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Twins Study Finds No Evidence That Marijuana Lowers IQ In Teens (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Roughly half of Americans use marijuana at some point in their lives, and many start as teenagers. Although some studies suggest the drug could harm the maturing adolescent brain, the true risk is controversial. Now, in the first study of its kind (abstract), scientists have analyzed long-term marijuana use in teens, comparing IQ changes in twin siblings who either used or abstained from marijuana for 10 years. After taking environmental factors into account, the scientists found no measurable link between marijuana use and lower IQ.
You don't have much experience thinking about medical issues, I take it?
There's a difference between IQ and giving a damn. How did they measure motivation, or paranoia, or the other things that anyone who's ever been around dedicated long-term stoners can plainly observe without needing any sort of formal study?
And, did this ten-year study make use of the contemporary high-test dope, or the sort of stuff that was more commonly used ten years ago?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Science cares about reality.
Your fiction of "what if" and fear of the unknown is how we ended up with prohibition in the first place. This attitude that "if it feels good it must be bad for you" is puritan, religious non-sense.
Marijuana is common place is society, and scientifically it has been shown to be rather benign.
That isn't how twin studies usually work. In this case, one twin decided to smoke marijuana, while the other did not. They weren't assigned roles in an experiment by researchers. Their parents either didn't have a problem with the drug, or they weren't involved in the decision.
Not dead. but 94 and pretty much out of the spot-light so an easy enough mistake to make.
Teen-agers should not be smoking cannabis. Legalize and regulate it like alcohol... 21+
If the kids are 16+ then the parents' opinion isn't too important, is it?
And the reason for doing it? Well, in the US, billions upon billions of dollars has been spent on detecting, prosecuting and jailing the users, growers and importers of this more or less (for the vast majority of users) harmless plant. And if drugs policy is to be based on facts then this sort of fact is just one more reason to give it up already and let adults decide what plants they'd like to benefit from.
It was likely survey based. I.e. they found identical twins and asked them if one used and one didn't, and if so, they evaluated them afterwards.
Anyways I'm kind of disappointed that they only looked at IQ, as to me it's a meaningless figure whose only purpose is for "I am more smug than thou art" clubs like Mensa. I'm more curious about other functional measurements both physiologically and sociologically (i.e. how did they vary in terms of career success.) There's some evidence that marijuana can improve both, as well as evidence that it can harm both.
... my kid was always stupid, then? Well, shit. :(
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There are those with legitimate needs as well- MS, palsy, seizures, etc Previous study I read pointed to a correlated drop in IQ was 4 points (average) for low habitual use and 8 points (average) for high habitual use. Sorry I don't have the link immediately available, otherwise I'd I look up the size of that study as well.
You didn't read TFA. The study is of teenage twins who previously had/hadn't smoked marijuana (ie they were given questionaires, and twins were then selected for IQ testing if one had smoked and the other hadn't) not of twins who signed up to take part in a controlled experiment.
Parents either had nothing to do with it, or simply failed to prevent one of their twins taking the drug.
The study is probably, to a certain extent, flawed because of that methodology, but without commiting ethics violations of the type you describe, there's probably no way to get a more accurate result.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
From the abstract:
Because of the infeasibility of studying this phenomenon experimentally, it is unclear whether the association can be causally attributed to marijuana use itself or is instead the result of confounding factors. We approach this issue quasiexperimentally using longitudinal samples of adolescent twins.
Wonder if there are any twin studies that detail the life outcomes of stoner/non-stoner twins? That would be more useful I think.
We used a quasiexperimental approach to adjust for participants’ family background characteristics and genetic propensities, helping us to assess the causal nature of any potential associations. Standardized measures of intelligence were administered at ages 9–12 y, before marijuana involvement, and again at ages 17–20 y. Marijuana use was self-reported at the time of each cognitive assessment as well as during the intervening period. (no drug test to confirm usage or non-usage?) Marijuana users had lower test scores relative to nonusers and showed a significant decline in crystallized intelligence between preadolescence and late adolescence.
The people in Flint, Michigan are about to gain a first hand appreciation of what lead does to cognitive abilities.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
You are correct
From the study
Standardized measures of intelligence were administered at ages 9–12 y, before marijuana involvement, and again at ages 17–20 y. Marijuana use was self-reported at the time of each cognitive assessment as well as during the intervening period. Marijuana users had lower test scores relative to nonusers and showed a significant decline in crystallized intelligence between preadolescence and late adolescence. However, there was no evidence of a dose–response relationship between frequency of use and intelligence quotient (IQ) change.
Maybe they are thinking about everyone elses kids. Maybe their kids have medical issues. Despite propaganda to the contrary there are actually many medical conditions whole marijuana successfully treats that isolated compounds within the plant do not successfully treat. Our current system of evaluating medicines does not really work well for finding treatments that depend on multiple substances which may have minimal or no pharmacological effect in isolation but become pharmacologically active in combination with one or more other substances.
There are hundreds of cannabinoids in whole cannabis and the endocannabinoid system responds to them in the human body. The potential interactions that lead to these benefits will not be easily chased down in our lifetimes especially with government refusal to cooperate with studies which don't assume negative effects. Since it's fair to say the vast majority of adults walking around today smoked marijuana at some point as kids the risk is pretty minimal and outweighed by any medical benefit.
