Slashdot Mirror
Study Shows Marijuana Use In Teens Correlates To Decreasing IQ
retroworks writes "The BBC reports on a paper published in the U.S.'s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing a correlation between persistent, regular cannabis use and risk of lower IQ. The study finds the risk particularly correlates use of cannabis by teenagers who use the drug "four times a week year after year." The more people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ. Reviewers of the study at King's College Institute of Psychiatry states that the data and methodology are exceptional, but she also cautions that there may be another explanation, such as depression, which could lower IQ while stimulating marijuana use. The study does not mention or rule out 'nocebo' effects, i.e. just feeling stupid for spending your teens hanging out with potheads."
Tag news article 'Propaganda'
Drinking Wine or Beer 4 times a day year after year will reduce your IQ. Over use of ANYTHING will cause problems.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
All drugs should be legalised, there is no reason to hunt people down for smoking whatever they want, drinking whatever they want. There are already plenty of laws regarding actual acts of violence and negligence (like causing an accident while drunk or drugged). The government likes to have control over your body as well as over all of your actions. Do you think you should be free people, even free to kill your IQ or do you think you should be controlled by the state, told what to do, what not to do, thrown in jail if you refuse to comply?
You can't handle the truth.
Wait... what?
It took a study to determine this. I think another good study would be sticking a tack in your thumb and determining if it hurts. I do like the nocebo affect though...maybe after smoking pot they could hang with some of the CERN physicists and recoup some of the lost IQ?
Updated for a new generation.
I was gonna go to class, before I got high
I coulda' cheated and I coulda passed, but I got high
I'm taking it next semester and I know why, (why man) 'cuz I got high
Because I got high
Because I got high
I'd say the biggest drawback to pot smoking in teenage years is a lack of ability to find and keep a job. Being a loaf isn't conducive to paying the bills, which is the skill teenagers need to learn first and foremost. Self-sufficiency is paramount to heading off to college, or work, or simply moving on in life and I'd wager is more important than grades, social status, or if they are pot-heads or not. Its possible to smoke weed and still have a reasonable income, but the desire to be self-sufficient needs to come first or the stoner mentality wins over.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Does smoking pot as a teen lower your IQ, or are stupid teens more likely to smoke pot?
4 times a week is quite a bit different than 4 times a year.
Just listening to the incoherent babbling and giggling of stoners, this does not really come as a surprise.
Combine this with the risk of acute psychoses really strong cannabis can cause and I think some countries should rethink their lax attitudes towards cannabis use.
I am looking at you, Netherlands.
Oh, and the hight tar content of weed that will cause lung cancer.
"Dope".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
... bears shit in the woods, the pope is a catholic, ect ect.
Persuading the kids is another matter of course.
Looking forward to seeing an otherwise intelligent readership make utter fools of themselves pretending that this study is deeply flawed and that weed is actually safe. It's amazing how many in the intellectual community buy into that fiction.
Those who started after the age of 18 did not have the same IQ decline.
"It's such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."
-King's College professor Terrie Moffitt.
Bet they didn't see that one coming.
From the article: One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use.
Quoted as saying: "It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."
No kidding. So is alcohol. But this article's hype implies that all potential future cannabis users are under 18 and therefore cannabis is a dangerous substance.
Whatever you say, BBC.
With the additional uncertainty of extra substances in your weed, I wonder how they controlled for THAT. From lead to sugar to liquid plastics (known as Brix where I live), anything could do that to your brain.
How fitting. CAPTCHA: poisons
they are as dumb and dense as rocks
if you have nothing better to do in life than sit around and inhale a drug to "get high" and have psychodelic hallucinations then you're probably not destined for greatness
And I always thought it was a smart drug. Benzo's are worse.
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
You would never know it when considering Joey...
Passed every exam at school with flying colours and had my first experience of failing an exam at university.
Of course that could also be explained by going into an exam hung over and sleep deprived. It's hard to say.
Study was run by a guy at Duke University in tobacco country. They have a vested interest in keeping pot illegal? Something to consider if you have any free brain cells. Not defending pot smoking, just sayin cigarettes are as bad or worse.
Or, alternatively, maybe there is some kind of effect from breathing in smoke that's generally bad for brain development. That wouldn't surprise me either. However, they did try to control for smoking of tobacco and consumption of alcohol too, so perhaps this is a distinct effect. Obviously they need to do some follow-up studies to see if this observation holds up.
In before all the druggies swarm to defend their narcotic. :)
Just like a stoner to be slow, late, and misspell everything in a two word sentence.
Breaking the law on a regular basis with a decent chance of being caught and treated harshly by the system probably correlates with a low IQ too, doesn't it?
