Study Shows Marijuana Use In Teens Correlates To Decreasing IQ 626
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."
Mods (Score:3, Insightful)
Tag news article 'Propaganda'
Re:Mods (Score:5, Insightful)
Propaganda by whom, and for what purpose? How do you identify it as propaganda instead of legitimate science? You have to answer these basic questions and support your answers with evidence before anybody is going to buy into your conspiracy theories.
Re:Mods (Score:5, Funny)
Propaganda by whom, and for what purpose? How do you identify it as propaganda instead of legitimate science? You have to answer these basic questions and support your answers with evidence before anybody is going to buy into your conspiracy theories.
Propaganda; n. Any material which proposes to sway a reader to form a conclusion that conflicts with your own.
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True. I think a more interesting study would be to see how successful and happy the study subjects turned out to be. IQ does not equate to success in life. Social skills, networking, personality, etc. can be more important than IQ.
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Re:Mods (Score:4, Informative)
Having taken into account other factors such as alcohol or tobacco dependency or other drug use, as well the number of years spent in education...
So there was manipulation of the data to exclude the effect of these "other factors", which completely throws out any correlation that these could/would/should have. It would be akin to testing if teen pregnancy lowered IQ, but they threw out data belonging to private school girls.
they found that those who persistently used cannabis - smoking it at least four times a week year after year through their teens, 20s and, in some cases, their 30s - suffered a decline in their IQ.
This is plain bad science. These people they are studying are CHRONIC users. They are likely using right up to the morning of their "interview". It is like the kid who started smoking cigarettes at 8 years old vs. someone starting at, say 23. The former is most likely to smoke 2+ packs a day. The latter usually smokes less than one pack. Also, nothing has been done to show what happens when they would stop.
I get my data through observation of people throughout my life from all sorts of geography. I absolutely believe that my retort has as much of a proper sampling as 1000 people from New Zealand
Science vs. propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Science vs. propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
As someone else pointed out, it is entirely possible that sitting around doing nothing all day will lower IQ, and so marijuana's role may just be in discouraging teenagers from participating in activities that maintain or increase their IQ.
I have always heavily suspected that this is the single biggest issue with "marijuana making you dumb". We see the same kinds of effects with people who have other, non-intellectual hobbies that they over indulge in. (sleeping, reading romance novels, playing sports, etc..., etc..., etc...) I'm pretty sure that we have some strong evidence that mental stimulation makes people smarter than they would be without it.
Re:Science vs. propaganda (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps it's just that low IQ is correlated with answering "yes" on a marijuana survey.
Re:Mods (Score:5, Informative)
You should study the history of anti-drug research. One of the original studies that claimed marijuana caused severe brain damaged basically put face masks on monkeys and had them inhaling nothing but smoke for a significant period of time. The cause of the brain damage was CO poisoning and general hypoxia, which should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain. No one breathes nothing but smoke when they smoke. That's what a lot of studies do, they give a subject 100x the dose that is used, or use some unusual delivery method, and perform the study on it, drawing absurd conclusions that aren't event remotely scientific.
The purpose? Funding, plain and simple. Studies that are anti-drug get lots of funding, and those that aren't, don't get approved (by the DEA when performed on humans) or funded. Why? Because the government funds the studies and the drug war is a political tool that they need evidence to support. A huge amount of science is shaped and steered through funding, and it absolutely biases the results.
If you are reasonably intelligent, this shouldn't surprise you. We've had quacks for the entire history of science and medicine, and many of them have used science to explain what is clearly a politically motivated status quo. Just look at all the studies that assumed minorities were inferior, and proposed to find out why (by measuring brain volume and other anatomical characteristics), without first checking the assumption that minorities were inferior.
Re:Mods (Score:5, Insightful)
recreational use implies abuse
I assume your stance on this extends to alcohol and caffeine as well, correct? Personally I wouldn't call a couple glasses of beer/wine/etc at a party abuse, but it's most definitely recreational.
News Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
Drinking Wine or Beer 4 times a day year after year will reduce your IQ. Over use of ANYTHING will cause problems.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
4 times a week, not 4 times a day.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Funny)
It affects reading comprehension also....
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?
The medical community has known for some time that marijuana has adverse effects. For one reason or another, the pot smoking community seems to get all defensive and denies all allegations backed by science almost as fiercely as denial of global warming or evolution.
It would be nice to see more studies like this and see if these results can be replicated.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any evidence to support that assertion?
The medical community has known for some time that marijuana has adverse effects.
Lol, it never fails to amuse me when someone lambastes another for making an un-backed statement without citing any evidence... moments before they themselves make an un-backed statement without citing any evidence.
To that end, who is this 'medical community' of which you speak, and what are these 'adverse affects' you so ambiguously refer to?
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Re:News Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_cannabis [wikipedia.org]
But of course, that's all lies and false propaganda right?
The first link obviously is, that's like asking Newt Gingrich if Obama's a good president. You might as well cite High Times for an equally biased view of pot. However, you didn't read the wikipedia link, did you?
If you do anything whatever every single day for a year, you're going to miss it if you no longer have it. Dependancy != addiction. Addiction has physical withdrawal symptoms; tobacco, alcohol, heroin, coffee are addictive. Orange juice and marijuana can introduce dependancies. Hell, there's a woman in my office who almost freaked out because the vending machine was out of little chocolate donuts and she'd been eating them every day for years. Yes, smoke pot every day for a year and you'll miss it when you can't find it... but you won't freak out or steal for it.
You know about correlation and causation, of course. Marijuana eases symptoms of depression and anxiety, and probably psychosis as well. They're putting the cart before the horse here. Smoking pot doesn't make you crazy, being crazy makes you smoke pot. From your link: "A recent study has shown that cannabidiol (a major constituent of cannabis) may be as effective as atypical antipsychotics in treating schizophrenia."
Gateway drug hypothesis
You'll find many pot smoker to deny a link, but there is a clear link: the same people who sell pot also sell other drugs. In short, the drug laws themselves cause it to be a gateway drug.
Odd that a two year old study wasn't mentioned here. Researchers thought that because of the facts cited above, that marijuana would cause cancer, so they did a test on very long term (>30 years) users. They had four groups: nonsmokers, pot smokers, cigarette smokers, and users of both tobacco and marijuana. They expected the users of pot to have as many or more cancers than cigarette smokers and users of both to have far more, but their research showed the opposite: those who smoked both pot and cigarettes had half the cancers of those who only smoked cigarettes, and those who smoked only pot amazingly had fewer cancers than nonsmokers, although the difference was statistically insignifigant.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it. Gees... drugabuse.org, why not cite the partnership for a drug-free america as well? Sheesh!
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience most of those in favor of cannabis legalization aren't blind to the adverse effects, it's just that they're sick to death of seeing time and time again how some study proclaims "Teenagers who are genetically predisposed to end up with severe mental illness may have slightly earlier onset of their condition if they smoke marijuana on a daily basis" and how the media and those who fervently hate cannabis turn that into "POT MAKES YOU CRAZY!".
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Informative)
The pot smoking community has released their official response to this study, saying, "dude, chill with the anti pot stuff."
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
For one reason or another, the pot smoking community seems to get all defensive and denies all allegations backed by science almost as fiercely as denial of global warming or evolution.
We don't deny that there are adverse effects. We deny that the adverse effects are sufficient enough to justify imprisioning people. Life is full of risks, and the fun parts even more so. A country that allows people to ride motorcycles [wikipedia.org] for recreation has no place telling us Cannabis is too unsafe for recreation.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
They get defensive because results like this can be used as a reason for keeping pot illegal.
This study can be used as evidence that it should be legal. If you have teenagers, ask them if it's easy to get pot in school, then ask them if it's easy to get a beer in school. I asked my kids that when they were in high school, and they said "of course you can buy pot in school." When I asked about beer, they laughed and said "don't be silly, of course not."
