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Pot Smokers Might Not Turn Into Dopes After All
ananyo writes "Back in August last year, we discussed a study reportedly showing heavy marijuana use in teenagers had been linked to a decline in IQ in later life. Now, a new analysis suggests that the study may have been flawed. Using the same data, the researchers found that they could explain the IQ drop by properly accounting for socioeconomic factors — such as individuals from poorer backgrounds being more likely to smoke cannabis as well as having reduced access to schooling."
Bam! They do more of it, and it isn't!
Who designed this religion anyway?
I realized this when i met someone who had smoked for about 2 years. He was border line retarded. Then I met someone else who had been smoking since he was 14, and he was an engineer. Different strokes for different folks. Dont blame the drugs.
Wahhabis wankers, Shiites shits, and Sunnis loonies. Much worse than pot smokers
I forgot what I was going to post !
Randomly getting the first post yo. Thank you THC.
Wait, what?
Going on smoking the dope for about 15 years now. If anything, it assisted me with diving in to the world of UNIX with intense enthusiasm and concentration. I've worked in IT business solutions and web development this whole time and things progressively get better as long as you continue to work hard. Just like anything else, all it takes is being responsible. What you do after 5pm is none of my business as long as your work gets done on time and in a professional manner. If you spent all of your waking hours drunk on booze, high on dope, full on fast food, or anything else out of control, then you probably won't succeed very much at anything. Toke responsibly.
And here's a defence of the original paper by one of its authors: apparently when you account for said socioeconomic factors the effect is still there. The take of this anonymous coward, who has only read his own link, is that the original paper should have included this analysis, but it turns out that its results stand nevertheless.
Or their smoking has lead them to drop out of school, causing them to have poorer schooling backgrounds. Its hard to make a definitive statement proving anything that way. What you can say from this data is that doing drugs correlates with being poor and uneducated.
How about whether high IQ folks are more likely to smoke pot or dumb ones? That would also be an interesting study. Does pot smoking have enough of a stigma attached to it that people who are considered "smarter" are less likely to smoke it. Also, how does it compare with alcohol ? I did not read TFA btw!
IQ has been completely debunked as a measure of intelligence. Why is it being used as the yardstick in marijuana studies?
Why not just use phrenology to tell my why marijuana is bad?
Idiodic propaganda to derail the debate before it leaves the station.
So, they're saying that you don't become a dope by smoking pot, you just already happen to be a dope, and it's not the pot's fault you're a moron.
Makes sense, actually. Not really a shining endorsement of pot smoking as a past time, but it's more of an indicator of being a moron, not a cause.
Correlation does not equal causation? I'll be darned....
I partook of the herb in high school and first 3 yrs of college.
My first real job was at NASA as a rocket scientist. I wrote softare to fine rocket motors and liquid fuel rocket engines.
I was getting smarter with every inhale and those who never tried it were getting smaller and smaller minded.
You realized that there wasn't a statistically significant correlation based on a sample size of two?
What have you been smoking?
And most people will focus on the person in the above stories that confirm their bias.
Like pot? Then it'll make you an engineer!
Hate drugs? Then it makes you a retard!
My doctor likes to point out that many of these studies aren't randomized controled trials - RCT - because it's a bitch to do any study on "recreational" drugs in the US because of our Puritanical laws and this whole "War on Drugs" horseshit.
Of course, there aren't any studies of whether smoking pot causes the same instances of emphysema, cancer, and other diseases that can happen from smoking anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a study years ago (not RCT either) that showed that there may be a link with smoking pot and slowing tumor growth.
It hasn't been repeated as far as I know so the results haven't been verfied.
Anyway, there are plenty of folks out there in the internet peanut gallery that cling to that one study and came to the conclusion that pot stops cancer.
Oy!
You smoke pot so we're kicking you out of school
You'll lose the opportunity to be educated and socialize normally with a mainstream peer group
We'll use your now sub-standard IQ and abnormal social skills to defend the prohibition on pot
...but the researchers got high.