Everyone opposed will be quick to point out any supposed or potential known side effects of Cannabis use like potential risks for people with severe heart conditions, schizophrenics, or the relatively low addition potential. What they won't do is give those side effects perspective and point out they pale in comparison with the side effects of Tylenol, Aspirin, Ibuprofen, and even many substances on the herbal supplement isle of the drug store.
It doesn't really matter now that we know that letting your kid participate in marijuana studies is harmless.
Seriously dude? Because teens inevitably will use it even if it's illegal for them to use.....rather like they're already doing.
-Zapp Brannigan
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
There seems to be an implication here that twins have identical IQs. I don't think that is valid and it strike me as more likely that the twin with the lower IQ is the one who elects to abstain from wacky weed and the twin with the higher IQ is burning out brain cells until they get down to their sibling's level.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The study only gives routine intelligence tests and asks the kids to fill out a confidential survey about drug use. It has no bearing on whether the kids decided to use drugs or not, and nobody gave the kids drugs or permission to use drugs.
Since the kids weren't tested, you have a valid point that is unfortunately unrelated to the article and topic in question.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Except that part of the study was a meta study LOOKING AT OTHER STUDIES THAT HAD ALREADY SHOW IT TO BE BENIGN.
But I'm guessing you couldn't be arsed to read what the actual study was about.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If it was settled and indisputable, there would have been no need for the test.
You seem to be very confused about how science works.
Required reading for internet skeptics
And what if the psychoactive part helps with the anti-seizure part?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"Marijuana users had lower test scores relative to nonusers and showed a significant decline in crystallized intelligence between preadolescence and late adolescence..."
But one that will no doubt get handpicked and reworded and passed on to the masses by the many that like to indulge, unfortunately.
They look basically the same. It turns out that marijuana doesn't turn your brain into a fried egg. Who knew?
"Roughly half of Americans use marijuana at some point in their lives, and many start as teenagers. Although some studies suggest the drug could harm the maturing adolescent brain, the true risk is controversial."
Using 'Americans' as an example that marijuana does not effect maturing adolescent brains is really pushing it.
This just in: Having a twin provides a natural immunity to the IQ-reducing properties of marijuana.
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." - Mark Twain
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The age of majority in the USA is 18. Yes, it is. I don't know where you got your 16 from.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And if drugs policy is to be based on facts then this sort of fact is just one more reason to give it up already and let adults decide what plants they'd like to benefit from.
Indeed. There is a real problem when the biggest detriment that people can identify for using an illegal drug is the very fact that it's illlegal. When the primary concern isn't that the drug will kill you, put you in the hospital, give you organ damage, make you crazy, or make you dependent upon it, but is instead that you'll be fined or tossed into jail, something has gone horribly wrong.
When you have people taking 'bath salts' instead of cocaine, which has a much higher chance of, I don't know, chewing somebody's face off, because the latter is illegal as well as the former, but the 'bath salts' are more accessable for those that would use drugs, we have a problem.
I don't read AC A human right
According to the abstract, weed use was self-reported. They didn't administer regular drug tests to verify whether one or both a twin pair was using weed, or the frequency. That's pretty weak methodology despite the longevity of the study.
The "safety" argument relative to drug legalization is huge red herring designed to drag legalization proponents down the path of needing to claim that marijuana is safer than tap water, or worse, into wild and unproven claims of its medical benefits.
The results of marijuana's relative safety have been in for years -- you can't really overdose on it and decades of mass use have failed to show any significant signs of problems in the general population. This is more than we can say about alcohol, acetaminophen, anti-depressants and whole long laundry list of substances that are legal and easy to get.
The REAL argument is that the public policy of marijuana criminalization has been an abject failure. We've spent trillions of dollars on prohibition on it and all we have to show for it is a complete dismantling of our constitutional rights, corruption of a law enforcement system that has produced an epidemic of civil rights abuses quite often enabled by the elusive pursuit of marijuana users (you didn't think they wanted to stop you for a traffic offense, did you?), an erosion in public respect for laws, almost certainly a disregard for the graver risks posed by other illegal drugs, and a criminal justice system that has ruined thousands of lives and built massive criminal enterprises
What we don't have to show for it is any reduction in marijuana use or availability. As a matter of public policy it has failed in its goals and produced a plague of horrific side effects.
This is the argument that needs to be made. The safety issue is a total and complete distraction.
You are kidding, right?
Probably because regardless of the law, by 16 most kids will do what they like regardless of their parents opinion. It's not like people magically become self-guiding adults at 18.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Age of consent is sometimes 16 in the US. That's probably more relevant to situations where things are put in your body.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Maybe because teens about and above that age are fairly independent and good about keeping things from their parents?
Only I can judge you.
Dude, you go take the test. I'm staying home and getting baked.
Have gnu, will travel.
IQ testing is not exactly the definitive method to benchmark ability or brain-power, especially if individuals don't want to participate.
It's not exactly a stretch to consider that those who smoke marijuana despite being told that they're not supposed to might also not commit themselves to tests designed to show their IQ.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It is generally prudent when putting forth nonsensical "arguments" to post AC, kudos for your cowardice/prudence!
Only I can judge you.
High-CBD, low-THC strains have already been hugely successful on the anti-seizure front. There may well be ailment that requires the THC for efficacy, but I haven't heard of one, yet.