See, it's easier for a teenager to buy pot than it is an adult. A dealer will be paranoid of an adult, because he could be the secret police, but there are no teenaged police officers.
If you want to keep pot out of teenaged hands (and I certainly don't want kids smoking anything at all), legalize it and sell it like alcohol.
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If it makes you less intelligent, it probably makes you happier too. Ignorance is, after all, bliss.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
But pot use after age 18 doesn't have long-term affects on IQ, only for the time immediately after consuming the drug. This was an important point lost in the summary. So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke. If marijuana were legal and regulated like alcohol, we would see less young people abusing the drug.
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But pot use after age 18 doesn't have long-term affects on IQ, only for the time immediately after consuming the drug. This was an important point lost in the summary. So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke.
Agreed.
If marijuana were legal and regulated like alcohol, we would see less young people abusing the drug.
So we should change things to that it's no longer legal to sell marijuana to minors?
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke
It *is* illegal for young kids to smoke marijuana (and for anyone else).
The problem here is that there isn't a direct link between "it's illegal" and "people cease to do it". Prohibiting drug use has demonstrably failed to stop people wanting to use drugs, and has demonstrably failed to prevent them from doing so. It's even possible that prohibition has made it *easier* for people to get hold of drugs, since production, distribution and retail is in the hands of people who aren't beholden to the usual rules.
Make it legal, such that illicit supply is no longer profitable. Regulate and educate, so that kids (and adults) generally don't want to use, kids that want to can't find a supply, adults that want to have a trustworthy supply and a society that encourages sensible usage levels.
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Even if the results of the study don't turn out to be some sort of "correlation != causation" effect, I wouldn't be surprised if it has absolutely nothing to do with the direct pharmacology of pot, but simply the fact that smoking pot isn't exactly famous for leading to intellectually-stimulating activities....
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Interesting)
simply the fact that smoking pot isn't exactly famous for leading to intellectually-stimulating activities....
I think that's the key here. Smoking pot tends to lead to activities which will result in you having a lower IQ. If you spend your formative years watching Adult Swim and eating funyuns all day, you're probably going to have a pretty low IQ.
I'd venture to say a study would find that frequent use of NASCAR in your teens correlates with a lower IQ as well.
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
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And cue the queue of stoners attempting to defend their addiction.
Desperate attempts to rationalize the use of marijuana is one of the signs of addiction. They're big on pointing out some benefits, but ignore all of the mental and physical problems associated with it.
Teenagers who are in the "I know everything" stage can be very frustrating when you try to explain the dangers.
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So by your argument, pretty much anything I use in my daily life would become a "sign of addition" if you challenged it and I defended it. Apparently I'm addicted to my bed, underwear, forks, and washcloths, to name a few.
Full disclosure: I don't use pot. In case your immediate assumption was to do an "attack the messenger" reply.
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Funny)
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So by your argument, pretty much anything I use in my daily life would become a "sign of addition"
No, anything you do in your daily life, and then decide to do something *extra* would become a "sign of addition".
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I've been practicing Tai Chi Chuan and meditation for more than 15 years in an attempt to keep myself healthy and sane. Sometimes between work and other commitments I don't practice enough. By your argument if I decide to put in some additional effort and time, this would be a sign of addiction?
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Informative)
Actually no, the argument put forth by NeoMorphy is a classic fallacious argument that doesn't hold up well to scrutiny. It's used for pretty much anything that should be a personal choice that certain people have moral or ideological objections to. It can be summed up as "If you say something isn't harming you or that it isn't addictive then that is in itself a sign of harm or addiction and thus you voicing your opinion "proves" that it is harmful and addictive and any further protest from you merely demonstrates how hopelessly addicted you are". This argument is quite familiar to me as the rabid anti-drug crowd here in Sweden have been using it every chance they get for decades...