There are so many details left of of the news stories about this report with regards to methodology I decided I would take a look at the report myself. Surely they controlled for things like, years of education, family income, geography... right? Well I went to the original study link but I am not willing to pay the $10 to read it. If anyone has a link to the pdf I would appreciate it. Until then I assume this is similar to the famous pirates vs. global average temperatures graph.
Did they ever stop to think that maybe the pot-smoking teens just didn't care about how well or poorly they did on the tests because they were relaxed from it?
See that's the problem with such tests, they are so easily skewed by the participants.
Just forget about them, and stop trying. Shut down the whole nasty business.
Nor did the study rule out the possibility that, once sufficiently stoned, one really has no desire to read--let alone learn--much of anything. IQ is like many things: use it or lose it.
Whenever I see something like this, I wonder: Is there a hidden agenda?
I wanna see some more data before changing my opinion. One study does not a fact make.
You have the right to remain silent. If you don't, anything you say will be misquoted and used against you.
came here to get better commentary then the "you wonder why they call it dope" meme. Not gonna lie, i'm a little disappointed.
"Do you think you should be free people, even free to kill your IQ or do you think you should be controlled by the state, told what to do, what not to do, thrown in jail if you refuse to comply?"
A free society doesn't mean you have freedom to do as you damn well please no matter what and screw everyone else. If you hadn't smoked so many joints you might understand this basic fact of human civilisation which has been true since probably before we came down out of the trees since even animals don't tolerate anarchy in their packs or herds.
If I had a dollar for every time my teenage pothead friends told me that weed was harmless, I'd be a very rich man.
Thing is, none of them did anything useful with their lives, or even had jobs. And now they're all completely drug-fucked wastes of space, to a man.
A spliff or two, now and again when you're old enough to handle it, might be okay. But when you're in your late teens, the stuff will destroy your mind -- because teens are inconsiderate, obnoxious douchebags, generally because the "not being a complete cunt" part of your brain is the last part of your brain to fully develop, and pot messes with its development.
Mod me down, potheads.
I smoked lotsa wid in my taiem and i got mai major in linguistiqs just faine.
The story was collapsed so the headline was so close to the previous story I saw Study shows Apple use by teens may cause lower IQ.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Wow, lots of AC's posting with no actual relevant discussion of the topic. I wish someone had the full study listed since the abstract doesn't mention any controls. It's pretty well established that IQ's can vary ~10 degrees in either direction throughout life from a baseline taken early on based on any number of factors, from physical activity to constant mental engagement (I know in PA they do initial IQ tests around 1st grade to get the baseline). I wonder if those factors are what is affected, vs a direct impact from exposure to cannabinoids (no one in the study seems to be the slice-and-dice-the-brain type, and everything is based on self-reporting).
Yesterday, I believed in evolution.
But what about all the alleged positive effects like eating a whole bunch and becoming a lazy fast ass and getting arrested...oh wait...
Propaganda; n. Any material which proposes to sway a reader to form a conclusion that conflicts with your own.
+1 Hilarious!
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
If, for example, you haven't smoked pot in 30+ years, is there still any detectable impact on cognition compared to non-pot-smoking peers? Empirically, I'd have to say "No, there's no difference," but I'm a sample of one. Other factors may weigh in as well. An intellectually challenging environment (e.g. far too much programming) may negate some of the negative effects of pot smoking.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
IQ tests are incredibly subjective anyway, and have innate cultural biases. Essentially all an IQ test calculates is how good you are at the test. It has very little to do with "intelligence", however loosely defined.
about the shitty tests they use to establish IQ, the organisation responsible for giving the tests and to a large extent the society that thought it was a good idea to give any credence to IQ in the first place as a measure of anything.
If anything I'd say this correlates to increased intelligence..
Your agenda is clear as a devout worshipper of ron paul. You don't actually want to grant people more "freedom" or any other such bullshit that you like you use as a veneer for your agenda.
You want to open up drug sales to collect tax to run your government. You want your own income tax to get as close to zero as possible, based on taxes you can charge to others and programs that help others that you can cancel.
Of course, you completely overlook the important functions of the federal government that have benefitted you over the years - education, transportation, health care, to name a few - and try to tell everyone else to go "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps".
In other words, you're just karma-whoring here. You know that "legalize drugs" is a popular call here, but it's not your true agenda. You just want more money in to the government so you can (presumably) pay less. You want your share of the pie for nothing, with others footing the bill.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
that panders to the dumbest element in our society? Wouldn't they see this as a reason to support legalization simply to increase the ranks of the stupid thus increasing the number of people who might vote for them?
