Negative Effects Behind Marijuana - Essay Example

Marijuana has many adverse impacts on the personal and social life of these children. It not only saps their tendency to positively connect and relate to other people in their home, school, and society in general, but also affects their academic performance. Children tend to find new ways to smoke marijuana that often gets them break the school’s laws. These marijuana consumers are also vulnerable of being exploited, used, and then blackmailed by criminals and gangs. This paper explores the effects of marijuana consumption on the learning and motivation of the students and compares the performance of marijuana smokers and non-smokers in the school.

Marijuana has adverse impacts on the learning and motivation of marijuana smoking students, thus making their academic performance poorer compared to the non-smokers. Marijuana has a negative effect on students’ learning ability. Active ingredient in marijuana is Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which meddles with the ability of the brain to think, develop coordination between different systems of the body, and control emotions “Marijuana and Teens”). Use of marijuana early in life and its continued use can affect students’ memory and their clarity of thinking.

Smoking marijuana makes it difficult for the students to concentrate upon concepts, pay attention in the class, and learn new things. Smoking marijuana has a negative effect on the decision making ability of the students. When the students are intoxicated, they cannot properly maintain their balance in their movements. A moderate decrease in the level of IQ has been noticed in heavy smokers of marijuana (Meier et al). Students who smoke marijuana cannot get concepts easily and quickly because of their impaired ability to concentrate.

Even if they understand the concepts, they forget them after a while because of their poor memory as a result of smoking marijuana. Marijuana lowers the level of motivation for studies and generally a healthy lifestyle in the smokers. “prolonged and heavy marijuana use can cause a person to become withdrawn, lethargic, apathetic and unmotivated, a collection of symptoms that has often been referred to as the "amotivational syndrome."” (“Marijuana and Motivation”). Interests of chronic heavy smokers of marijuana become narrow.

Marijuana smoking students can lose their ability to establish well-thought and complex long-term plans. They become apathetic and have to endure frustration for extended time periods. Many marijuana smokers become introverted and in their behavior, exhibit a childlike regression. Their attention is focused only on the present and they cannot establish long-term goals for themselves in order to progress or succeed in life. Although it is hard to state the extent to which it is caused by learning difficulties posed by use of marijuana, lack of motivation, or affiliation of marijuana smokers with pro-risk gangs, yet marijuana smoking is associated with increased absences from school poorer academic performance, and increased risk of drop out from the school before graduation.

Numerous surveys have found adverse impacts of marijuana smoking on the academic performance of students. The Healthy Youth Survey conducted in the Washington State in 2010 yielded that marijuana smoking high school students displayed lower grades (Cs, Ds, or Fs) more often than their non-smoking counterparts (“