Yes, it's weak methodology, but better than nothing. And if there was an impact from marijuana use, you'd expect there to be some indication, even though the methodology would make it difficult to quantify how extensive it is. The fact that they found no significant variance in scores indicates that's because there is no effect....or the vast majority of the 1588 participants lied about their drug-use, for no reason.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
lol.
Of course tasks like this while high are going to be challenging. Tests are not administered while under the influence. Were you the spliff smoking kid? It sounds like something hilarious to have seen, I bet you and your buddies laughed about it for days.
Only I can judge you.
Hmm, so similar IQ but lower crystallized intelligence, does that imply that they had higher fluid intelligence? Because somehow, despite their lower crystallized intelligence, they ended up at a similar IQ.
Only I can judge you.
You are talking about something that has an inconsistent deliver method, is difficult to measure, is only used to treat symptoms, when there are more easily measured/delivered alternatives. Although for recreation it can grow in fairly diverse conditions, would be hard to control and tax, would probably end up getting mixed with other more dangerous things like it already is, and would be problematic testing to see if someone is currently under the influence when they operate heavy machinery and cause an accident.
I know that pot and tobacco don't really compare in many important ways, but from a scientific standpoint tobacco use is vastly easier to study. I point this out because it is actually difficult to quantify how much pot - or more critically in general, THC - a user really takes in over a unit of time. By comparison if someone says they smoke a pack of cigarettes a day we have really a pretty good idea how much nicotine, tar, etc is being taken in.
It's nice to see a more statistically rigorous study, but the difference in amount of pot usage that people do is very significant, as is the quantity of THC per gram of pot.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Actually it does. Nobody is going to seriously suggest that thermodynamics is in danger of being overturned (for large systems at least). Hint: AGW relies on very easily tested pieces of thermodynamics and atmospheric science (properties of CO2 and radiative physics). You can prove it yourself in your basement.
Cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) are different thngs. THC is psychoactive, CBD is not.
I think the big problem here is reliance on any test intended to show off levels of intelligence. Many of the cheaper, simpler to administer tests vary wildly in both consistency and accuracy.
Most US schools rely on a specific test to determine gifted/intelligence level. Its cheap and easy to do and doesn't take long. Its primary problem is that in the case of very gifted kids, the test results reverse themselves and may even indicate that a very introverted, very intelligent kid is well below average in intelligence. Then you give the same kid that same test a month later when they're focused and interested in the test and you get a completely different result.
So if you want to show in a study that average scores are lower, use the cheap test. If you want to show higher average scores, use the expensive long tests that capture all of the kids with IQ's over 125 instead of showing them at 80-90.
As far as the original story, I was a regular 'user' in my 20's and dabbled with it infrequently for 30 years. I don't think it reduced my intelligence but it sure does cut into motivation and aggression. One interesting metric I've seen was getting my social security statement a few years ago which showed my annual income since I was a teen. It goes up smoothly and sharply until about the time I started smoking pot. Then it flies level for about five years until I gave it up at which point the income numbers resume the same sharp upward line.
It'd seem to me that the last thing a teenager needs is less motivation and less interest in doing things.
"or worse, into wild and unproven claims of its medical benefits"
Tell it to any of the 7 kids who had between 7-36 seizures a day consistently which dropped to 0-4 a year from the first moment of treatment with CBD heavy extracts I provided in NM. Claims aren't wild and unproven, there is quite a bit of research coming out of California and other states. Enough research that many state legislatures have found it compelling enough to legalize the medicinal use.
We have an entire body subsystem that responds to compounds that naturally occur in only one plant in nature and synthesize many cannabinoids naturally in our own bodies. It would actually be highly improbable that the plant had no medicinal benefits.
Obviously, I do agree about the safety of the plant though. It should be completely unregulated under the FDA's own rules. Those rules exempt garlic pills and should exempt marijuana. Something causing euphoria is not a valid reason for regulation or outlawing it.
Should doctors prescribe it? It shouldn't require a prescription but last I checked doctors are free to recommend herbal remedies and foods off the shelf if they like. There are nuts who claim herbal remedies cure everything under the sun and there are also nuts who claim herbal remedies do absolutely nothing.... never mind that most prescription drugs came to exist as the result of isolating the compound in an herbal remedy that was believed to be behind it's effects. Doctors are not scientists, they do not have to wait for the science to come in before they start using something that is clearing helping people. If they did they still wouldn't be allowed to recommend asprin.
The problem is the "self-reporting" aspect of the study. Without administering regular drug tests to verify weed usage (or non-usage), the I don't see how the researchers could draw any meaningful conclusions. "Quasiexperimentally" is the word they used to describe their methodology. Yeah, right.
You posted an comment so vague it is meaningless. You did not provide anything agreeing with or refuting what was written.
There's nothing to agree with or refute. If you take even a cursory look at the story, you will see that this was not the kind of study that the GP assumed it was.
Teenagers were not subjected to drug use for this study. Adults who had used marijuana as teens were studied.
The first hint was right there in the summary:
If we're studying the effects of marijuana use on teens, and ten fucking years have gone by, then what exactly is the probability that these subjects are still teens at the time of the study?
