Does smoking marijuana help your memory?

Much of my childhood was wasted; spent in heated debates with my parents. I, on the one side arguing pro marijuana, while my parents, the United States Government, and just about every other establishment in the United States on the other side urging me to come to the realization that smoking marijuana results in the genocide of all my living brain cells, not to mention a myriad of other results, all bad and all rendering the user a vegetable for life. Perhaps! But, could it be possible that all the old arguments were propaganda based or simply opinion based? A recent article posted on BioEd Online titled, Marijuana may make your brain grow: Cannabinoid injections sprout new neurons in mice, by Geoff Brumfiel, claims, “Most addictive drugs inhibit the growth of new brain cells. But injections of a cannabis-like chemical seem to have the opposite effect in mice, according to new research.”

“Neuropsychologist Xia Zhang and a team of researchers based at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, aimed to find out just how marijuana-like drugs, known collectively as cannabinoids, act on the brain. The researchers injected rats with HU210, a synthetic drug that is about one-hundred times as powerful as THC, the high-inducing compound naturally found in marijuana. They then used a chemical tracer to watch new cells growing in the hippocampus,” states Geoff.  According to my Wikipedia research the hippocampus plays an important role in the consolidation of information from short term memory and long term memory. In other words, the research indicates that growing new brain cells improves memory while combating depression and mood disorders. Another professional in the field of addiction, Amelia Eisch, an addiction researcher at the University Of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas excitedly says, "It makes marijuana look more like an antidepressant and less like a drug of abuse."

The real question that remains unanswered is why cannabinoids have a different effect on the brain than other addictive drugs. This unanswered question is high on the list of new research and will only help to confirm my lifelong belief that marijuana possesses a medicinal value. I suggest that the proof is in the pudding. I have smoked marijuana many times. My memory remains intact thus I call out the naysayers and challenge them to prove otherwise. Anyone can claim anything they want to claim, parents, schools, and even governments, but that does not make it a point of fact. Let’s promote an atmosphere, not based on an outsider mentality or one that grapples as children with opinion, but an atmosphere based on rigorous intellectual truth!