大麻会在快感过后很久损害驾驶技能

大麻会在快感过后很久损害驾驶技能

Running red lights. Driving at high speeds. Crossing center lines into the opposite lanes. Getting into accidents -- even hitting pedestrians. A new study found these were some of the dangerous driving behaviors of regular, heavy users of recreational weed who began using before the age of 16.

闯红灯。高速驾驶。穿过中线进入相反的车道。遭遇交通事故——甚至撞到行人。一项新的研究发现，这些是16岁之前就开始吸食大麻的人的一些危险驾驶行为。

Here's the catch: users drove this badly even when they were no longer high.

问题是：吸食者即使在不在兴奋的情况下也会把车开得这么差。

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, asked chronic, heavy marijuana users to drive in a customized driving simulator.

这项研究发表在周二的《药物和酒精依赖》杂志上，要求长期大量吸食大麻的人在定制的驾驶模拟器中驾驶。

"Heavy use was defined by daily or near daily use, a minimum of four or five times a week, with a lifetime exposure of 1.500 times," said Staci Gruber, director of the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) program at McLean Hospital, the largest psychiatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

哈佛医学院最大的精神病学教学医院麦克莱恩医院大麻调查神经科学发现项目主任斯塔奇·格鲁伯说：“重度使用的定义是每天或几乎每天使用，每周至少四五次，一生接触1500次。”

The worst drivers? Those who began using regularly before age 16.

那些在16岁之前就开始经常使用药物的人是最糟糕的司机吗?

"Prior to age 16. the brain is especially neurodevelopmentally vulnerable, not just to cannabis but to other drugs, alcohol, illness, injury," Gruber said.

格鲁伯说:“在16岁之前，大脑在神经发育方面特别脆弱，不仅是大麻，还有其他毒品、酒精、疾病和伤害。”

"And when we looked at the cannabis users and separated those into early (before age 16) versus later onset of use, almost exclusively these differences between the two groups were attributed to the early onset group," Gruber said. "So it's really early exposure to cannabis that appears to confer greater difficulty with complex cognitive tasks like driving."

格鲁伯说：“当我们研究大麻使用者，并将他们分为早期(16岁之前)和较晚开始使用大麻两组，两组之间几乎所有的这些差异都归因于早发组。”“因此，早期接触大麻似乎会增加驾车等复杂认知任务的难度。”

That wasn't a real surprise, said study co-author Mary Kathryn Dahlgren, a post-doctoral fellow at MIND.

研究报告的合著者、MIND的博士后玛丽·凯瑟琳·达尔格伦说，这并不奇怪。

"Research has consistently shown that early substance use, including the use of cannabis, is associated with poorer cognitive performance," Dahlgren said, "specifically tasks controlled by the most frontal part of the brain, the part behind the eyebrows."

达尔格伦说:“研究一直表明，早期的药物使用，包括大麻的使用，与较差的认知能力有关，特别是由大脑最前部控制的任务，即眉毛后面的部分。”

That's also the part of the brain that controls our impulses, a major factor in appropriate behavior choices.

这也是大脑控制我们冲动的部分，是做出适当行为选择的主要因素。

"We've documented the role of impulsivity in cannabis users previously, and it does appear that earlier onset may confer a decreased ability to inhibit inappropriate responses," Gruber said, adding that science doesn't completely understand the relationship.

格鲁伯说:“我们之前已经证明了冲动在大麻使用者中所起的作用，而且似乎更早开始吸食大麻会降低他们抑制不当反应的能力。”他还补充说，科学还没有完全理解两者之间的关系。

"What comes first? Is it these impulsivity differences that drive early cannabis use? Is it early cannabis use that drives impulsivity differences? That question really needs to be addressed in future longitudinal studies that look at these folks before they ever begin using cannabis."

Does this same concern apply to users of medicinal marijuana? Not at all, Gruber says.

“什么是首要原因?是这些冲动的不同导致了大麻的早期使用吗?还是早期的大麻使用导致了冲动的不同?这个问题确实需要在未来的纵向研究中解决，在这些人开始使用大麻之前进行研究。”