Go ahead, get out your calculator and I'll wait here for your answer.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You are perhaps confusing Cannabidiol (CBD) with cannabinoid of which THC and CBD are but two examples. There are nearly a hundred cannabinoids, and the human body contains an endocannabinoid system that uses many of them.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
According to the law, they do.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unlike cocaine where you just chew your own face off.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's a sad comment on our society where we are so worried that there might be some natural substance that makes people feel good that before an effective drug can be approved the feel-good properties have to be removed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Except in regards to alcohol. Not that it's enforcible anyway.
Everyone who didn't believe the bullshit they spewed.
If anything, that scaremongering campaign was detrimental to the whole drug prevention. Because kids ain't as dumb as these people. Or at the very least as dumb as these people think. The idea was "we scare the kids straight". And that backfired badly. Because kids tried weed, noticed that hey, it ain't killing me. And in turn came to the correct realization:
They're bullshitting me.
Of course this led to them ignoring the warning. And doing the same that the idiots did: Lumping all the drugs together.
And today we have problems with really damaging drugs, drugs that cause serious addiction and serious impairment, drugs that are actually destructive to our kids. Because we decided that crack and weed are all eeeeeevil and you must not tough them!
Fuck those scaremongers. Instead of teaching our kids about what's what, they were fed lies. And they saw through it. Why did you expect them to listen to you when you tell blatant lies?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's the same society that flipped it's shit when someone invented a vaccine against a virus that causes cancer, for much the same reasons.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Gambling used to be illegal almost everywhere in the US. Gambling was addictive, it ruined families, it caused all manner of social ills.Then governments figured out how much money there was to be made from lotteries and casinos, and now gambling is legal and casinos and lotteries are everywhere.
I think the very same thing is going to happen with cannabis. Colorado made about $125 million in tax revenue on weed last year. There are going to be a whole lot of other state governments that see that and start doing whatever it takes to get their hands on that revenue.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Rigorously testing a Sched 1 drug, which no matter your opinion on the stuffs efficacy should NEVER have been put in that classification, is both expensive and time consuming. Combine that with the fact that marijuana is common as dirt and anyone can grow it and there is VERY little financial incentive to perform such tests.
I had assumed that was "pot doesn't make you stupid, but stupid people are more likely to smoke pot", but maybe I misunderstand.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> For *every* other drug out there, in the US, we have this thing called "USDA clinical trials" where the drug is rigorously tested
And we did that for alcohol, right?
Oh wait, we didn't.
Gee, what's the LD50 for cannabis again?
Precisely. I.Q. Isn't a measure of performance, perfirmance is actually based on integrated learning while I.Q. can remain static based strictly on previous knowledge. Apparently marijuana use DOES affect the more important process of *learning*. Pot isn't the bogeyman it's made out to be, but calling it 'benign' is flat out naive.
I'm beginning to think the pot lobby is in cahoots with the tobacco lobbies. It is in the name of profit, and it is disgusting.
Good grief this melodrama was appropriate before you could just move to Colorado. Denver Tech Center needs YOU!
The age of majority in the USA is 18. Yes, it is. I don't know where you got your 16 from.
The subjects of the test had already been smoking pot for at least 10 years. So they are likely in their mid to late 20s. They are full adults, and can make their own decisions about what studies to participate in.
What we're discovering is that everything they said about it is a lie. It was started by Richard Nixon, to use as a tool against the evil jazz musicians. It was perpetuated by entrenched interests like the for-profit prison system that is designed to maximize recidivism and can force its captive labor population to work for 75 cents a day. It is by far the biggest crime committed against the American people, with a financial impact in the trillions. And it is the perfect crime -- no one responsible for it or who profited from it will ever admit they were wrong, much less be held accountable for their actions.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So you want the arbitrary metrics they used to be a different kind of arbitrary?
That is not what he said. He said they should report things like income in addition to IQ. My dope head friends don't really seem to be particularly stupid, but they sure seem to be apathetic and lacking in ambition. So it would be interesting if that was measured and quantified along with IQ.
No no no, some Americans spawn as teenagers, the rest are born as babies.
If we're studying the effects of marijuana use on teens, and ten fucking years have gone by, then what exactly is the probability that these subjects are still teens at the time of the study?
Go ahead, get out your calculator and I'll wait here for your answer.
Sorry dude, but we're sitting around getting baked, and somone stole the fucking Doritos! Not time dude, no time, no....
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Hardly; cokeheads will just argue you to death... and in an altogether humorless fashion at that.
Question: Research candidate using Cannabis sees drop in IQ and motivation. Is the cannabis use the cause?
Define "stoners". Most likely, it revolves around a whole lifestyle of consumption. You were also working around a bunch of THC consumers who did not call out such attention.
The REAL argument is that the public policy of marijuana criminalization has been an abject failure.
Maybe if we repeat that enough, it'll actually become true. The reality, however, is that the Drug War has been achieving exactly what it was intended to achieve; most of us are just too stupid to realize it.
That means that there is a clear bias. The teen who is smart enough to figure out that they have been sold a load of hyperbole and smoke a bowl is clearly smarter than the one who, proudly no doubt, abstains from consumption.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yeah no one's experimenting on twins. Nobody stocked up experimental and control groups with bright-eyed 12-year-olds and told mom and dad to keep Tommy comfortably numb for the next decade while Timmy stays on the straight and narrow.
Nothing posted to
All the study did was administer standard IQ tests and ask the teens about pot use confidentially.
