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Short and Long Term Effects

This drug can affect your health, both long and short term, and your driving — in a really bad way.

Effects While Driving

Smoking or eating marijuana slows down your responses to sights and sounds, making you a dangerous driver. Marijuana makes you sleepy, distorts your sense of time and space, and hurts your ability to adapt to light and dark. It also lowers your ability to handle a quick series of tasks while driving. So a marijuana user�s biggest driving problem is unexpected events, such as a car approaching from a side street or a child running into the street. This poor reaction time is worse when you�re driving at night because marijuana also causes a severe loss of night vision.

Short-Term Effects

In low doses, marijuana produces:

Poor memory and ability to learn
Difficulty in thinking and solving problems
Poor muscle coordination and judgment
Short attention span
Dangerous driving behavior
Altered sense of time and space
Food cravings

In larger doses, marijuana produces:

Hallucinations
Delusions
Poor memory
Not knowing where one is
Anxiety attacks or feelings of paranoia
Depression

Long-Term Effects

Cancer. Marijuana contains the same cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke.
Breathing problems. It creates the same kinds of breathing problems that cigarettes do: coughing and wheezing.
Immune system. The THC in marijuana can damage the cells and tissues in the body that help protect against disease.
Memory, learning, and energy are impaired.
Fertility. Reproductive hormones are decreased. In men, there is less testosterone, causing decreased sperm counts and possible erectile dysfunction. In women, there may be irregular periods. Both problems would result in a decreased ability to conceive but not lead to complete infertility.
Birth defects in unborn children.