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Summary
What is marijuana?
Marijuana is a green, brown, or gray mix of dried, crumbled parts from the marijuana plant. The plant contains chemicals which act on your brain and can change your mood or consciousness.
How do people use marijuana?
There are many different ways that people use marijuana, including:
- Rolling it up and smoking it like a cigarette or cigar
- Smoking it in a pipe
- Mixing it in food and eating it
- Brewing it as a tea
- Smoking oils from the plant ("dabbing")
- Using electronic vaporizers ("vaping")
What are the effects of marijuana?
Marijuana can cause both short-term and long-term effects.
Short term:
While you are high, you may experience:
- Altered senses, such as seeing brighter colors
- Altered sense of time, such as minutes seeming like hours
- Changes in mood
- Problems with body movement
- Trouble with thinking, problem-solving, and memory
- Increased appetite
Long term:
In the long term, marijuana can cause health problems, such as:
- Problems with brain development. People who started using marijuana as teenagers may have trouble with thinking, memory, and learning.
- Coughing and breathing problems, if you smoke marijuana frequently
- Problems with child development during and after pregnancy, if a woman smokes marijuana while pregnant
Can you overdose on marijuana?
It is possible to overdose on marijuana, if you take a very high dose. Symptoms of an overdose include anxiety, panic, and a rapid heartbeat. In rare cases, an overdose can cause paranoia and hallucinations. There are no reports of people dying from using just marijuana.
Is marijuana addictive?
After using marijuana for a while, it is possible to get addicted to it. You are more likely to become addicted if you use marijuana every day or you started using it when you were a teenager. If you are addicted, you will have a strong need to take the drug. You may also need to smoke more and more of it to get the same high. When you try to quit, you may have mild withdrawal symptoms such as:
- Irritability
- Trouble sleeping
- Decreased appetite
- Anxiety
- Cravings
What is medical marijuana?
The marijuana plant has chemicals that can help with some health problems. More states are making it legal to use the plant as medicine for certain medical conditions. But there isn't enough research to show that the whole plant works to treat or cure these conditions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the marijuana plant as a medicine. Marijuana is still illegal at the national level.
However, there have been scientific studies of cannabinoids, the chemicals in marijuana. The two main cannabinoids that are of medical interest are THC and CBD. The FDA has approved two drugs that contain THC. These drugs treat nausea caused by chemotherapy and increase appetite in patients who have severe weight loss from AIDS. There is also a liquid drug that contains CBD. It treats two forms of severe childhood epilepsy. Scientists are doing more research with marijuana and its ingredients to treat many diseases and conditions.
NIH: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Diagnosis and Tests
- Drug Testing (National Library of Medicine) Also in Spanish
- Drug Use Screening Tests (National Library of Medicine) Also in Spanish
Treatments and Therapies
- Treatment of Substance Use Disorders (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Related Issues
- Does Marijuana Help Treat Glaucoma or Other Eye Conditions? (American Academy of Ophthalmology) Also in Spanish
- Inhaled Marijuana and the Lungs (American Thoracic Society) - PDF Also in Spanish
- Medical Cannabis and Multiple Sclerosis (National Multiple Sclerosis Society)
- What You Need to Know (And What We're Working to Find Out) About Products Containing Cannabis or Cannabis-derived Compounds, Including CBD (Food and Drug Administration) Also in Spanish
Specifics
- 5 Things to Know about Delta-8 Tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-8 THC) (Food and Drug Administration) Also in Spanish
- Synthetic Cannabinoids (National Institute on Drug Abuse) Also in Spanish
Images
- Marijuana (Drug Enforcement Administration)
Statistics and Research
- Cannabis Facts and Stats (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Clinical Trials
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Cannabinoids (National Institutes of Health)
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Cannabis Use Disorder (National Institutes of Health)
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Marijuana Use (National Institutes of Health)
- ClinicalTrials.gov: Medical Marijuana (National Institutes of Health)
Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine)
- Article: A Matched Design for Causal Inference With Survey Data: Evaluation of...
- Article: Avatar Intervention in Virtual Reality for Cannabis Use Disorder in Individuals...
- Article: Effectiveness of the adolescent-community reinforcement approach for treating Cannabis use disorder...
- Marijuana -- see more articles
Find an Expert
- Drug Enforcement Administration
- FindTreatment.gov (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Also in Spanish
- National Institute on Drug Abuse Also in Spanish
- Partnership to End Addiction
Teenagers
- Cannabis and Teens (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
- Marijuana and Teens (American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry)
- What Is Marijuana? (Nemours Foundation) Also in Spanish
Women
- Marijuana (Cannabis) and Pregnancy (Organization of Teratology Information Specialists) Also in Spanish
- What You Should Know About Using Cannabis, Including CBD, When Pregnant or Breastfeeding (Food and Drug Administration) Also in Spanish
Patient Handouts
- Marijuana intoxication (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
- Medical marijuana (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish
- Substance use -- marijuana (Medical Encyclopedia) Also in Spanish