It's not like they were handing out joints.
There is no way to read that sentence and interpret it as stating or implying that people are skipping their teenage years
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I firmly believe that a great number of people get some kind of relief from what ails them from marijuana.
That being said, there are a lot of pro-legalization people who respond to challenges made as to its safety with a litany of medical claims that sound little different than the claims made by all manner of herbalists and charlatans.
It's a weak tactic that's not well validated scientifically and ultimately ends up making legalization advocates just sound like hippies down at the co-op.
But like I said, I really do believe that there are significant medical uses for marijuana, I just don't think they've been scientifically validated enough to use as a strong argument for actual legalization.
I know that some legalization advocates are willing to more or less settle for California style "medical marijuana" legalization, but opponents are right to label this as something of a sham and at worst, you might end up with the kind of "medical" legalization like we have in Minnesota with all kinds of strings attached that doesn't really help many people (like literally not many people, they capped participation and enormously restricted access).
And that kind of legalization doesn't really solve the many huge problems with criminalization.
What kind of demented comment is that? These kinds of studies are very, very obviously done after the fact, i.e. adults are asked whether they used the respective drug as a teen and then they look for effects.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is because anybody with minimal intelligence and education knows the answer. You obviously are lacking in those departments.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That isn't how twin studies usually work. In this case, one twin decided to smoke marijuana, while the other did not.
I doubt that. One twin got caught and claimed the stash was entirely theirs. The other twin said, yeah, thats not mine. Later when alone they both lit up.
Adults who had used marijuana as teens were studied.
No, adults who SAID that they had used marijuana as teens were studied. How many of them were honest about it?
..for longer than I've had my Slashdot UID. If it hurt my IQ, I didn't notice.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
That must be why the FBI is having trouble hiring hackers because they can't pass the "MJ" test.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Well it sounds like your coworkers had partken a bit much when they told you those tall tails.
I can tell you, while all anecdotal, as a veteran with PTSD it has helped me greatly. It calms the emotional roller coaster that my days had become. Before it I couldn't keep a relationship going, I was too unpredictable. Somethings would leave me wanting to scream and rant, and others wanting to cry. I used to get boxes of pills in the mail every month from the VA. Pills for anexiety, depression, migraines, sleep disorders, etc.
Then a fellow veteran convinced me to try it. Since then it allows me to keep my mood swings under control. I dont go flying off the handle over inconsequential things anymore. I am way, way less jumpy, and my TBI induced migraines are actually handled much better with a bowl and a autoinjector of imitrex (which had bad side effects for me anyways).
Did it cure my PTSD? No. Migraines? No. Depression? No. It most certainly did help me get control of those things again even when the Box'o pills wouldn't.
So yes, there are very real and possible far reaching medical uses for cannabis.
..and how was this kid damaged by an IQ test?
What! :-)
Seeing how the middle class is all but gone and most of those teens are destined for minimum wage jobs for the rest of their lives, anything that helps make that more bearable helps both them and the society at large.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
That means that there is a clear bias. The teen who is smart enough to figure out that they have been sold a load of hyperbole and smoke a bowl is clearly smarter than the one who, proudly no doubt, abstains from consumption.
Or, the teen who is smart enough to realize that dabbling in an illegal drug has consequences that can totally fsck up their life, regardless of the drug's toxicity level or health effects, chose to abstain, while the one not smart enough to figure that out didn't.
There is very little factual scientific data on marijuana. A deliberate smear campaign by the US government kicked off the war on drugs, and it's been a hard sell to get actual scientists to study the stuff ever since.
I've known two young men who were very heavy cannabis users. Both were incredibly intelligent - among the smartest guys I ever met. However, both became manic depressive and that only got worse over time. Eventually both of them (who didn't know each other) committed suicide. Hard to unravel cause and effect, and only two data points but it's made me very wary of heavy pot use. The occasional smoke, not a worry, but habitual use is a killer, I believe.
I have a genetically-caused (easily traced back two generations and rampant in me and my sibs) serotonin-based depressive disorder. It was treatment refractory, meaning nothing medical helped. At all. And it gets worse as I get older, just as with my grand dad and my dad (and now my younger sibs).
Besides massive amounts of sunlight (which eventually trigger me into mania that no mood stabilizer, not even Lithium, reduces or controls), the only thing that ever helped me was marijuana (until somebody invented Viibryd).
For the first 2.5 years that I was a volunteer guinea pig at Mass General Hospital's Bipolar Research Clinic, I took everything the gave me, and ONLY what they gave me, and I lived in worsening Hell. Finally, I gave up and went back to what put me on the Dean's List when I graduated from Tufts University: marijuana.
All of a sudden, I was back in school (genomics), making music, had a girlfriend, wasn't overwhelmed with fatiguel no suicidal ideation or the inability to do ANYthing (including get out of bed).
The MGH folks wanted to know what I'd done, so I told them I was vaporizing marijuana. "No," they said, "what did you change?" I said, "Pay attention: I am now using marijuana PRN and it works, just like it used to."
They got all pissed that I was screwing up all their drug trials, but I told them they already had 2.5 years showing the failure of their protocols, and that mine was working, now study MY protocol, if it melted my mind they already had my informed consent forms (which included specific "You're on your own, Kid" sections about death, organ injury, rhabdomyolysis, irreversible mental damage, etc., etc.). So they watched me succeed for the next 2.5 years as I kept my jobs at the leading edge of high tech R&D and smiled a lot.
