Maybe the hippies were right:

Calgary — Forget the stereotype about dopey potheads. It seems marijuana could be good for your brain….

Most “drugs of abuse” such as alcohol, heroin, cocaine and nicotine suppress growth of new brain cells. However, researchers found that cannabinoids promoted generation of new neurons in rats’ hippocampuses….

“This is quite a surprise,” said Xia Zhang, an associate professor with the Neuropsychiatry Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

“Chronic use of marijuana may actually improve learning memory when the new neurons in the hippocampus can mature in two or three months,” he added.

The research by Dr. Zhang and a team of international researchers is to be published in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation….

The scientists also noticed that cannabinoids curbed depression and anxiety, which Dr. Zhang says, suggests a correlation between neurogenesis and mood swings. (Or, it at least partly explains the feelings of relaxation and euphoria of a pot-induced high.)

Pot makes you smarter? This would certainly explain Republican (and to be fair, Democratic) hostility to legalization. And to think I took my last toke 25 years ago… or was it 30? Getting harder to remember…

Then again, reading the BC Marijuana Party “literature” makes one wonder if the researchers were smoking their lab rats when they wrote up their findings.