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Short form: If you admit it, you're addicted. If you don't, you're in denial.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Teenagers who are in the "I know everything" stage can be very frustrating when you try to explain the dangers.
Probably because you're an adult in the "I know everything" stage, and think you know the dangers. Funnily enough, teenagers with internet access can easily learn more about a given subject than you know offhand, and it may surprise you that some of them actually research marijuana before smoking it. Which is often more than their parents can manage before laying down the law to them about it.
In fact your entire attitude stinks, and teenagers can smell that a mile away. The teenager doesn't actually think he knows everything, but he has learnt that his parents don't. Yet many of them still insist on being treated as unquestioned authorities. Hence your "frustration" when you're not treated that way. It's a parenting problem, not a growing up problem.
I'll bet $100 all you know is what you've uncritically read in the sensationalist media. For instance, you seem to think marijuana addiction exists. There is no scientific basis for this idea, as you should know if you want to engage in a serious discussion with your teenager about what you believe the risks to be. Talking about marijuana addicts just makes you look ridiculous, I'm afraid, and that is why you fail.
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I'll bet $100 all you know is what you've uncritically read in the sensationalist media. For instance, you seem to think marijuana addiction exists. There is no scientific basis for this idea, as you should know if you want to engage in a serious discussion with your teenager about what you believe the risks to be. Talking about marijuana addicts just makes you look ridiculous, I'm afraid, and that is why you fail.
I'll take that bet.
I used to smoke an ounce a week for ~12 years. A lot of my peers also smoked a lot, some more than me. Eventually my job became too mentally demanding to keep that up, so I quit smoking pot. It was really tough, especially when trying to sleep, I ended up drinking at night to help sleep, but I eventually was able to stop that as well. Even when you're not high, there's still an impact to your abilities that seem to last a couple of days. It's also nice to not have to stress about your sup
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Any behavior can become an addictive behavior. Some people become physically addicted to exercise and the endorphin rush that comes from pushing their bodies to the edge. Some become addicted to tobacco and the stimulation that nicotine gives them. Some are addicted to food. To say that marijuana addiction doesn't exist is to discount that the human body and mind can become addicted to almost any stimulation. That's not to say that all individuals who consume marijuana will be addicted but some do. So don't fully discount the potential for addiction. Some portion of the population when exposed to the ongoing stimulation will become addicted to it.
It is impossible, and this is scientifically proven, to become physically addicted to marijuana. It's just not made of physically addictive stuff. There are no chemicals which give rise to physical dependency. Now as to the question of psychological dependency, that's a different matter however when you compare a psychological addiction to the chemical dependencies such as the endorphin rush or nicotine you are just building yourself a badly constructed argument. Also btw you will find that the actual mechanics(the movement of the hand to mouth to take a draw of a cigarette), the behavioural aspect of tobacco , is one of the habits hardest to break. Such as recent ex-smokers being out, beer in one hand and thinking it's weird not having a cigarette....
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Interesting)
Also btw you will find that the actual mechanics(the movement of the hand to mouth to take a draw of a cigarette), the behavioural aspect of tobacco , is one of the habits hardest to break. Such as recent ex-smokers being out, beer in one hand and thinking it's weird not having a cigarette....
I wish this were more widely known. I foolishly picked up a pack a day cigarette habit for a few years, and I finally managed to quit about ten years ago. By far, the most useful thing for me to do when I got cigarette cravings past the third day (by which time the physical withdrawal symptoms end) was to mime through the actions of lighting and smoking an invisible cigarette. The level to which this satisfied my cravings was profound, and I think it was the key to my finally being able to quit for good.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Informative)
A telephone survey? Really?
Re:News Flash (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
Compared and contrasted to addiction to other substances, weed rates pretty low on the "Omfg i got to have it" scale. Booze is way far more addictive, so is smoking and caffeine. Not to mention it doesn't even stand close to the company it keeps with cocaine, heroine, crack, meth. etc. etc.
Science these days is so corrupted with politics and agendas. Anyone can get a lab rat geek with a degree to skew data. I would have loved to see a side by side run of this experiment with booze and other substances.
