Doctors question whether medical marijuana is worth the trip

Take a couple of white coats, some advanced degrees, and allocate a good chunk of university money to do groundbreaking research, and what happens? Well, in the case of a new study out of the University of California, Davis, scientists discovered something that every hackey-sack-kicking, hemp-clothes-wearing undergrad could have told them: Marijuana eases nerve pain at the expense of certain mental skills.

Appearing in the June edition of The Journal of Pain, the study revealed that pain ratings dropped precipitously in participants after smoking THC cigarettes (THC is the main psychoactive substance in cannabis), while no such reduction was reported after smoking a placebo cigarette without the THC.

Participants took tests to measure their mental skills, including memory and coordination, before and after smoking. Their scores showed a steady decline after smoking high-dose THC cigarettes. Many experts have cited studies such as this as being reasons against the use of medical marijuana for neuropathic pain, in addition to the recently uncovered link between marijuana use and the potential for developing schizophrenia-like psychoses.