When I left the program, the lead MD shook my hand and thanked me for helping to train the staff on this issue.
Then they invented Viibryd which has SSRI action that never helped me much in any drug, but it also turns off the "no serotonin" signal in the receptor neuron which seems to make all the difference. I thrive now, not just survive. Now I get high for fun sometimes, not to fucking survive a day without tossing myself off a high building.
Am I an anecdote? NO, I am one of an increasing number of statistics that show marijuana (cannabinoids, if you must) have powerfully useful medical properties vis a vis (that I know of so far) treatment refractory epilepsy, treatment refractory depression, wasting diseases, nausea, and peripheral neuropathy.
All the war on drugs (and civil liberties) has done is make cocaine cheaper, fentanyl ubiquitous, and the one drug that everybody wants (and is almost impossible to hurt yourself with) more expensive by an order of magnitude: in 1976 the Boston price for an ounce of killer Columbian was $35 (yes you read that right, $35); in 2016 a fucking GRAM costs $20 and ounce costs what, $450? Nice work, you stupid right-wing fucktards.
I am posting this AC because DUH.
What are you talking about ? Towley wrote a best seller on pot ! (stoned)
Fuck you. There a bunch of cancer drugs notorious for causing (wait for it) cancer later in the patient's life. This is one of the reasons that contemporary oncology considers a "cure" to be 5 years remission of cancer symptoms, and they fudge REAL HARD about whether the cancer you get later is the same one you used to have or was caused by something else (like the fucking treatment, and if it WAS the treatment that caused the later cancer, they STILL say they cured your first cancer!)
I understand trade-offs, but cannabis has a panel of side effects and long-term deleterious effects far smaller than 90% of pharmaceuticals out there. If you doubt that, listen carefully to the end of the TV commercial for the latest whizzbang drug where the fast talking voice spews out the long list of bad things that drug can do to you. Pot will make you hungry, maybe a bit fuzzy and slow thinking (I get focused and sped up), and will fog up your memory a bit. But a normal dose won't melt your liver (tylenol at standard dose) or kidneys (ibuprophen at standard dose) or rot your intestines (aspirin, Cox II inhibitors, naprosin at standard dose) or kill you by mistake because the clinically effective level is so close to the toxic level.
Maybe the kind of parent who is absolutely positively sure that X is not harmful and does not mind some more scientific proof.
What they really found was There was no measurable ink between the two. Now the editors are trying too hard.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
If the former scenario is true, it suggests a sort of paradox wherein the advantage in intuition turns out to lead to choices that effectively negate the intuitive advantage. This is the hilarious kind of crap that gets fun to think about while you're stoned, but it would have no impact on the study results and thus has no bearing on science (apart from modern physics, where making up really interesting but untestable ideas to explain stuff is pretty much the state of the art).
If the latter scenario is true, the study results would likely be different, as the suggested deleterious effects of the drug would impact testing performance. But that isn't the case, is it?
I think the big problem here is reliance on any test intended to show off levels of intelligence. Many of the cheaper, simpler to administer tests vary wildly in both consistency and accuracy.
This is where it gets important to have large samples, I think - one of the uses of statistical analysis is to reduce the influence of noise due to poor quality data.
As far as the original story, I was a regular 'user' in my 20's and dabbled with it infrequently for 30 years. I don't think it reduced my intelligence but it sure does cut into motivation and aggression. One interesting metric I've seen was getting my social security statement a few years ago which showed my annual income since I was a teen. It goes up smoothly and sharply until about the time I started smoking pot. Then it flies level for about five years until I gave it up at which point the income numbers resume the same sharp upward line.
Well, this study was about intelligence, not motivation; intelligence is a 'passive' quality, I suppose - you have it, even if you don't use it. It isn't as simple as that, but still... Think of the Sherlock Holmes stories (the original ones, not the modern action man): both Sherlock and Mycroft are highly intelligent, but one is ambitious, the other is completely lacking in ambition.
My dope head friends don't really seem to be particularly stupid, but they sure seem to be apathetic and lacking in ambition.
I'm extremely lazy and exhibit all the signs of a pothead, but I don't smoke. I wonder if I did get on it, would my natural lack of ambition be blamed on the weed?
Maybe your couch bound friends were like me already that way inclined, and figured smoking pot makes the couch an even more enjoyable place to be?
While MJ may not lower IQ, from the people I have met there is a strong correlation between MJ and low IQ.
You must not have spent much time at Uni, plenty of smart people doing weed there. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Carl Sagan, even Barry Obama have all admitted to getting on it.
It caused low self-esteem?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
more expensive by an order of magnitude: in 1976 the Boston price for an ounce of killer Columbian was $35 (yes you read that right, $35); in 2016 a fucking GRAM costs $20 and ounce costs what, $450? Nice work, you stupid right-wing fucktards.
I am posting this AC because DUH.
Wow! That is some expensive shit. Last ounce I bought here in Oregon was only $100 (high quality stuff too).
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What would be interesting is plotting the career progression of long-term marijuana users. Besides, the current crop is hundreds of times more potent, the use of which can lead to memory loss and psychosis, even long after they stop using.
