in the past year.The effects vary from person to person depending on how strong the marijuana is, how its taken and whether other drugs or alcohol are involved. At first, pot can make people feel relaxed, in a good mood and even silly. Users will likely experience dry mouth, rapid heartbeat, some loss of coordination and poor sense of balance, and slower reaction times, along with intoxication. Blood vessels in the eye will expand causing the red-eye effect. Smoking marijuana may impair short-term memory while people are using the drug. This happens because all forms of marijuana contain THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the main active chemical in marijuana, which alters the way the brain works.After a few minutes, paranoia or anxiousness may set in, then intense hunger (a.k.a. the munchies). Finally, sleepiness. For some people, marijuana raises blood pressure slightly and can double the normal heart rate. This effect can be greater when other drugs are mixed with marijuana. Adding more evidence to shatter the myth that marijuana is not an addictive drug, researchers in Massachusetts have identified significant withdrawal symptoms in 60 percent of participants in the first out-of-laboratory study of chronic marijuana users. Symptoms included increases inirritability, anxiety and physical tension, as well as a decreases in appetite and mood, among participants the four-week study. Experiments performed on mice at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that THC, the major psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, may promote tumor growth by impairing the body's anti-tumor immunity system. In addition, researchers say smoking marijuana may be more of a cancer risk than smoking tobacco because the tar portion of marijuana smoke contains higher concentrations of carcinogens. They also say marijuana smoke deposits four times as much tar in the respiratory tract as does a comparable amount of tobacco. Further studies will be n...