For me, this one is grasping at straws. It's an intoxicant and it has no place around children, just like booze and cigarettes and some would argue caffeine. I mean if this is the best that they can come up with, it's pretty pathetic. When I factor this versus the bullshit I have seen my entire life on the subject versus real life results helping cancer, aids, and MS patients, I have to ponder did another "scientist(s)" sell out and give us more junk science/propaganda? I find the timing on it suspect considering we are coming up on a SCOTUS trial on moving weed down out of schedule 1 substances.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Interesting)
When discussing marijuana "addiction", there is a clear attempt to imply an addiction to chemicals a drug which is bad, while, when being called out on the myth, declaring it to mean an addiction to chemicals that your body produces when you are happy which is not bad.
Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:News Flash (Score:4, Interesting)
When I read this debate, I always think of the bits on Dragnet, such as the one where LSD supposedly has this kid afraid he's turning into an orange and if anyone opens the closet door, he'll be 'juiced' into oblivion, or where the character "Blue Boy' supposedly overdoses on LSD (only to have the scrolling text at the end of the show mention it was actually Barbituates that killed the real person he was based on). We have people calling themselves 'experts' and speaking out publicly against drugs who still think that everything Joe Friday said came straight from a real case and not something made up by the Dragnet writers.
Drugs share at least one thing in common with everything else. Nothing can be learned from the people who have their basics wrong. When the government has pressured researchers to redefine addiction so it covers drugs it didn't, or to redefine"Narcotic", "Chromosome Damage" and other scientific and medical terms to let them persuade people who still think the words mean what they once did, what really happens is people stop trusting anything their government says.
I'm a little reassured that the researchers on this study are mostly from Duke University, but include some form the UK and New Zealand. Just the fact that some of them work where the DEA might not be able to influence them so easily makes me trust the paper a bit more. But this is an area where the US government has lied so much, so deliberately, and so cynically, that the people here on slashdot who are talking 'addiction denial' and 'conspiracy nut' lines come off like a shady lawyer saying "Just because my client comitted lebenty-leben bombings using this exact same M.O., shouldn't raise the remotest suspicion it's him again.". Read up on COINTELPRO, and learn that the conspiracy nuts in this area have usually been right. Or ignore what the US government's history in this area is like, and don't be surprised when the same people try to redefine 'terrorist' so they can jail the Dixie Chicks, or 'hacker' so that disabling region encoding on your DVD player is a felony, or whatever.
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Re:News Flash (Score:5, Informative)
I noticed the article talked about people who kept on smoking pot until they were 35. I though I'd be a counter-example to this study, but I only smoked pot heavily in 9th grade. Before that I was universally called the "space cadet", and was infamous for getting lost on the way to the bathroom. I managed to get a D- in 8th grade, which is incredibly hard to do, especially in a school with low standards and easy teachers who hate giving F's. My IQ never tested particularly high as a kid. In 9th grade, I got all A's, and mostly A+'s. Going to school stoned was great. I even joyed spelling tests! By 10th grade, I'd smoked so much pot I burned out on it. I could get high just going for a jog. I gave it up and never started again. School was a lot harder while not stoned, but I still managed a respectable 3.85 average (9th - 12th, back when 4.0 was the max).
My memory remains a leaky can, and I've wondered if smoking pot in 9th grade degraded it any. Thanks for the link to that article about pot improving memory. It does make me feel a bit better. I haven't been officially tested lately for my IQ, but on a dumb on-line quiz that my friends were all taking, I got 100% right, far higher than any of them, and most of them are pretty sharp. If there's a negative impact of heavy smoking for one year in the early teens, I don't know what it is.
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Reefer Madness (Score:2)
Updated for a new generation.
Ya buddy (Score:5, Funny)
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
Work ethic... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Work ethic... (Score:5, Informative)
It demotivates you. I've lived with stoners and they were some of the most lackadaisical folks I've met. If you're not going to get up off your ass and get a job, and prove that you want to keep it, you're not going to be employed, simple as that.