And at a time when doing well in school peaks in importance. Forget IQ, what's the effect on going to college?
I personally believe marijuana usage should be legalized. It's no more harmful than other substances like alcohol or tobacco for example. That being said, I would strongly discourage my kids and friends from using the substance. Granted this is just my personal anecdotal evidence, but any of my friends, or anyone at all I know that has ever smoked pot on a regular prolonged basis seemed to have been completely robbed of any serious ambition. It seems like nothing really much mattered to them anymore, they were perfectly happy being mediocre people. Go home, chill, and smoke pot. Just my personal observations, not scientific facts.
For the record there are a lot of reasons to abstain that have nothing to do with "it will hurt me if I smoke this". Some people don't like feeling altered. Some people think the smell is distasteful. Some people just can't smoke (and didn't consider eating it). Some people, yes even teens, have jobs that require drug testing and feel it's more important to keep the job than to get stoned once in a while, etc etc.
Is it bad for you? Who cares? Will it make you "stupid"? Not likely. That doesn't make the abstainer or the partaker any more intelligent or less intelligent, to begin with.
It's always amazing how such nonsense enters these types of arguments.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
So they all post to slashdot?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
$400 is pretty typical full retail for high grade (generally indoor, named genetics, absolutely controlled and grown from clones with zero seed).
$450 is someone getting ripped off. $300 would be the normal price for a full OZ if someone likes you since $400 is no discount vs buying four full price $100 quarters.
That's sexual consent. No, it's not more relevant to situations where things are put in your body (snicker), because not only is the drinking age not 16, it's 21. And that's another problem.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yeah... but they weren't at 16. That's the only point I was trying to address. Parents are responsible for the actions of their minor children.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
These are observational studies. Nobody tells the kids to (or not to) smoke pot; the subjects answer questions about what they've done, all on their own.
We have this weird idea that you should be able to take a particular drug to control your seizures, accepting the side effects, without also taking other drugs that don't help control your seizures and have their own side effects. Crazy hey?
Alcohol has been pretty extensively studied. We know about, and most of us acknowledge it's side effects. Marijuana hasn't been as extensively studied. Unfortunately, due to political reasons, many people also insist that it's perfectly safe, without any side effects at all, which is a ridiculous claim to make about any drug.
Clinical trials are generally only done for drugs that are going to be used clinically (thus the name), not recreationally. Marijuana (and it's components) have been studied in clinical trials for potential medical applications, but studies of recreational use, including this one, are not clinical trials at all. They're observational (they involve giving people surveys) instead of radomized and controlled (where you assign people to take or not take the drug, preferably without telling them which group they're in).
That's a common mistake: no significant effect doesn't mean no effect, it literally means "my data isn't good enough to reach any conclusion with confidence." They did in fact observe a negative effect of marijuana use, it just wasn't big enough to be confident that it was real. All sorts of factors can cause that: actual absence of effect, noise in your measurement, a poorly fitting model, methodological problems, etc. Not measuring the amount of use, for example, means that instead of fitting a model that takes into account the dose effect, you have to just group people into users and non-users, based on some threshold. That leads to things like assigning anybody who took a single puff to the users category. It's not fatal to a large enough study, but it can easily produce a not significant result in a smaller one.
"You are talking about something that has an inconsistent deliver method, is difficult to measure, is only used to treat symptoms, when there are more easily measured/delivered alternatives."
I'm sorry but your information is out of date. There are extremely consistent delivery methods, including vaporization in the same way that many medications for lung conditions are treated with extracts of known potency. Although dosing is a bit of a red herring given that you can exceed the dosage 500 fold without any significant risks of a serious problem.
"is difficult to measure"
In what way?
"is only used to treat symptoms, when there are more easily measured/delivered alternatives"
Which are ineffective for many patients, carry far greater risk of serious side effects, and in many cases don't work at all. There are no shortage of over the counter medications which are far more likely to cause serious side effects and/or death while only treating symptoms. This includes almost everything found in your typical medicine cabinet including the cough syrup, cold medicines, and pain relievers. The water you use alongside most of those medications is more likely to cause you harm than taking 5000% of your typical dose of Cannabis. One would expect that for any symptom for which it brings relief it would be the first choice solution since it is the lowest risk solution rather than the last resort of the desperate when none of the far more dangerous drugs work.
"Although for recreation it can grow in fairly diverse conditions, would be hard to control and tax"
You could say that of many of the plants you'll find amongst the landscaping along my residential street. Unlike cannabis, you could make a good argument for needing to control of them as they are quite toxic. I've yet to hear any particular reason we should be controlling or putting special taxes on Cannabis. The tax argument is used to bribe the ignorant in order to sway their stance on something which represents no public health risk and was only restricted in the first place because it competed financially with certain industries so they came up with a synonymous name the public wasn't familiar with and then spread mass propaganda campaign. Had the public known then that marijuana was nothing more than hemp we wouldn't have restrictions today.
"would probably end up getting mixed with other more dangerous things like it already is"
That is actually just a myth. All those more dangerous things are more expensive and therefore no dealer would waste them lacing a bag to get people more addicted. Generally the only thing you'll find people doing is adding water to increase weight. There is one particularly evil practice I know has occurred a couple times which was using crushed glass to make the plant look more sparkling and potent. In a completely white market I see no reason the drug or grocery store is more likely to do that with hemp than with lettuce. They already do add water to cheat you in many cases at the grocer.