No, I guess they wouldn't- they don't believe in science.
Singling one out vs. the plethora of others for cause and effect politically serves little real purpose. The real question is how the damage done by a drug being studied for a typical user compares with other common drugs on various levels. In that light, how do the most commonly abused "other" drugs, such as alchohol or tobacco compare in both health and lifestyle effects. Nearly everyone uses some sort of recreational drug at some level. Make a good choice. I've made mine.
I mean you would get the same result with various drug or even alcohol : active regular consumption of psycho active product during the formative years until adulthood has a chance to lower your IQ. So that does not seem very special.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
For some of us this would be a beneficial side effect.
See, this is why we need better regulation of the recreational cannabis industry - same as with alcohol and tobacco. But nobody seems that interested, despite the fact that proper taxation could go a long way towards covering the costs *rolls eyes*
here is the source i used: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/34415 i would bet there is some external factor not controlled for.
Let's start by saying that I am biased. I am anti-drugs. My best friend smoked copious amounts of weed and has deteriorated over the years in everything you can measure. Having said that, I'd still like to bring the obvious point, it's correlation, not causation. Whilst I thoroughly believe drug abuse will harm your brain I still have to ask a few questions;
1. Is it because people with low IQ are attracted to weed?
2. Do people with low IQ tend to stay at the same intellectual level, or advance slower than the rest; whilst the rest of the testable average simply advances slightly at the same pace? (this would give the illusion of a downturn)
3. Is there any grey area with the IQ testing? most intelligence tests only measure an individual's willingness to score well rather than actual intelligence,
4. Can we demonstrate that a high IQ person that will begin smoking weed has a decreased IQ score over time because of weed making them dumber or because weed makes them less competitive or interested in scoring well?
Perhaps like many others, I'd like to know.
correlation does not imply.. um...
wait, wait...
The study showed that these same effects are absent when used by adults. To me, that says it should simply be something that is age restricted like cigarettes or alcohol.
I feel compelled to post here (as AC for obvious reasons). I'm a 32-year old father of 2 incredibly cute and intelligent kids, I have a beautiful successful wife, a six-figure income, a Ph.D in theoretical computer science, and I'm a research scientist at a leading university. I'm also an inventor, a small business owner (capitalizing quite nicely on one of my inventions) and I have also variously been a professional carpenter, performing guitarist, and more.
I have smoked marijuana 3 or more times a week since I was 15 years old. I consider it an important part of my life and success. Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to tell people that it is a part of my life - the stigma surrounding it is strong with "driven achiever" types. Because of this, and also because it is in fact illegal and I need to get it somehow, I am forced to maintain a dark side in my life including somewhat unsavory people, etc. It is only the illegality of marijuana that is problematic to me. You want to know why pot is a gateway drug? Because you are forced to debase yourself to obtain it: you have to associate with a drug dealer who - by necessity - is a felon.
Finally, to address the topic directly, pot makes you stupid if you sit around watching TV, but it complements intellectual work very nicely once you figure out how to do it. Both my Ph.D thesis topic and my best invention came to me when I was quite high, as did the proof to the central theorem in my thesis after a six-month struggle.
I wonder if the IQs actually dropped or if they remained stable as the non smoking group in the study improved.
What gets you a 100 IQ at 10 years old doesn't cut it when you're 15.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I can see there being correlation here, but as with many things in life just because they are correlated does not mean one is causing the other. Any kid avoiding or trying to escape daily life's routines such as school by indulging in _something_ four times a week that lets them escape might likely have the same effect of lowering their IQ.
My aunt smoked a lot of weed. She was a fucking idiot in daily life and completely incapable of figuring out the simplest of problems. Whatever smarts she had as a kid were killed by 45+ years of weed.
all those educational reality tv is less evil than smoking?
...don't look smart, so it's a yes.
There is more too it than that. It is a fact that the higher brain functions (forebrains) develop last in humans. This is where our self-control is located. These develop in the late teens and may explain why teens can be reckless risk takers, have less empathy, and be more vulnerable to some psychoactive chemicals. It is probably no coincidence that schizophrenia shows up around this age. It is also why the military likes recruits around this age since they are easier to mold into killers without empathy.
Did you know you can't prescribe Ritalin to teens & children in the country it's manufactured because of it's potential side effects like psychosis or for the lay person; goes into school buildings and starts shooting. The number of shootings are on the rise with the number of medicines prescribed.
"You notice you never hear any positive drug stories on the news? Thats fucking strange because ever experience I've had on a drugs has been positive. I hear stories about some kid on LSD who jumped out the window because he thought he could fly. I say "GOOD!" thin out the gene pool. Aww, what? He's an idiot. If you think you can fly, try taking off from the ground. It's what ducks do. You don't see ducks lined up to catch the elevator."
