New Study: Alcohol, Not Weed, Manipulates Brain Structure

We’ve been saying it for a long time, but now scientists are confirming: alcohol negatively manipulates the structure of the human brain and cannabis does no such thing.

The powers that be, especially within the deteriorating administration in the White House, continue to disseminate blatantly erroneous information about cannabis and ignore authoritative academic work, such as one most recent study.

Researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Oregon Health & Science University evaluated neuroimaging data among adults (18 to 55) and adolescents (14 to 18) and identified an association between alcohol use and negative changes in brain structure.

They identified no such association with cannabis.

Alcohol consumption is associated with negative changes in gray matter volume and in white matter integrity, which refers to areas of the central nervous system… and cannabis use is not.

“No associations were observed between structural measures and past 30-day cannabis use in adults or adolescents,” according to the study, which will be published in the journal Addiction.

The study, first reported by NORML, is in line with others of this kind.

A 2015 brain imaging study published in the Journal of Neuroscience similarly reported that cannabis use was not positively associated with adverse changes in the brain, but that alcohol “has been unequivocally associated with deleterious effects on brain morphology and cognition in both adults and adolescents.”

And while we’re on the subject, other studies have shown that weed has the power to reduce the damage done by alcohol. So there is yet another advantage to the already extremely beneficial plant marijuana.