the pot out of the cafes or if you have to smoke it there? I wonder if it's not less pot smoking but less going out.

What happened when the students lost access to Adderall?

"The most rigorous study yet"

I searched the article for placebo and didn't find any mention.

How would you propose a placebo in this context?

well it would be hard with marijuana leaf. But you could have a vaping placebo, and compare that with vaping the real thing. Maybe the vaping placebo material could be made from marijuana but with the cannabis removed. I don't know enough how marijuana works, tbh, but something along those lines.

Except this isn't an experiment, where they control the conditions. It's monitoring natural behavior. Just saying "placebo" makes no sense for this kind of study. That'd be like asking for a placebo in a national poll.

The kind of thing you're talking about would be an experiment, where they bring people in and use various measures to quantify various types of intelligence after smoking marijuana. In that situation yes you could use a placebo as one group. But even then it's not always appropriate, and just skimming an article and dismissing it by saying "no placebo!" makes no sense. Not all experiments do use or should use a placebo as part of their methodology, and this isn't even an experiment.

> "this isn't an experiment"

Well then this "study" is just an observation. So it probably doesn't warrant the amount of attention it is getting, to say nothing of people using this "study" as evidence. Observation is an early step of the scientific method, but now they need to perform a scientific experiment in order to make this newsworthy. (Well I guess it is "newsworthy" in that it makes for high click-through...)

>Well then this "study" is just an observation.

Yes. Many studies are.

> So it probably doesn't warrant the amount of attention it is getting, to say nothing of people using this "study" as evidence.

It seems like you lack an understanding of how science works? Because the fact that this is an observation doesn't mean that it isn't evidence. Observation is like one of they key kinds of evidence.

>but now they need to perform a scientific experiment in order to make this newsworthy

No they don't. That's not how this works, at all. It's still valid meaningful evidence. I mean, do you ever read stories about stellar discoveries? Do you think they aren't worth reading because they didn't do an experiment to re-create the black hole they discovered in a lab?

> "But even then it's not always appropriate"

It can be appropriate it you get consent to be part of the experiment. You don't have to have the whole student body be part of the experiment.

What is your point? I said that it's _not always_ appropriate, not that it is _always not_ appropriate. And the ability to do it is not the sole deciding factor on whether it is appropriate.

I haven't read the study, but I would be willing to suggest that another effect could be that removing access to marijuana meant students spent less time high, and correspondingly more time productive.

Significance and size of the effect.

Ban Netflix (and all other video and movie entertainment) and you'd get a bigger for both, less emotive than "Illegal Drugs!!!11!" though.

I quit smoking weed years ago when I noticed when I was reading that I had forgotten the meaning of some words that I once knew. Smoking is great until it makes you stupid.

How do you distinguish what you forgot from smoking weed with what you just plain forgot?

It's amazing what you can forget, even stuff that has been drilled into you. I'd forgotten how to do long division until recently, despite doing it over and over again in primary school to pick one example. The brain is very much "use it or lose it".

I had known these words for years. The feeling of knowing that you used to know what, say, "superannuated" or "collusion" or "hegemony" meant, but right now you haven't a clue, is distressing.

These words were in long-term memory. My memory was slowly restored after I quit. Smokers will readily admit that their short-term memory is damaged by marijuana use, but not much is said about damage to long-term memory.

Better to keep it illegal, so that if students get caught with it, they lose their student aid and federal loans instead.

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