- Bill "MOTHERFUCKING" Hicks
Other noted pot smokers: Carl Sagan, Johnny Cash, Rick Rubin, Rodney Dangerfield, George Washington Carver, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton, George Clinton, Jeremy Piven, Larry Flynt, Oliver Stone, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Kimmel, Micheal Phelps, Tony Bennet, Seth Rogan, Damn every comic, musician & artist worth a shit ever most likely.
All those concussions... let's ban that too!!
Indica/sativa narcotic/entheogenic. Those that like the former end up eating cookies and not getting off the sofa and repeating the words "I'm so stoned."
link, for those of you who didn't realize it
Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but...well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored and...it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or...being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything!
-Randy Marsh
This study has caused a flurry of classic bad science reporting. Correlation isn't causation. Saying that this study shows that marijuana use "causes" cognitive decline is just silly. In fact the authors themselves state "our data cannot definitively attest to whether this association is causal" I suspect that the very kids inclined to toke up are those who have attention and executive function issues to begin with. Maybe this is be evidence that Marijuana is bad for the adolescent brain. Sure, further research is warranted, and yes, I don't doubt that any kind of intoxication by children is to be avoided. And sure, this study makes me worry a bit about my youthful indiscretions, but let's be cautious in reading too much into a study that supports contemporary fear and panic.
Man that gets you wasted. Good thing those are non-toxic, legal and always will be available. Only problem is the cyan and fuchsia dripping out of your nose seems to unnerve my co-workers, blacks not much better but no one seems to notice the yellow.
In other news, both drug use and low IQ are correlated to poverty.
If you've been living under a rock for the last six years, you may not have seen this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc
DO NOT watch this video while drinking milk or Coke!
When the 'authorities' are pushing something, they often exaggerate. That leads people to reject the whole message.
Many of the scare tactics, used to discourage teenagers from using marijuana, are easily proven false. That, in the teenagers' minds, gives them license to smoke up all they want without worrying about the consequences.
Propaganda: MARIJUANA LOWERS IQ
The difference is in how this is presented. A scientific presentation cannot possibly say that marijuana is a causal factor until at least all of the following are addressed:
There are a lot of things that can cause the results the scientists saw -- which is good news for them, since it means they have plenty of questions to answer. Unfortunately, the media will see this, ignore the part about heavy users, spend no time discussing confounding factors, and jump right on the "marijuana is bad" bandwagon. Typical, unsurprising, propaganda-driven approach.
Palm trees and 8
I been smokin at LEAST four times during my work day for years - I've steadily been getting better and higher paying jobs so I think especially in this case it is totally dependent on the person.
I would love to see same study performed with alcohol and tobaco.
Also the danger zone for mariuana usage was 13-18 years old (kids that should not use it anyway, especialy in those high doeses mentioned), the reset would just revert back to their normal levels.
and to me, 8 points of IQ don't sound much, But then again that depends on the IQ Scale used.
The only thing you've proven is that you're willing to judge others. As I always say, when one person attempts to judge another, it says a lot more about the person doing the judging than the person being judged.
Or should that be "Dumb dumb dumb!"?
Alcohol and ecstasy are known to cause brain damage directly.
In 1980's, my life was pretty terrible. I lived in a poor post-industrial city where hope dwindled. I lived on a street where the bikers were fighting with the block punks. I have seen people beaten and bloodied. I have seen someone's jaw broken with a three foot stick. I have seen someone choke someone unconscious. I have seen someone seizure from a beating. I have known two people who were scarred from being dragged down the street at the end of a rope. As a teen, I knew quite a few others who were abused both brutally and sexually. It seemed that every day something was going wrong. When someone pulled a blackjack on me it took 22 minutes for the police to arrive. My house was broken into twice. I have been the victim of violence several times, including sexual.
I remember one night when all us bad youths were sitting in an old bus hulk. We were listening to "Hell is for Children" from Pat Benatar. Everyone looked elsewhere as we chanted along with the song. Yes, we were high, and perhaps because we were, we survived, I survived.
I remember when I first saw the a computer a person could actually own. Oddly, it was a Tandy Model 1. Later on, I bought a Color Computer 2, and I loved that thing. It had 256x192 graphics, in 4 colors. I love computer graphics, and started writing lots of programs for it, because that's what computer users did back then.
My point is, having been though what I have, it is doubtful that I would been able to relax enough to do that, in the environment I was in. For me, pot is a gateway drug that led to some computer programming, Photoshop use, working at dot-com, working at a major computer game company, it led to CAD, and writing a provisional patent, and some other things.
