If you’re old enough to remember the DARE program, you probably remember the litany of unhinged rhetoric they used to try and convince you that smoking cannabis was not a good time and does not make you a cool dude. Among those was the claim that over time, cannabis makes you dumber and permanently damages your long term memory. Well, we can (maybe) put that one to bed along with the whole “gateway drug” thing. Because according to a study out of Denmark, cannabis users might actually experience less cognitive decline than non-cannabis users as they age.
Conscripted In Copenhagen
A little background first: Ever since 1849, Denmark has required physically fit men over 18 years of age to be conscripted for 4-12 months of military service. On the way into this service, conscripts are given a cognitive test. That’s where the authors of this new study saw an opportunity. The test was re-administered to 5,162 men who were now around 64 years old, and then polled those men to see if they’d ever tried or habitually consumed cannabis.
Videos by VICE
The men who were habitual consumers of the devil’s lettuce actually scored higher on the cognitive test than those who didn’t, showing less overall cognitive decline over the around 44 year period between the first time they took the cognitive test and the re-test for this study. There are a lot of other factors that could play a role in these results, like lifestyle, income, and consumption of other intoxicants over time. But even accounting for those, the researchers still saw a slight uptick in cognitive function among the old stoner crowd.
Not so fast, Grandpa
There’s a caveat, though. The margin is slim: cannabis consumers scored on average 1.3 points higher than non-cannabis users. Even the authors of the study say that much more research is needed before any medical conclusions can be drawn. Still, it’s an interesting result that flies in the face of conventional wisdom about cannabis. So don’t go getting your grandpa a bag of weed and a bong for Christmas just yet. Or do, just don’t expect that it’ll make him any better at, well, anything besides eating and saying inappropriate things at the dinner table.