-- Bill Hicks
There is no way most of the mainstream press is going to cover this. The potentially flawed study reinforced too many stereotypes and opinions in step with the "war on drugs" which bankrolls increasingly powerful law enforcement.
....individuals from poorer backgrounds being more likely to smoke cannabis as well as having reduced access to schooling.
There you have your answer about cannabis and drugs in general.
I'm sure legions of potheads will jump in here to tell me how pot is harmless.
I can assert that isn't true from personal experience.
In my fraternity days, as a freshman I met and ended up being friends with a guy fairly similar to myself. Bright, introverted, we got along really well for at least 3-4 months. Then he discovered the joy of weed. From the first joint in his life, he quickly progressed to constant indulgence, and his room became a haze of bluish smoke.
Finally we went on a freshman bus trip and he brought along what I thought was a huge bag - roughly the size of a softball, maybe a little larger - and he smoked that gone in about 3-4 days.
He became a different person. Distracted, apathetic, unresponsive, glassy eyed. I can't say he became stupid, he 'discovered' apparently that if you study baked and then take the tests baked, you do just fine. I think he graduated with a 4.0 anyway.
But he was a wholly different, dislikeable person. I missed my friend.
Who knows, right? Maybe he was an addictive personality that would have similarly destroyed himself in alcohol or other drugs.
All I can tell is that the person I met and grew to like was not eventually the person he became in a very short while. And that was ENTIRELY due to weed. I watched it happen.
But go ahead, keep telling yourself that marijuana's harmless, it hasn't changed you at all.
-Styopa
"pot use reduces not only IQ but also wealth and access to schooling"
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
The original study was restated to middle class children, which arguably means it was corrected for socioeconomic factors (or that only middle class kids who smoke dope experience IQ loss).
What is implicit in the article is that the first study may not be as strong, or the effect might be more complex than initially indicated.
I used to spend a lot of time with a small group of friends in high-school, back in '88-'89, and for a couple of years after that. One of them was a guy who by all counts was a heavy pot smoker. I mean, we're talking a whole collection of elegant and fairly costly water bongs he kept locked up in a safe and the whole works.
I don't think I ever saw him when he wasn't obviously high.
He was also the soft-spoken type who didn't communicate much unless you directly asked him a question -- but he was still fun to be around. He always listened to interesting music, was willing to take our group around places in his vintage Mustang he liked to work on, and would occasionally just say or do something that cracked everyone up. Seemed to be pretty well read though, and had a decent sized book collection around his place -- though he didn't talk about it much.
Much later on, I ran into the guy again. I think most people I still knew who remembered him just wrote him off as a goofy stoner, and imagined he never did much with his life. But turns out he had a pretty good paying job as a C++ developer and had a lot of enlightening things to say on current events, politics, individual rights, and other such topics. I imagine he still communicate a lot more verbosely online than face to face. But he's clearly a really bright guy who didn't suffer from pot killing his brain and making him into a zombie, after all.
So they are not stupid because they smoke cannabis. They smoke cannabis because they are stupid. Got it!
"A friend with weed is a friend indeed"
"Dope will get you thru times of no money better then money will get you thru times of no dope."
both I learned from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brother comics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers
I'm really stoned right now and low or high IQ, this is the best I can do for this conversation.
Be seeing you...
Suddenly my title bar changed over to "Slashdot (15)"
What does the 15 mean? I looked everywhere but I only had one unread message (comment moderation) that I deleted.
That's all the counter-study is doing.
Well that would be easy enough to check. Just take kids from poor neighborhoods and without access to good education who did not smoke pot and see if their IQ declined later in life. If the pot isn't a factor, then the IQ should drop just the same as in the people who smoked pot. Or, if the pot is a factor, then do the same study, but with rich kids who had access to a good education. If the pot is the factor, then their IQ should have dropped, too.
One benefit to the recent legalizations in the US is that it should be much easier to find test subjects and actually study the effects of marijuana. It would be nice to actually have some scientific evidence about the risks instead of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I mean, he used it (very documented) and enjoyed it, and he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected, so, when will he push for something that I'd guess a majority of his supporters and followers would support?