When people talk about drugs, I feel that they do not talk about the benefits. IM(not so)HO, in every way, pot is a better anti-anxiety than benzodiazepines. It is less physically addictive, and it does not make you as clumsy as it does.
~
I am generally so angry about the US's anti-drug policy that it is indeed hard to evaluate things objectively. The US Government has been lying to its people for so long on about drugs it will be hard for any rational person to believe anything, case in point: Reefer Madness.
When people lied and said that pot was always terribly addictive and so was heroin, those people who saw the truth that pot is not so addictive, and they thought that heroine was not addictive, and so they tried it.
I also remember during Regan's rein, when he tightened the borders. Drugs like pot became rare and expensive. Pot was $20 for a half-ounce before that and cocaine was expensive and scarce. In just a few years, pot became scarce and cocaine was plentiful. The people in the inner cities might not ever became familiar with harder drugs if it was not for the Drug War, the war on people. Why? Back when domestic sensimilla was still an "exotic" there was a lot of inexpensive Mexican and Columbia pot. Tightening the borders created a condition where only the smallest and most valuable drugs were moved through. The drug war made crack almost as cheap as pot.
True or not, the test will probably become a weapon in the conservative drug war. Even if the test is true, pot is much safer than driving a car, which claim more teenage lives than anything else.
Please remember that in the US, an anti-rave act was passed with a fouled test. The test was supposed to represent MDMA, but instead it was meth. The funny thing is: lots of people take meth as adderall. (I have seen what meth does to people, and I don't like it.)
In the US, we have other issues: we as country, think that alcohol, the blood of Christ is the only drug that should be allowed. There's are so many people making money from the war against drugs, that stand to lose that we cannot see things in a rational way. Anhieser-Bush and Phillip Morris tobacco were members of a Drug Free America. Pot was made illegal to control Mexican Americans. To me, the war on drugs is the war on US Citizens.
Pot smoking led to computer use and it has made me intolerant the drug war : )
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
See there is a problem with studies like this and that is that people in these studies are already of a personality and mindset (Disposition I guess?) to smoke Cannabis anyway, which is OK by me in my opinion, but for teenagers (well just say minors I guess) I don't think it's the most appropriate thing they should be doing. (should be kinda like alcohol if they are going to try and control it at all, instead of this bs drug war...etc)
I think the decrease in IQ is from their own daily habits which probably do not consist of attending all of their classes if they even show up at school at all. You can probably forget about them doing homework or studying at all too. We all know that Cannabis causes certain affects, that's not something anyone has ever tried to deny, but they are temporary and it's far safer than anything else they could have otherwise been taking or drinking. Even if a teen that were consuming Cannabis were to show up and actually wanted to go to class, they would most likely be thrown out or otherwise be punished as soon as the teacher or other staff or heck the other students smelled Cannabis on them or heard even a hint they had been using it. Even if they were not actually in possession of any drug, they would still be in trouble. Being yelled at, suspended or expelled and or arrested .... kinda makes it hard to study or learn anything, yeah?
Now for (young) adults who have already done most of their schooling or perhaps are in college and being responsible about their use of Cannabis if they use it. Most likely would not have any issues or degradation of their IQ at all. The problem is that with all of this drug war nonsense and the "taboo" of even talking about it makes it hard to actually be responsible. By responsible I mean kinda like how people SHOULD be with alcohol or other drugs, not taking it during work or school or while driving...etc. If someone were to just use a little cannabis after work or school or on the weekend they would be just fine and the relaxation might even actually help them especially by reducing stress, that alone might help them do better in school (again responsible use). Though if you are going through like a pound of the stuff in a day,... well then, that's abuse, not responsible use.
Many of the world most brilliant and smartest minds use or used cannabis. So studies like this should be taken with a Boulder of salt and remember it's about TEENS.
List of some great people who were users: (list was of some I already knew and others were from some websites I had come across, you can search yourself).
Carl Sagan, Scientist and scifi writer.
Dr Francis Crick. Nobel Prize winner
Carlos Santana, an amazing guitar player
Friedrich Nietzsche
Kary Mullis, Nobel Laurate, Biology
Lewis Wolpert, biologist
Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize Laureate physicist
Sir Paul McCartney and the other members of the Beatles
Several Presidents of the United States
seems like most Senators and congressman have
and more artists, writers, actors, directors then you can shake a stick at.
oh and since Apple computers are so prominent in the news right now, it should be known (like anyone doesn't know already) that Steve Jobs was a cannabis user as well. .... that's just a small handful. There are more brilliant people than you can even count, of all different backgrounds and fields of study:
science, philosophy, art, writing, acting, Medicine(well part of science I guess) and we can't forget politics (perhaps ALL of them just didn't inhale? mm hmm sounds plausible right? LOL).
