A recent study revealed that smoking cannabis reduces memory among teenagers. Teenagers who smoked daily performed badly in memory test even when they had given up smoking the drug two years ago. The study was recently published in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

This study was done by research from Northwestern University in Illinois, US. Researchers found that in these teenagers, who had smoked cannabis daily, the region of the brain where memory function is conducted were shrunk.

For the study, 44 healthy non-smoking people in their 20s, and 10 people(similar age) with a history of daily cannabis use was taken. Besides the study compared results of 15 people with a history of schizophrenia and cannabis use, and 28 people who had schizophrenia but no past history of regular  marijuana use.

The study revealed that people who had smoked marijuana, whether they had schizophrenia or no schizophrenia, had brain abnormalities. Also, the sooner these participants had started smoking cannabis, the more was the abnormality in their memory function. However, the researchers also accepted that brain structures could have been damaged before the individuals smoked. The study also revealed that 90 per cent of the individuals who had schizophrenia smoked pot before developing the disorder.

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(AW: Pratima Tigga)