Mr. Obama, are you listening?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
For *decades*, we've been seeing Studies That Show The Dangers Of Weed (tm). And within the year, sometimes within the month, they're withdrawn, or debunked, or shown to be massively flawed.
Not *ONE* has ever overturned the conclusions of the LaGuardia study of 1941 (completed? '44) http colon //www.drugtext.org/Table/LaGuardia-Committee-Report/
The truth is that the prohibition was created thanks to Hearst's purchase of four very large wood pulp paper mills, and the last head of Prohibition, Anslinger, who wanted his job back, and it's been a useful tool to squash folks who might not agree with you in the ballot box.
And the moralists. (The definition, by a friend years back, is that moralists are TERRIFIED by the thought that Someone, Out There, might be having... FUN!)
mark
I think it depends on the person's brain chemistry AND what they do with their brain when stoned. I can agree with most of the viewpoints on here, both from personal experience and watching other people. Which is to say I don't think it's cut and dry, whether it's harmful or not. I think it also might depend on how well you eat--like it may deplete some nutrients faster in comparison, so if you don't stay on top of that, you can get burnt out. But this is kind of the same thing with any drug, especially alcohol. Also, the wisest guys I've ever met were stoners. And we're talking old buddhist monks without egos that pretty much fit my definition of enlightenment at the time (undefined now). I always hold them up as examples for how you're not doomed if you smoke. But I do worry about it a fair amount and thus go through stretches of smoking and stretches of not. Also, one thing they would talk about is the extra ego it gives you--which for them was just something else to look at and not get attached to :), but for normal people, it's ego-inflating (which might account for some of the negative effects people see).
But it's really great for thinking and creativity. I think it's a very useful tool for artists and anyone who needs to think abstractly (like, say, theoretical physicists or computer programmers coming up with novel algorithms).
Chevy Chase: A reminder to those of our viewers who missed our story last week on the influx of so-called Killer Dope in urban areas around the country. "Weekend Update" has been analyzing the samples of marijuana sent to us anonymously all week. We are pleased to report that, so far, the only significant finding has been that if you force a baby squirrel to smoke seven-hundred cannabis joints a day, he will become disoriented, seems to take the laws of self-preservation less seriously, tending to play with his nuts rather than store them.
Once again, if you should come into contact with ANY suspicious cannabis, and wish it be analyzed by "Weekend Update"'s team of research analysts, simply send a small sample immediately to: "Chevy Chase, 857 West 81 Street, New York City".
This hasn't, and it won't.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
10 years of medical marijuana hasn't produced any noticeable changes. I was always absent minded. More like focused to the exclusion of everything else. Now I'm stoned and communicating with all life everywhere in the universe at the same time. No extra charge for long distance. Being on disability and having no schedule imposed by work makes appointments the hardest thing to keep. I made it to the dentist this morning on time! That's once in a row, a record! The prescription drugs for disease with serious side effects that create the need for medical marijuana will kill me far sooner than marijuana use will.
Snoop Dogg! (actually he's really smart!)
Snoop Dogg! (really smart dude actually, great business sense)
I stopped enjoying being stoned in my early 20s. At some point it started to crank my anxiety up from its usual manageable level to "OMG SOMEONE PLEASE CUT MY HEAD OFF AND THROW IT OUT A WINDOW."
That being said, I think it's great stuff and should be completely unregulated...as in, no laws, no tax, no nothing. The US really stepped in shit when we bought the whole "Devil Weed" myth.
to me a dope is someone without any common sense, I wonder how many other "stoners" would agree.
Pot use does decrease intelligence. This is why the moderators and submitters keep putting their druggy stories on a *technology* website. Pot is not technology, and no study of how it affects your brain is technology, so get that shit off of here, you terribly pathetic losers.
In my rounds of bein a pothead. I've run into alot of people who are amazingly stupid.
And the worst are those who have been smoking for 30+ years.
I'm all for legalization. but lets not pretend it has no long term costs to people.
It turns your memory to swiss cheese. It fills your lungs with grey goo even without using a burning method of smoking.