These people are used or still use cannabis and you can't really say any of them are "idiots" or "stupid" they are smarter both you and I most likely and far more successful as well.
Ok end of my rant. I just wanted to really push the point that the use of Cannabis does NOT cause you to lose intelligence or become a stupid drooling moron with the IQ of a vegetable.
The less enthusiastic they were about the tests; which strangely was reflected in the scores.
I support anything that makes other people's kids dumber and lazier. It will improve my daughter's chances by reducing the competition. Even if I screw her up as long as everyone else is worse she will still look good. She may grow up to be a misanthrope though.
.... I STILL haven't smoked enough to have become dumb enough to be happy in this world. Maybe I should have used alcohol or brownnosing? These seem to work extremely well, up to the point of all critical thinking stopping completely. No such luck with THC as of yet :/
As far as I'm concerned, this study really doesn't matter -- even if it *is* right from a methodology and execution perspective, which I'm kind of questioning based on my reading of the news article about it where the only comments were from the Partnership for a Drug Free America, and the fact that it involves self-reporting from surveys.
Regardless, at a gut level, it seems risky to *encourage* teens to use mind-altering drugs, be it pot, booze or Adderall (it's funny, we never hear these people want to run studies showing the risk of putting developing brains on anti-depressants or stimulants).
But all of this seems to miss the point -- it seems like people opposed to marijuana legalization point to studies like this with a "SEE!!! IT"S BAD FOR YOU!" attitude, as if the only result that would rationalize legalization is the impossible one (for pot or anything else), where chronic, daily smoking of pot results in nothing more serious than an urge to drink more water.
This won't happen, and it's tiresome to see these kinds of studies used as some kind of justification for continuing a criminal justice empire costing billions of dollars a year that undermines the constitutional rights of everyone that has utterly failed to accomplish its goal.
for me I was straight edge, angry and a d student. My career goals wee to become a construction worker. THen i started to smoke pot, which led me to acid, which made me think and realize I should set higher goals for myself, so I went to college, got a bachelor became and A student while being and avd pothead and moved to hollywood where I make more money than most people but less then great programmers. Weed helped me to look at other avenues of thought than to just look at the world with blinders on.
It's paywalled (except for the abstract), so maybe not.
It's a good study, way better than most studies of this type, BUT... not a slam-dunk.
1) There were 1,037 subjects, but only 124 were "regular users" of cannabis at any timepoint. (Authors defined "regular use" as 4x/week or more). And the authors basically found that "non-regular users" (4x/week) didn't have any significant decline of IQ compared to non-users. The whole paper hangs on the rather small subset of 124 heavy smokers.
2) When you're measuring neurocognitive deficits in pot smokers, it's important to ensure that none of the test subjects have smoked weed in the last week. Otherwise you don't know if you are measuring permanent impairment vs. effects of acute intoxication/hangover. They did NOT exclude recent pot smokers (last day/last week) from the primary analysis. They DID perform a separate analysis where they excluded recent smokers, and they still found some deficits-- but the deficits were less pronounced, and more importantly, the sample size was smaller. Instead of hanging their conclusions on 124 heavy smokers, they actually hung their conclusions on (124-X) heavy smokers (and the value of X was not reported!)
3) I also noticed that the heavy smokers appear to have had a lower premorbid IQ. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the main finding, which is that the heavy smokers experienced a decline in IQ of about 6 points, whereas the light/non-smokers retained the same IQ. But it does suggest that there are a lot of confounding variables. They tried to control for certain confounders, like comorbid substance addiction and years of education, but you can't control for everything.
4) The "premorbid" IQ was measured at age 13, and the authors seemed to just assume that age 13 was "before the onset of cannabis use". Ain't necessarily the case. Heavy potheads tend to start early.
Let's see that would mean that they are basing these statistics on a sample of 50 people, okay perhaps, other factors not studied may have influnenced this small sample size like say depression, personality type, motivation levels etc... how can you apply these statistics universally?
It's all about the possibilities!
is that pot use is higher amongst people of lower or higher IQ. The best programmers I've ever worked with were heavy potheads. OTOH, pot use is high with stupid lowlifes I've known. Non-pot use is heaviest in people in the average IQ range (i.e. 100 +- 15)
My own experience (which really proves nothing statistically) is: I've smoked weed since I was 15 (I am now 57). I outscored everyone in my school on the Ohio Psych by at least 40 points. Maybe I'd be a super-genius if i'd never used but I doubt it.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Scientific conclusion: heavy TV use amongst teenagers is correlated with decreasing IQ.