My POV on the IQ loss is that there's probably a heavy component of just not exercising the mind, because you can't be bothered.
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If in my employ there is a performance issue, or better yet an indication of malfeasance, you might have a sufficient right to violate my privacy and my physical person to determine whether I have a problem with substance abuse. The argument for this is thin.
Generally, you have as much right to know what drugs I take as you would any of my medical records: none whatsoever. Forcing someone to undergo medical testing of any kind is abhorrent.
Confounding (Score:4, Interesting)
Does smoking pot as a teen lower your IQ, or are stupid teens more likely to smoke pot?
Re:Confounding (Score:5, Informative)
It was a longitudinal study. First assessment was before anybody had smoked anything, and it was the change in IQ that was tracked.
Re:Confounding (Score:5, Informative)
Does smoking pot as a teen lower your IQ, or are stupid teens more likely to smoke pot?
From the abstract; "Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline. Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning among adolescent-onset cannabis users. Findings are suggestive of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on the adolescent brain and highlight the importance of prevention and policy efforts targeting adolescents."
A randomized controlled trial is by far the best means of proving causality, but a strong dose-response curve is a good secondary indicator. In this case, the data don't seem to support the contention of the abstract very well. Here they are from Table 1 in the paper:
Persistence of regular cannabis use
Never used | 242 | 38.84 | 99.84 (14.39) | 100.64 (15.25) | 0.05
Used, never regularly | 508 | 50.59 | 102.27 (13.59) | 101.24 (14.81) | â'0.07
Used regularly at 1 wave | 47 | 72.34 | 101.42 (14.41) | 98.45 (14.89) | â'0.20
Used regularly at 2 waves | 36 | 63.89 | 95.28 (10.74) | 93.26 (11.44) | â'0.13
Used regularly at 3+ waves | 41 | 78.05 | 96.00 (16.06) | 90.77 (13.88) | â'0.35
Where the columns are: MJ usage category, # of people in category, %male, Avg(SD) IQ at 7- 13 years old, Avg(SD) IQ at 38 years old, size of effect.
There are a couple of striking things: the percentage of males jumps markedly as the regularity of cannabis use goes up, and the initial IQ drops. So this study shows that young men with slighlty lower than average IQ are more likely to engage in regular cannabis use, and this may or may not result in a further decrease in their IQ over time.
Also, the numbers in the regular use categories are quite small: a few dozen.
I've not read the paper in detail, but superficially this looks exactly like the kind of research that led to hormone replacement therapy being touted as a good thing for post-menapausal women. Selection effects amongst the population of HRT users in the early days resulted in apparently dramatically improved health outcomes, whereas when applied to the general population the results were just the opposite.
While the data are plausibly suggestive that cannabis is bad for the adolescent brain, it is also plausibly suggestive that the lower-IQ male adolescent is more at risk for cannibis use and IQ decline.
Re:Confounding (Score:5, Funny)
There are a couple of striking things: the percentage of males jumps markedly as the regularity of cannabis use goes up
Holy crap, smoking pot turns females into males!
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Whilst the under-reported initial neurotoxicity claims for MDMA were overstated, there remains evidence of problems. Wikipedia's article has a few links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mdma#Long-term_effects_on_serotonin_and_dopamine [wikipedia.org]
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Probably both, but the study shows the former. From the abstract:
Persistent cannabis use was associated with neuropsychological decline broadly across domains of functioning, even after controlling for years of education. Informants also reported noticing more cognitive problems for persistent cannabis users. Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline. Further, cessation of cannabis use did not fully restore neuropsychological functioning among adolescent-onset cannabis users. Findings are suggestive of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on the adolescent brain and highlight the importance of prevention and policy efforts targeting adolescents.
