Does marijuana cause short-term memory impairment?
The effect of marijuana on memory is probably its most dramatic and the easiest to notice. Many inexperienced marijuana users find that they have very strange, sudden and unexpected memory lapses. These generally take the form of completely forgetting what you were talking about when you were right in the middle of saying something important. However, these symptoms only occur while a person is “high”. They do not carry over or become permanent, and examinations of extremely heavy users have not shown any serious memory or thinking problems. More experienced marijuana users seem to be able to remember about as well as they do when they are not `high.’ Studies which have claimed to show short-term memory impairment have not stood up to scrutiny and have not been duplicated. Newer studies show that marijuana does not impair simple, real-world memory processes. Marijuana does slow reaction time slightly, and this effect has sometimes been misconstrued as a memory problem. To put things in
