Miriam Fauzia | (TNS) The Dallas Morning News DALLAS — As public support for marijuana decriminalization grows, new research is shedding light on the drug’s impact on sleep and memory. In a recent study published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas found that adults with cannabis use disorder tended to experience poorer sleep than those without the condition. They also performed more poorly on tests assessing visuospatial memory, or the ability to retain and process information about an object’s appearance and location.
“What this paper does is provide a bridge between the two things” — sleep and memory — “and helps establish that perhaps some of the memory impairment associated with cannabis use is indeed due to poor sleep quality,” said Christopher Verrico, an associate professor of psychiatry research at Baylor College of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. The study also underscores the many unknowns surrounding marijuana’s impact on the human body and the need to be cautious when using it, said Ashley Garling, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy who was not involved in the study. In a 2022 survey of more than 27,000 people between ages 16 and 65 in the U.
S. and Canada, almost half reported using cannabis to help with sleep. In another survey, commissioned by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in 2023, a quarter of Americans .