They followed individuals for several decades, and frequent users showed a decline of neuropsychological functioning that non-pot-smokers did not. In other words, pot damages your brain. Note that they were specifically testing adolescent-onset users: in other words, people who used it as teenagers. Whether it would have the same effects on an adult who didn't smoke it as a teen isn't answered (although probably yes, I'm guessing the effects
And in other news ... (Score:2)
... bears shit in the woods, the pope is a catholic, ect ect.
Persuading the kids is another matter of course.
Summary left out important information (Score:5, Informative)
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.
So in other word like any psychoactive substance? (Score:3)
As `The Dude` would say (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
So that's why (Score:2)
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.
Correlation or Causation? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
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needs more 'correlationisnotcausation" tagging methinks.
if A and B appear together (correlation) it doesn't mean A causes B, or even that B causes A. It just means that the two tend to occur together for some possibly very indirect reason.
I think in this case pot doesn't cause stupidity, but that generally speaking, stupider people tend to do more drugs. Nothing surprising nor valuable to hear about that.
but but but (Score:3)
I wouldn't read too much into that. (Score:4)
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.
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"IQ tests work best when you're young and they assume less training"
IQ changes during adolescence [webmd.com], from age 12 to 16 it may go down 18 points or up 21 points.
Adults generally show stable and even increasing IQ scores until mid-30s and some to mid-50s, then there can be decline.
correlation (Score:3)
correlation does not imply.. um...
wait, wait...
Does it have to be safer than water to legalize? (Score:3)
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.
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I think all things should be free to use as long as you're not significantly interfering with someone else's enjoyment. For example, the government should stop telling us e.g. that we can't use that empty house + land over there because it "belongs" to someone else.
People are free to kill their IQ, but should be discouraged. Putting potheads in jail is wrong because no-one is at risk of harm from potheads, not because being a pothead is somehow a grand expression of freedom. If they fail and harm themselves
Re:Legalise all drugs (Score:4, Insightful)
How far does that go? Can I invite all my friends into your house while you're at work? After all, why can't we use that empty house? It doesn't matter that it "belongs" to someone.
Re:Legalise all drugs (Score:5, Funny)
"at work"?
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- if you're going to post AC to insult people, roman_mir, at least make your sentence style and impotence less obvious.
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If you leave it as you found it and make good on any damage, I couldn't give a fuck what you do with my stuff.
There are small communities (from traditional English villages to new age communes) which have open door policies like this. But capitalism with its modern cities and covetousness has pretty much fucked up this philosophy.
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- it's not a government issue, it's a private matter. Just because 'you come from a rich family' doesn't change that fact that government shouldn't be involved in private disputes of this type.
It changes a lot: it means I can pay security guards to stop you getting back into the house you thought was yours. Government's not involved, so good luck raising your own army.
Should you pay a fine for somebody else's transgressions? Should you be thrown to jail for somebody else's crime?
Communities and whole countries are made worse off all the time because of the actions of a few. This will always happen for as long as the actions of one person has an indirect effect on more than one other. Welcome to reality, and I'm sorry you're having such trouble coping with it.
Prison is a way of stopping those dangerous to so
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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?
Free people should make free choices for themselves as they wish. But the classification of something as a drug includes that you lose your free choice because of the addiction and influence.
Yes, jail for marijuana use is too much. No, not all drugs should be legalized.
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Name the drug that you think should be kept illegal, and I will explain to you why it should be legalized.
Crystal Meth.
Bath Salts.
PCP.
Re:Legalise all drugs (Score:4, Informative)
Crystal Meth.
Methamphetamine is already legal by prescription and it is prescribed to both children and adults. Most of the harm caused by recreational methamphetamine is caused by toxic byproducts that are left over from poorly controlled and completely unregulated production processes, which is a direct result of prohibition; such things are not present the pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine that doctors prescribe.
Bath Salts.