"would be problematic testing to see if someone is currently under the influence when they operate heavy machinery and cause an accident"
I'm not sure if it really matters if they were under the influence, the issue would be that they caused an accident and either it was reasonable or not. But then I feel the same way about drunk driving. Who cares why you were swerving all over the road, you were driving recklessly and should be ticketed as such. If you were driving perfectly there is no reason to ticket you.
That said, while actually under the influence a simple blood test reveals the substance and quantity the same as any other. Many existing drug tests fail at this because they are designed to be as sensitive as possible to be sure to detect even the smallest trace in the system so it can be detected up to a month after usage. But a simple analysis of your blood can show the levels right now, which are certainly going to be dramatically different in someone currently under the influence vs someone who used the substance yesterday, let alone last week.
selection bias. if you limit your pool to MJ users to are in ivy league schools, of course the MJ users are a smart bunch. but if you expand your pool to all MJ users, my statement above still stands.
It's always amazing how such nonsense enters these types of arguments.
That's what 80 years of propaganda will get you.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"We"? Do you have a mouse in your pocket? Or are you speaking for the entire medical establishment?
And if you think that the removal of THC from cannabis has anything to do with "side effects", then you haven't seen any recent pharmaceutical commercials.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My lab rat Barney is insulted you called him a mouse. And he'd never ride around in a pocket.
No, they're too busy being lawyers or running corporations.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Both of the friends we have bought from here (first charged $150 for an ounce, and the second was the $100 ounce guy) grow and produce primarily for the medical MJ industries. Since these guys have been my little brother's best friends since they were kids, they are essentially giving us wholesale prices.
I am guessing it will take one more full ounce purchase to keep supplied until I can get the grow room down in the basement operational again.
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I'm just correcting the AC on what THC and CBD mean. I'm realy not commenting on the issue.
Oh, I realize that. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I wasn't talking about customs and rituals specific the US.
most report that weed is easier to get than alcohol. If weed were available legally, black market dealers would not exists, making it hard for teens to get it short of a fake ID or an adult buying it for them.
That doesn't mean they wont get it, but it could easily be much harder than it is today.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I tried it once. The world felt "off" and distant, and I didn't like it. I don't actually remember that much about it, except for the bowls of peanuts I was emptying. Despite the fact that I was going through a really bad spot in my life, I didn't want to feel that apart from reality.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Pornography of 16-year-olds is highly illegal. In this state, I could legally have a wild sexual fling (insofar as I can have a wild fling at my age), but taking pictures could get me in real deep trouble.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
of course the MJ users are a smart bunch.
there is a strong correlation between MJ and low IQ
These two statements are mutually exclusive.
why do you say that?
Man, this is almost as old as prostitution. Twins switching with one another. How do we know that didn't happen?
Fuck! I'm an only child. I'm screwed!
Seriously, why would anyone lie? Did you even think through your argument
You are clearly not a scientist. When doing a scientific study you need to be able to measure how good your result is not merely cross your fingers and hope that it is accurate. Why would people lie on a poll about voting in an election? I don't know but given the number of polls which get things very, very wrong there is clear evidence that they do.
With marijuana there used to be a stigma attached to having smoked it. Perhaps the more intelligent twins realized that this was no longer case but that the less intelligent ones did not? When you are doing a study on intelligence and you are relying on that intelligence in the first place to get accurate data you have a bias problem.
How do the consequences of long-term use of cannabis compare to the consequences of long-term use of alcohol and nicotine? Disclosure: I ask this as an eighty-year-old retiree from Harvard University with lung cancer married to a woman who is a seventy-year-old alcoholic retiree from Harvard with lung cancer who has a sister with lung cancer and whose pulmonologist is a dead man walking with lung cancer. I started smoking when I was thirteen, my wife when she was sixteen. Do we get high? No. Did we used to get high? Of course, fifty years ago. Why did we quit? Well, as far as we can tell, pot is non-addictive and we just got tired of it. Why didn't we also stop drinking and smoking? Well, nicotine and alcohol are *unbelievably* addictive, as far as we can tell. You can't cold-turkey those two drugs. I still smoke a pipe and my wife still drinks wine. We have a neighbor with lung cancer who still smokes cigarettes. We had a neighbor who died of lung cancer 23 years after he quit smoking tobacco. By comparison, the only thing dangerous about cannabis is that it's illegal. "Gateway drug"? Bullshit. *Every single narcotics addict*, without a *single* exception, has been born. BIRTH is the *real* gateway drug!
I grew up poor in a group foster home and got very little in the way of education. What I did do was work hard for peanuts until I learned enough skills and made a reputation for myself. I ended up retiring at 40.
So the advice that "You're poor, give up and smoke pot" might not be the best one.
The study measured intelligence as an active factor, via testing. How well would a high 16 year old with a 160 IQ do on an intelligence test vs a non stoned 110 IQ kid?
While IQ is a measure of some areas of potential ability, as you note the issues of opportunity and effort are required along with the ability inherent. At least two of those have to be solid. In my experiences the effort gets a lot smaller when you regularly use THC. Opportunities for a regular pot user might also decline. So whether it damages or reduces the ability might almost be irrelevant.