These studies may also miss categorize heavy/habitual users. Heavy canabis use tends to leave a somewhat functional if unmotivated individual. This is in contrast to heavy alcohol users who quickly lose the ability to function in society due to hangovers and inebriated actions.

Not all heavy alcohol users quickly lose the ability to function in society.

Some have lucrative television careers and go on to run the Pentagon overseeing millions of others and trillion dollar budgets.

* https://haderclinicqld.com.au/what-is-a-functional-alcoholic...

* https://www.crestviewrecoverycenter.com/addiction-blog/7-sig...

Politics is seriously a virus.

That's only because politics elevates the worst of us.

There are some surprisingly functional heavy drinkers. People who consume alcohol throughout the day rather than just at night can largely avoid hangovers and end up with incredibly high tolerance levels.

You don’t want them to operate heavy machinery, but for rote tasks that don’t take a lot of coordination it can be hard to tell.

That does not match my experience with alcoholics. In my experience they can stay functional in society for a very, very long time.

Not that that has anything to do with the original topic :)

Small effect size, and one I'd expect to be comparable to a lot of other things, like similar alcohol use, sleep deprivation, mood disorders, etc.

Hard as it may be for some to believe, not all people are trying to optimize for maximum brain function, evidence suggests that a vast swathe of humanity tries very hard to actively REDUCE their function on a recreational basis.