You will have to be more specific, since that is a generic name for a number of stimulants that are also produced under poorly controlled and unregulated conditions. Yes, the media has been playing up the risk, but the stimulant psychosis is not news, and incidents involving caffeine seem to go unnoticed (or do you really think coffee should be illegal?):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407709 [nih.gov]
The difference, of course, is that caffeine pills come with dosage information, their production is regulated, and you know that they contain caffeine. "Bath salts" come with no such information, and you have no idea what they contain -- it might be MDPV, but it could just as easily be caffeine, some unknown byproduct of MDPV synthesis, or something that is only known among drug researchers. Do you see the pattern yet?
PCP.
PCP is legal by prescription (same schedule as methamphetamine), for use as a painkiller. Recreational users have the same problems as recreational methamphetamine users: poor production, unknown dosage, etc. There is not much more to be said -- the problem here is not the drug, it is the law.
Sure, so long as you pay full medical costs (Score:3)
"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 a
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It's not about individual intelligence, it's about herd intelligence. If individuals lower their intelligence, the intelligence of the group goes down, and in a democratic society that is devastating. It's actually a problem in any society (except maybe a tyranny or dictatorship), but it's worse when individuals have the ability to influence society directly. Unless, of course, drug users would be willing to give up their vote, which I don't imagine is going to happen anytime soon (nor, indeed, would it be
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Looking at roman_mir's posting history, I'm fairly sure that a dictatorship is his preferred choice. Except he will call it "The Corporation" instead of "The Government".
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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
Just that nobody calls those users "stoners" who aren't stoned all day long but only enjoy a reefer now and then to relax.
It's like calling everyone a drunkard who drinks a glas of wine now and then.
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I don't know if you knew this or not but it's actually illegal. Oh and by the way, no, getting high to make yourself feel better about all your problems and pretending that it makes them go away is not healthy at any usage frequency.
It's not illegal where I live.
But I agree that "getting high to make yourself feel better about all your problems and pretending that it makes them go away is not healthy at any usage frequency".
Just that there're lots of people who don't do this to make problems go away at all. It's basically a harmless bit of fun and relaxing to wind off after a day of work. What's wrong with that? It's the same with having a bit of wine or beer or whatever in the evening.
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I say the same thing about people who have trouble writing basic English sentences, as well.
Re:that's why they call them stoners (Score:4, Insightful)
So? The chances are, you are not "destined for greatness" no matter what you do. Why waste your life chasing for a winning lottery ticket rather than simply relax and enjoy what you can have? Besides that the lottery company - the 1% - have a harder time exploiting you if you don't buy into the lie, I mean.
Most people can never be great, because great means exceptional, and most people are average by definition. You are not exceptional and will never be great. And there's no shame in that, no matter how much you're trying to evoke it.
The stereotypical stoner mentality - "relax, take it eeeeasy" - is the antithesis of the rat race mentality, and almost impossible to exploit, so of course the people who benefit from having all the little hamsters spin their wheels fight pot. And since they are nasty people, they use nasty methods, to the point of calling their fight a War with capital W, complete with propaganda front to complement the armed forces and prison camps. And all that should really make you wonder if you should trust them to be quite honest.
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You do realize that we (the netherlands) have a much lower percentage of regular cannabis users than, say, the US, right?
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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.
You draw a conclusion and provide no supporting evidence. One could just as easily say that big tobacco has a vested interest in getting MJ legalized, so that they can package it and sell it.
Re:Not being a dickhead (Score:4)
When you use such generalizations as "...they're all completely drug-fucked wastes of space..." and respected scientific terms such as "the not being a complete cunt part of your brain" why would we think you unworthy of notice? Why would we not wish to bask in such measured delivery of your wisdom? When you proclaim the devil's weed will "...destroy your mind..." why would we think that to be hyperbole and scare mongering? Oh good sir, taunt us not with your desire to be unheard -- to be banished from our eyes and minds. You do us great injury to suggest such a thing -- even in mockery.
Mod him up! Mod him up, my friends. We must all see what "not being a dickhead" looks like. We must all learn from this shining example.
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Mod you down? If pot heads are the complete fuck ups you describe I doubt there are legions of them moderating at slashdot.