Propaganda: TV LOWERS IQ
The difference is in how this is presented. A scientific presentation cannot possibly say that TV is a causal factor until at least all of the following are addressed:
What can cause IQ to change over time? As someone else pointed out, it is entirely possible that sitting around doing nothing all day will lower IQ, and so TV's role may just be in discouraging teenagers from participating in activities that maintain or increase their IQ. TV can increase appetite (couch potato?) -- it is possible that eating too much junk food lowers IQ.
There may be a particular trait that attracts some teenagers to watch TV heavily, which also causes them to have lower IQs later in life.
Teenagers who watch TV may be participants in a subculture that involves other activities that cause lower IQ.
TV may be produced using shit or mostly shit that is also absorbed when the TV is watched, and that might cause lower IQ.
TV may contain commercials that cause lower IQ; maybe other methods of watching will not have such an effect (rectally?).
There are a lot of things that can cause the results the scientists saw -- which is good news for them, since it means they have plenty of questions to answer. Unfortunately, the media will see this, ignore the part about heavy users, spend no time discussing confounding factors, and jump right on the "TV is bad" bandwagon. Typical, unsurprising, propaganda-driven approach.
Doesn't IQ naturally drop after schooling anyway (for those that do not study as a hobby)? Wouldn't the connections in the brain start to deteriorate and not be replenished because the person simply isn't stimulating their brain enough (or at least as much as they were at school)? What about peer pressure?
I'm not saying weed is a wonder drug, I knew someone who was institutionalised after having a nervous breakdown and he was a _heavy_ weed smoker (again could have been other factors, I only saw him every other week) but I just don't think you gauge the effects of weed on IQ by simply giving them an IQ test at 13 and 38 (if I RTFP correctly) just seems too vague to me.
ive smokd fur yeers an it never gave me no trubul.
and im smerter than i uzed to be
I'm not a weed smoker, pothead, or drug addict (but everyone drinks alcohol. Normal people, anyway) but I must point one thing out:
IQ is an arbitrary, meaningless, and fake statistic that does not actually indicate the intelligence nor potential intelligence of a person. I live with the two biggest potheads imaginable and both of them, while mentally retarded when it comes to most things, are still intelligent enough to work in IT and can hold intellectual conversations. And they're 26 and 24.
TV has a 2 minute slot to tell you the news and keep you from switching the channel at the same time... scientists spent years analyzing boring data to bring you this interesting factoid... and now for our commercial break!
it's because they're smoking pot instead of studying, texting their weed connections during class instead of listening to the teacher, etc.
I'd like to see a study done on pot-smoking, homeschooled teens, who smoke weed but still spend a reasonable amount of time learning... though I imagine pot-smoking homeschooled teens (which are actually homeschooled and not just giving an excuse to drop out of school) are kind of rare.
I had a roommate who used to light up every night after work. One of the smartest and most driven people I've ever known. Never drank, either. Just liked a couple hits after work.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
So its ok if you have a higher IQ to ok to smoke pot, but if your borderline retarded its not.
In this example I would say that marijuana lowers motivation and drive of these teenagers. Motivation and drive are very important facets in learning. Essentially if you don't give a crap about anything, you wont take time to learn it or be interested in it. So essentially you have a bunch of people who aren't interested in anything and therefore don't learn anything and as such they appear to have lower IQs, even though it's entirely possible for them to still be smart...
A flaw of the IQ test not being a absolute measure of intelligence and pot smoking casing a change in personality rather then physiology.
"Correlation is Not Causation"
You're not going to wind up smoking four times a week without some bad shit going on in your life. It's perfectly possible to be a healthy person and smoke roughly once or twice a week, but once you get much more than that, common sense will tell you other things are going on. Perhaps depression? Maybe personal issues that weed provides an escape from?
This study isn't that meaningful. Socioeconomic background needs to be discussed, as does home environment, and other areas of mental and physical health.
Saying that smoking weed four times or more a week is correlated with a drop in IQ is meaningless, because we don't know the concept. I will say that from my personal anecdotal evidence, when people smoke that much, there is something else going on.
Or, here's a possibility. You're a pissed off kid. Your crazy parents are making you take an IQ test. The type of guy who smokes a lot of weed is also the type to fill out random bubbles and generally not give a fuck about an IQ test.
This needs to be studied with well-funded, open-minded research.
Seriously, smoking is bad for you. How many times do you have to hear that before it sinks in?
the NIDA funded this study - do the math!
