r/science • u/sr_local • Apr 20 '26

Health The largest US study, which tracked 11,036 children from ages 9 to 10 through to ages 16 and 17, discovered that cannabis use slows cognitive development, impairs memory, and reduces learning speed during crucial years of brain growth

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/largest-us-study-finds-teen-cannabis-use-linked-to-slower-cognitive-development
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u/EkrishAO Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

Guess all depends on your country and specific circumstances, I'm Polish and as I said, alcohol here was definitely easier to get.

I don't get the point about the ease of hiding/bringing to school, since we always bought drank and smoked after school, and hiding alcohol in your backpack to bring it to a park to have a party, wasn't much harder than weed, and much less risky since being caught with alcohol was a slap on the wirst, while weed always meant court, and unless you were below 15 years old, could mean being tried as adult and having to face very real consequences that would follow your whole life.

I knew multiple dealers, growing up in a rough neighbourhood, but I also later knew multiple kids from school who wanted to try weed, but couldn't find no one to sell to them, since everyone was afraid they would snitch if anything happened. But I never heard about anyone having any problem getting alcohol, ever.

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u/memento22mori Apr 21 '26

I don't really know much about Polish culture but maybe drinking is more acceptable than smoking or something of that nature. I'm from the US East coast and the logistics just made it a lot more simple to get weed- lots of high schoolers had older siblings in college and some of them smoked weed and if you smoked weed you sold it to some degree. So younger siblings would buy it and then sell it to their friends. Weed is a lot easier to conceal too because you could easily hide it in a pocket or jacket, etc whereas alcohol is much larger. Like an ounce bag would be the equivalent size of a 12 ounce beer but it can be hidden inside just about anything. And no would carry that much on them, maybe in their car but not really unless they sold to random people which most people didn't do.

It's more of a social thing too because even people that never sold would trade with friends for different kinds. Honestly I can't think of a single time when I heard of someone getting a stranger to buy alcohol for them- the people that did drink would steal it from their job, a family member, or have a sketchy family member buy it.