And it DOES make you stupid, lazy and more accepting of how things are instead of working to improve things to how they could be.
Plus it seems to make antibiotics not work as well either.
But hey. that's just my experience. and why i finally quit doin it. Your mileage may vary.
did you ever think that all comments are like in a big circle, man? whoa .. every comment is first, middle and last... !
1. THC a mind altering drug.
2. There is no logical reason to get high.
3. It's extremely habit-forming.
4. It is very expensive.
5. It causes altered perceptions, concentration problems, and short term memory loss.
Conclusion: It should not be used by children.
This should not be hard.
How's this for a correlation and causation? If the kids have a low socio-economic status, it could be because their parents are on drugs too.
Drugs ruin people's lives, not enhance them. Wake up people.
Pot and Drugs have different effects in every individual, there is no evidence that everyone will have the same effect. Some are allergic, some immune and others get the effect intended. While the ones that get the effect intended will have a change towards immune or allergic depending on the consumption.
The funny thing about marijuana is that in some places it is use in traditional medicine but never smoke. In Peru natives place a leaf of marijuana in their tongues when they are going to ascend to the mountains. I have no idea why they do this or what use of the leaf is apply for. While in Real de Catorce of the state of San Luis Potosi in Mexico Marijuana is place in rubbing alcohol bottles for a stronger effect and the use of marijuana is so much different then just smoking.
10 years of medical marijuana hasn't produced any noticeable changes.
Yes it has, for many people. For example, many chronic pain sufferers have been able to live more normal lives because they haven't been as debilitated or addicted to opioids, some cancer patients have lived longer because their weed helped them tolerate the chemo treatments better, allowing them to complete regimens that many can not, folks who suffer sever anxiety and panic attacks can get out and live their lives without being overwhelmed by fear, people with glaucoma have maintained their sight without risky surgeries, and at least one person with epilepsy (who I personally know) no longer suffers from seizures as long as she "medicates" at least every 2-3 days.
It is very clear that there have been noticeable changes since medical marijuana became available in the U.S., and they have been overwhelmingly positive. Crime rates in medi-pot areas have NOT increased, cases of addiction to illegal drugs have not gotten out of control (busting the guess that weed is a "gateway" drug), there hasn't been a rise in cardio-pulmonary diseases among non-tobacco smokers, and courts in states like Colorado have not been clogged with minor, non-violent marijuana offenders.
Of course I do not advocate driving under the influence, use among minors, or puffing away all day like a stereotypical Rastafarian or flash in the pan, one hit wonder rapper, but informed use in moderation or under a physician's supervision should be possible in every state. I'd like to see it reach a level of acceptance where employers are not permitted to dictate how you live your life or choose to medicate yourself when you are not at work. If they do not specifically suspect that you are high at work, and have no evidence that you are, positive tests for THC should not warrant dismissal or exclusion from employment. But then I believe strongly in the American concepts of privacy and freedom, so I am certainly a bit biased.
And further, wait.... what?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Only dopes smoke dope.
It's quite true that correlation does not imply causation, but how does it really matter whether or not pot smoking causes stupidity, or stupidity causes pot smoking? Smoking pot is still a stupid thing to do, and that remains well established. The really stupid part is that people who have willingly drugged themselves into oblivion think they have a right to live as stoned and high as they please on public assistance because they are unable to work as a pilot, stockbroker, heavy equipment operator, truck driver, lawyer, physician, surgeon or any other position that requires mental or physical coordination and judgment on the job.
And we wonder why the 47% are on welfare, with all those stupid pieces of metal sticking out of mutilated gauged-out body parts, ugly tattoos all over their skin, and brains damaged not just from pot, but meth, crack, heroin, and hard liquor. Never mind the USA is still by far the easiest country to work yourself out of "low socioeconomic status"---these people just don't want to because they enjoy that way of life.
I've smoked POUNDS of pot. I'm talking about over an ounce a week, every week, for nearly 10 years.
That's 1/16 * 10 * 52.
Or 1/8 * 5 * 52
Or 1/4 * 5 * 26
Or 1/2 * 5 * 13
Which is, the same as 65 / 2. Which by my calculations is 32.5.
