The Easter Bunny better be prepared with a face mask while delivering baskets of goodies and hiding eggs in Colorado this weekend given the annual two-day Denver 420 festival will be taking place Saturday and Sunday.
Organizers are hoping for a more sedate and calm celebration given a shooting during last year's event that remains unsolved.
The event arrives on the cusp of a new study this week that reveals even casual and recreational use of pot can lead to abnormalities in key brain regions. Northwestern Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School conducted the study.
According to reports it's the second research effort showing marijuana is related to major brain changes and is damage is dependent on the number of joints smoked in a week. A recent Northwestern study showed chronic pot was linked to brain abnormalities. The more toking, the more brain damage, states the Northwestern report.
The study reveals even those who smoked just once a week showed brain abnormalities. This will likely be startling news to the nearly 19 million users of pot.
"This study raises a strong challenge to the idea that casual marijuana use isn't associated with bad consequences," states corresponding and co-senior study author Hans Breiter, M.D, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a psychiatrist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
"Some of these people only used marijuana to get high once or twice a week," Breiter said. "People think a little recreational use shouldn't cause a problem, if someone is doing OK with work or school. Our data directly says this is not the case."
The study comes at a time when cities across the U.S. are considering doing what Denver did in 2012 in legalizing marijuana. The study will be published April 16 in the Journal of Neuroscience. A recent Northwestern study showed chronic use of marijuana was linked to brain abnormalities.
With the findings of these two papers," Breiter said, "I've developed a severe worry about whether we should be allowing anybody under age 30 to use pot unless they have a terminal illness and need it for pain."
