Air India Pilot Tests Positive For Marijuana After Mid-Air Incident: Expert Explains What 'Weed' Actually Does To Your Body

Published 12 August 2026 · local

News lifestyle health-and-fitness Air India Pilot Tests Positive For Marijuana After Mid-Air Incident: Expert Explains What 'Weed' Actually Does To Your Body Air India Pilot

News lifestyle health-and-fitness Air India Pilot Tests Positive For Marijuana After Mid-Air Incident: Expert Explains What 'Weed' Actually Does To Your Body Air India Pilot Tests Positive For Marijuana After Mid-Air Incident: Expert Explains What 'Weed' Actually Does To Your Body Written By, Last Updated: August 12, 2026, 14:39 IST After an Air India pilot tested positive for marijuana following an in-flight incident, a doctor breaks down what the drug does to attention, memory and long-term brain health Air India Pilot Tests Positive For Marijuana After Mid-Air Incident: Expert Explains What 'Weed' Actually Does To Your Body It took a 300-foot drop in altitude over the skies for marijuana to make headlines again. The pilot-in-command of an Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi allegedly tested positive for marijuana in a confirmatory lab test, after the aircraft experienced a sudden loss of altitude that left 24 people injured. Investigators are still piecing together what happened in the cockpit that day, where technical faults, turbulence, human error are all on the table. But the drug test result alone has put marijuana and the assumptions people carry about it, back under the microscope. For a substance so often waved off as “just weed" (often called natural, mild, harmless compared to alcohol or harder drugs) marijuana’s actual effects on the body are more complicated, and more immediate, than most people realise.

What Happens When You Consume Marijuana The first thing marijuana affects isn’t mood. It’s function. “Immediately after use, marijuana can impair attention, memory, judgment, coordination and reaction time," says Dr. Prateek Kumar, MBBS & DNB, Internal Medicine, Maccure Hospital, Delhi. “These effects increase the risk of road traffic accidents, workplace injuries and poor decision-making." That’s the case whether the person using it is behind the wheel of a car, operating machinery, or, as the Air India case has put in sharp focus, in a cockpit. The impairment isn’t always visible from the outside. It doesn’t always look like intoxication. But the cognitive machinery required for split-second decisions is measurably slower. The pilot-in-command of the Air India Phuket-Delhi flight that suddenly lost altitude last week was not able to stand straight and needed assistance in submitting urine sample for the dope test, according to a report published by NDTV. There’s a psychological dimension too. “Some people may also experience anxiety, panic attacks, paranoia or temporary psychotic symptoms, especially with high-potency products," Dr. Kumar notes. As cannabis products have grown more potent over the years, this risk has only become more relevant; the marijuana of a decade ago is not the marijuana available today. What Happens When You Smoke ‘Weed’ Regularly A single instance of impairment is one thing.