Look ma, I've smoked over THIRTY POUNDS of weed and I can still calculated how much I've smoked without a calculator.
I can also write efficient algorithms, and prove using economic models that minimum wage increases reduce the buying power of your savings by driving up the price of the many goods that make up the consumer price index WITHOUT causing proportional interest to be paid on your savings (thus causing inflation). Obviously, the non-pot smoking economists that work for your government aren't capable of such feats, since they legislate minimum wage increases without legislating maximum levels of compensation and profit.
Perhaps pot is illegal because it makes you SMARTER (which is dangerous for corrupt governments)! I can understands economics and programming considerably better than I did at 18, before I started smoking. As medical professionals say, correlation is causation, and my rapid increase of intellect correlated with my starting to smoke pot.
THIRTY TWO POUNDS!!!!
That is all.
Pot is smoked by people across the entire social spectrum. If you asked an intelligent, reflective pot smoker (not necessarily an oxymoron), they could probably have suggested this as an explanation. Of course they are probably also intelligent enough to hide their pot use so if you're not already friends with one, good luck finding one.
The War On (Otherwise Law-abiding Citizens Who Use) Drugs disproportionately affects people of lower socioeconomic status. Innumerable studies confirm this; use a search engine and educate yourself. I'm not surprised, however, that the opinion of popular culture has been reduced to "pot makes you poor/stupid/dangerous/(insert inane public fear here)". After all, what is the media's take?
Most potheads I know have six figure incomes, and coach their kids teams on the weekend. I even know a few active in local government. The wrecks I know all drink way too much....
They wasted all their money buying pot, imagine that. Still the same cause and effect chronologically. I really don't think that social and economic factors affect how quickly and effectively my brain can process information. Constantly messing with my nervous system with drugs, well that just might do it.
no offence they aint the bright side of life .....but they are ok people still none the less and almost all of them are at min wage.
Marijuana definitely has some pain killing properties, but it doesn't really work for all pain, just like ibuprofen only works for certain pains.
When I had a bad tooth infection and had to wait a week to get into a dentist, the pain killers they prescribed weren't doing anything for me. But a few tokes off my pipe and the pain went away, although the swelling was still there and felt weird.
Worked great for migraines I used to get when on an experimental drug for a skin condition I had when I was younger as well. Cleared up a migraine within a couple minutes.
Muscle pains however I never had marijuana do much for. Makes them more tolerable, but it's still every bit as painful. it did however clear up cramping that occurred as a result of muscle pain, wonder if that cramping is just an issue of the mind overriding the body to avoid further pain.
there was this one toker who graduated from this ivy league school, but instead of taking on big corporate job like his classmates just went into community organizer work on the bad side of Chicago. then he became a senator then president. beware the weed, kids...
... They spent the rest of their lives down in San Bernardino ... 'Hay Bobby ... I'm sorry you got a head like a Potato ... I really am.'
XD
DUH
Steve Jobs
Bill Gates
Sir Richard Branson
These guys all smoked dope. Didn't Steve Jobs say in an interview that taking LSD and tripping was the most important experience in his life?
Isn't it always a question of what came first - the low IQ potential or the pot smoking? - Did they start smoking because they were borderline stupid or did they become stupid from smoking?
About a decade ago we had a huge discussion about "painter's syndrome" where professional painters showed symptoms very similar to chronic alcohol abusers. The painters claimed it was the solvent from the paints but studies showed that the painters did consume more alcohol than comparable groups, although not quite as much as alcohol abusers. The painters then claimed that the fumes made them drink, while their employers noted that a lot of painters ignored rules about protection against the fumes, often as a result of being more or less drunk. It was never really resolved as the paints in the meantime became water-based thus reducing the fumes. As far as I know the current generation of painters still drink more than average but their symptoms has all but disappeared.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Most people will probably know a stoner, someone who isn't all there. Absentminded, procrastinating loser. But I have known a stoner who never did pot. The guy was just an absentminded loser. Nice enough but weird and logic was never his strongest point and he tended to believe whatever he was told.
