“Researchers are working around the clock to try to identify the ingredients in marijuana that have potential,” to benefit human health, Baler said. “I emphasize ‘can’ – it’s not even clear to the best scientists what are the triggers that allow that progression to happen,” he said, noting that why some people have a higher risk than others of developing liver disease from drinking is not understood medically or biochemically. Because marijuana can impair coordination and balance, there is the risk of hurting oneself, particularly if someone drives or chooses to have unprotected sex while their inhibitions are lowered, Baler said. These are two areas where people using marijuana could hurt themselves for the short and long term.
Health Effects Of Weed Vs. Alcohol
As individuals continue to have alcoholic beverages over time, their brains may change structurally and transition from occasional drinking to chronic consumption, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. White matter integrity following can baclofen be abused alcohol and cannabis use was examined in six studies, including four alcohol use studies and two alcohol and cannabis co-use studies. The other factor that makes it hard to answer this question is the relative lack of studies on the negative health effects of weed.
This billionaire is spending millions to defeat recreational weed in Florida
- While both alcohol and marijuana may have some positive effects, both have the potential to be harmful.
- The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the most recent literature focused on understanding how these substances affect the developing brain.
- They cited strong evidence that drinking alcohol — as little as a glass of wine or beer a day — increases the risk of developing both pre- and postmenopausal breast cancer.
- While there is the possibility for occasional deaths and accidents caused by cannabis use there isn’t sufficient data to compare it to alcohol.
- Caulkins and Peter Reuter, a drug policy expert at the University of Maryland, suggested a model in which all the major risks of drugs are drawn out and each drug is ranked within those categories.
THC, the psychoactive chemical in cannabis, is almost instantly absorbed and quickly reaches high blood concentration after inhalation through the lungs. Alcohol can cause cognitive impairment which can lead to poor judgment, decreased coordination, and memory loss and in some cases blackouts. Cannabis can be addictive but this is more a psychological dependency than a physical one. It can be more habitual or emotional in nature and can be aided by therapy and not necessarily require outside intervention.
Short-term effects
Given the high rates of alcohol and cannabis use during adolescence, coupled with the significant neural maturation occurring during this period, it is critical to understand how alcohol and cannabis use affect adolescent brain development. Specifically, existing reviews exclusively focus on alcohol,12,20 cannabis,21 or co-use,22 with some focusing solely on neuropsychological23 or neuroimaging studies24–27 within maverick house east boston each substance use group. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the most recent literature that is both (1) focused on alcohol, cannabis, and alcohol and cannabis co-use use during adolescence and (2) meets the criteria for a prospective longitudinal neuropsychological and neuroimaging study in humans. Limitations of existing studies and future directions for research are discussed.
Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, gave the example of an alien race visiting Earth and asking which land animal is the biggest. If the question is about weight, the African elephant is the biggest land animal. And if the question is about length, the reticulated python is the biggest. But alcohol’s crime risk is due to its tendency to make people more aggressive (and more prone to committing crime), while heroin’s crime risk is based on the massive criminal trafficking network behind it. The individual scores account for a host of variables, including mortality, dependence, drug-related family adversities, environmental damage, and effect on crime. It might seem harmless to mix alcohol and weed, but doing so can be a slippery slope toward getting overly intoxicated.
Some drugs are very harmful to individuals, but they’re so rarely used that they may not be a major public health threat. A few drugs are enormously dangerous in the short-term but not the long-term (heroin), or vice versa (tobacco). And looking at deaths or other harms caused by certain drugs doesn’t always account for substances, such as prescription medications, that are often mixed with others, making them more deadly or harmful than they would be alone.
Even if two drugs score similarly in Nutt’s analysis, the underlying variables behind the scores can be completely different. But heroin scores much higher for mortality risk, while crack poses a much bigger risk for mental impairment. If you’ve mixed weed and alcohol and are having a bad reaction, it’s probably because alcohol seems to make the high from using weed stronger. This can happen any time you’ve consumed to much weed — with or without alcohol. If you take medication, talk to your doctor before using weed, alcohol, or both. They may weaken the effectiveness of your medication or increase your risk for certain side effects.
The analysis doesn’t fully account for a drug’s legality, accessibility, or how widely a drug is used. If heroin and crack were legal and more accessible, they would very likely rank higher than alcohol. The harm score for marijuana would also likely rise after legalization, but probably not too much since fun substance abuse group activities for adults pot use is already widespread. This may seem like a petty academic squabble, but it’s quite important as researchers and lawmakers try to advance more scientific approaches to drug policy. Finding the best method to evaluate the risks of drugs is much more complicated than assigning numeric rankings.
However, many of the included studies used only two neuroimaging or neurocognitive time points, which does not allow for more complex modeling and understanding of developmental trajectories over time. Furthermore, reliably identifying causal mechanisms in observational studies without randomization is difficult, with the primary concern being confounding (i.e., whether causal associations are real, or entirely or partly confounded by other variables). The studies synthesized in this review included statistical models with a range of sociodemographic and environmental covariates to address the issue of confounding.
There are also more than 100 different cannabinoids, which are substances found in the cannabis plant. So, the answer to that question may depend on which strain of cannabis you’re smoking or what mix of cannabinoids are in it. Unlike alcohol, which slows your heart rate, marijuana speeds it up, which could negatively affect the heart in the short term. Still, the largest-ever report on cannabis from the National Academies of Sciences, released in January, found insufficient evidence to support or refute the idea that cannabis may increase the overall risk of a heart attack.