"Leonhart has significant control over medical marijuana research in the U.S., and has used her position as Acting Administrator to obstruct the scientific advancement of this important therapeutic substance. In January 2009, days before President Bush was to vacate his office, Acting Administrator Leonhart thwarted an effort to end federal obstruction of medical marijuana research, ignoring an 87-page recommendation from her own DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner, who ruled that such research was "in the public interest." The DEA and the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) have colluded to obstruct medical efficacy studies by prioritizing research on the supposed harmful effects of marijuana."
Why oh why are we still using flawed metrics like IQ tests to determine intelligence in any fashion?
Marijuana is not habit forming. Trust me, I do it every day so I would know if it was.
now, which is the cause for which?
uhh, I meant DAMN!
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
I remember a study showing that pot makes people stupid being used as an example of why correlation does not imply causation. The article said "but it could also be true that less intelligent people are more likely to chose to smoke".
Here is, perhaps, a more likely explanation: people who admit to participating in an illegal activity to someone claiming to be taking an anonymous survey are, on average, less intelligent than those who would lie about it.
Dusty
An ounce a week? Fucking bullshit.
Unless it was ditch weed at $100 an oz, then maybe I guess, if you don't give fuck one about getting busted and smoke EVERYWHERE.
At my highest/worst I was going through an ounce of kind a MONTH, and that was smoking prior to work, and then continuously after work. Just me, nobody else. And believe me, I was SMOKING.
An ounce a week is simply impossible. Not even my dope dealer smoked that much and he got the shit for free, basically.
They will lobotomize you again.
They just, like, stopped accepting society's standards of value and couldn't justify exerting themselves to eek out a higher score on some meaningless tests. Did the guys interpreting the results ever think to disprove whether the compound effect of caring less about competing to win the academic race over a series of years would be developing a different value structure than people who were over the same period more motivated or intent on getting higher grades school? Are the products of competitive academic systems biased towards expectations that they are the standard or somehow more noble than... Oh shit, I totally forgot what we were talking about. I hate it when that happens.
Pot, increasing general apathy and decreasing snacks since forever, bros. Now dangle your carrot a little closer so I can take a bite.
Wording like "The more people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ" is irresponsible because it insinuates a cause and effect relationship.
Maybe it's the other way: the dumber the people, the more dope they smoke.
Duh, what?
IQ, sure, yes.
How about Emotional intelligence? Sexual intelligence? Creative intelligence? Kinesthetic intelligence? Sensorial intelligence? Spiritual intelligence. ...
I suspect MJ has a positive impact on all of these. Would you rather be Bobby Fischer or Richard Feynman? The smartest guy in jail is ... still in jail. How about a balanced life instead?
Becoming the first Type A in your class to heart attack is no badge of honor. Leave that for another.
Light up, now.
Did they take into account ANYTHING else besides marijuana use? Maybe the utterly depressing state of the american educational system?
A fair price to pay.
Now, I didn't read the original paper, so perhaps AP got enough wrong (hardly unlikely) to lead me to the wrong conclusion. I believe that you can never be sure how to interpret a study's findings unless you read the original study itself. But the story as published by the mainstream news services seemed so counterintuitive -- and the burden of proof is edged a little higher here by the fact that the study was partly financed by US & UK national governments -- that I'd assign it at most minor probative value.
So unless I get the urge to seek out and study the original findings, I think the most reasonable response is to consider this to be one minor piece of evidence that will have credibility only if corroborated by other, independent, research. There's likely not much to worry about here.
And, of course, no mention is made of other factors, only whether or not marijuana was in use. Well, the same can be said of alcohol. Or caffeine. Or a host of other substances. I'm sure the "study" only shows a correlation, not causation. When they can prove that it's more harmful than any legal substance, I'll still say it's up to the individual to decide what to do with his/her body. And I'll agree to limits on use by minors when everyone agrees that abortion can't be done on a minor. It's about the sovereignty of the person over his or her own body. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Grar II
They didn't control for television, or other vegetative, non-engaging, non-activities...
obama must have been like the smartest man on earth before he smoked.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
How about just regular cigarette smoking making them kids dumber. That seem to work with most adults :-)
What doesn't affect us these day's.
Self-selecting, self-appointed, self-deluded.
Long-term pothead here, withdrawal symptoms consist of grumpiness, irritability, agitation. Goes away in a week, no big deal.
Being a dickhead is far worse, and evidently incurable, so STFU.
There's some good stuff out there that is pretty hard to smoke much over a half ounce per day, but I'm not such a heavy smoker these days.
y'all are just lightweights.