So it is back to the old debate, what comes first, the chicken or the egg. Do stoners do pot or does pot create stoners?
The research linked in this case is nice and useless as usual. Lesser access to education. So, how do you explain stoners then in countries were education is free and accessible by all?
One simple, but highly unacceptable answer is this: There are only 24 hours in the day, 8 are spend asleep, 4 spend on body necessities like eating, washing, crapping, leaving 12 hours to do something. Anything.
Who is more likely to end up a stoner, the kid who spend his free time studying OR the kid who spend his free time smoking. No, don't give me that crap about drugs expanding your mind, if that worked you could have long since proofed it clinically, going "ooh, my hands" is NOT mind expanding, it is a sign your brain has fallen out. Scoop it up before the cat gets it.
It is the same reason sluts don't do well in school. It is a fact that girls outperform boys in every field, right up to the point girls get intrested in boys and they start falling behind. The girl who studies after school will do better in school, then the girl who is banging the sports team but the girl that does the teacher beats them both.
Think about it: Who is the better coder, the nerd who writes on slashdot in his free time OR the guy who spends his free time coding? (Take the recent Doom 3 code is beautiful article. The world has those who admire code and those who write it. Guess who makes the most money?)
Take this one: Most famous people, barely watch TV. It makes sense, you don't get famous for being a couch potatoe. People who got famous for their achievements, had to first achieve something and you don't achieve anything hanging in front of the idiot tube. (Take programs like QI and HIGNFY, the lead intellectuals on those shows are often barely coherent on popular media often getting no closer in 2013 then being aware that Star Wars movie thingy is getting pretty big. They know the births and deaths of countless dead people but can't name the 4th spice girl... and yes, it does say something about me that my current media events are decades old)
Does the idiot tube make you stupid OR do stupid people have nothing better to do then watch the idiot tube?
When you read of a self-made man like Warren Buffet, you got to realize that he didn't post on slashdot, watch TV, follow his favorite soccer team, spend his first fortune on a PARTY!. He worked, every day, every hour and STILL does it and lives in a rather ordinary house, driving a decent but not super flashy car and basically is not you, the loser.
Now I am not going into a debate about whose life is better spend because ultimately that is all about personal taste BUT I am going to say that how you end up in life is in large part due to yourself and NOT your race/culture/parents but due to your own choices. And that you didn't see a choice... well... that is a large part of it. The stoner who bitches about people hating stoners and not being able to get a job isn't jobless because he does drugs, he is jobless because he is the type of person who instead of making an effort, does drugs instead.
That is why some people ARE successful despite doing the same drugs. That is NOT proof drugs have no harmful effect, it is proofs that being successful is mostly about drive and ambition. Doing weed doesn't make you a winner or a loser, the reason you DID weed makes you a winner or a loser.
And to be honest, the world has more room for losers then winners. Only one pothead can be president. But there is infinite space on the couch.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Our society is hypocritical. It needs to decide once and for all, whether citizens have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness
You contradict yourself. "Society" is nothing but a collection of individuals. "It" cannot "decide" anything. Only human beings can make decisions, and only individuals are human beings.
Therefore, when you claim that "society" (a collection of individuals) will decide whether individuals have rights, what you really mean is that some individuals will decide whether other individuals will have rights. And that -- if you can admit to yourself -- neatly voids the entire premise.
Pot doesn't make people stupid, people make people stupid. Is there a pot equivalent of an AK47?
Sooo when this story first appeared and I pointed out bogus weed studies are a dime a dozen, especially from any nation anywhere near Scandinavia, and everyone scoffed at me, I gotta wonder if anyone is now willing to concede this sorta thing goes on all the time AND is a waste of Slashdot space?
The only significant study on weed I've seen in a looong time is one from the NIH. It's significant because no one the the US has done any inquiry into medical uses of weed since the 60s or so. The study had a small paragraph suggesting that weed can stifle cancer growth in cells. Wish I had a link but it was a couple of years ago.
The majority of pot users are from poor and un affluent neighborhoods, they don't get an education so they tend to be more redneck than anything else