Young cannabis smokers run risk of lower IQ, report claims

[Bald Bouncer]

Young people who smoke cannabis for years run the risk of a significant and irreversible reduction in their IQ, research suggests.



The findings come from a study of around 1,000 people in New Zealand.

An international team found those who started using cannabis below the age of 18 - while their brains were still developing - suffered a drop in IQ.

A UK expert said the research might explain why people who use the drug often seem to under-achieve.

For more than 20 years researchers have followed the lives of a group of people from Dunedin in New Zealand.

They assessed them as children - before any of them had started using cannabis - and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38.

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, 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.

The more that people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ.

The effect was most marked in those who started smoking cannabis as adolescents.

For example, researchers found that individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and then carried on using it for years showed an average eight-point IQ decline.

Stopping or reducing cannabis use failed to fully restore the lost IQ.

The researchers, writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that: "Persistent cannabis use over 20 years was associated with neuropsychological decline, and greater decline was evident for more persistent users."

"Collectively, these findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects."

One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use.

"This work took an amazing scientific effort. We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users.

"Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today.

"It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research, also at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry but not involved in the study, said this was an impressive piece of research.

"The Dunedin sample is probably the most intensively studied cohort in the world and therefore the data are very good.

"Although one should never be convinced by a single study, I take the findings very seriously.

"There are a lot of clinical and educational anecdotal reports that cannabis users tend to be less successful in their educational achievement, marriages and occupations.

"It is of course part of folk-lore among young people that some heavy users of cannabis - my daughter calls them stoners - seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up achieving much less than one would have anticipated. This study provides one explanation as to why this might be the case.

"I suspect that the findings are true. If and when they are replicated then it will be very important and public education campaigns should be initiated to let people know the risks."

Prof Val Curran, from the British Association for Psychopharmacology and University College London, said: "What it shows is if you are a really heavy stoner there are going to be consequences, which I think most people would accept.

"This is not occasional or recreation use."

She also cautioned that there may be another explanation, such as depression, which could result in lower IQ and cannabis use.

Source

[Mystical_2K]

Young people who smoke cannabis for years run the risk of a significant and irreversible reduction in their IQ, research suggests.



The findings come from a study of around 1,000 people in New Zealand.

An international team found those who started using cannabis below the age of 18 - while their brains were still developing - suffered a drop in IQ.

A UK expert said the research might explain why people who use the drug often seem to under-achieve.

For more than 20 years researchers have followed the lives of a group of people from Dunedin in New Zealand.

They assessed them as children - before any of them had started using cannabis - and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38.

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, 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.

The more that people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ.

The effect was most marked in those who started smoking cannabis as adolescents.

For example, researchers found that individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and then carried on using it for years showed an average eight-point IQ decline.

Stopping or reducing cannabis use failed to fully restore the lost IQ.

The researchers, writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that: "Persistent cannabis use over 20 years was associated with neuropsychological decline, and greater decline was evident for more persistent users."

"Collectively, these findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects."

One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use.

"This work took an amazing scientific effort. We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users.

"Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today.

"It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research, also at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry but not involved in the study, said this was an impressive piece of research.

"The Dunedin sample is probably the most intensively studied cohort in the world and therefore the data are very good.

"Although one should never be convinced by a single study, I take the findings very seriously.

"There are a lot of clinical and educational anecdotal reports that cannabis users tend to be less successful in their educational achievement, marriages and occupations.

"It is of course part of folk-lore among young people that some heavy users of cannabis - my daughter calls them stoners - seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up achieving much less than one would have anticipated. This study provides one explanation as to why this might be the case.

"I suspect that the findings are true. If and when they are replicated then it will be very important and public education campaigns should be initiated to let people know the risks."

Prof Val Curran, from the British Association for Psychopharmacology and University College London, said: "What it shows is if you are a really heavy stoner there are going to be consequences, which I think most people would accept.

"This is not occasional or recreation use."

She also cautioned that there may be another explanation, such as depression, which could result in lower IQ and cannabis use.

Source

fuck whatever all that said, i just want a go on that reefer that young lady is going at

[BigBird]

Only ever tried a joint once. Was at the bulldog bash in 2004 Everyone else was down the large marquee listening to the band and I was keeping my m8 company on his bike breakers autojumble stall. He lit a large joint and passed it to me. It was just then that Men and Motors asked him if they could film the stall for their program. We had been passing the joint back and forth without thinking. After they had finished filming he looked at me with a look of sudden realization and said, "for fucks sake, we've just been filmed smoking what is obviously a joint, on sky TV. My mothers not going to talk to me for weeks". Had to laugh - he was 42 years old at the time.

Glad my daughter has never bothered with any sort of drug including cigarettes or alcohol. Same with the girlfriends five grown up kids. They have the odd drink when out with friends but have never seen any of them pissed. I think my daughter learn't about addiction early in life watching her mother spend £200/week of my hard earned money in the slot machines for years. The gambling stopped when I finally went into the arcade and put my fist through the front of the slot machine and what was, according to the owner, vandal proof glass. Another addiction took its place and she spent the next ten years drinking herself almost to death.

One thing i can never understand is why young teens start smoking with all the bad press that smoking gets, and everything that is in the news about the damage it does. And there is the cost which should be putting them off - but it doesn't seem to. (">

[darkstar]

Will not matter to most pot heads as thay think it's the cure from every thing from MS to whatever Ells thay can think of ... My 18 year old lad is a bit of a pot head and all you get out of him is it's never killed any one it helps me with my ADHD blah blah blah and so forth and so on

[Bald Bouncer]

fuck whatever all that said, i just want a go on that reefer that young lady is going at

Yeah that's the difference between pot smokers and non pot smokers I just want a go on the young lady

[rIKmAN]

LOL My first thought exactly Mystical!
I didn't understand the rest of the article due to my low IQ...

Will not matter to most pot heads as thay think it's the cure from every thing from MS to whatever Ells thay can think of ... My 18 year old lad is a bit of a pot head and all you get out of him is it's never killed any one it helps me with my ADHD blah blah blah and so forth and so on

It's people with your attitude that is the problem, open your eyes, do some research and reading before you start giving it a bad name.

I dunno about where you live but I don't see groups of people fighting outside my local cos they are stoned, or dying of liver disease cos they smoked too much weed, yet there is a pub on every corner.

Not saying it's for everyone but get some perspective.

[Bald Bouncer]

LOL My first thought exactly Mystical!
I didn't understand the rest of the article due to my low IQ...



It's people with your attitude that is the problem, open your eyes, do some research and reading before you start giving it a bad name.

I dunno about where you live but I don't see groups of people fighting outside my local cos they are stoned, or dying of liver disease cos they smoked too much weed, yet there is a pub on every corner.

Not saying it's for everyone but get some perspective.

I am for the legalisation but you should also do some research on the down sides (Alzheimer's for instance) of which there are many although for medical reasons I believe they are outweighed by the benefits and I have seen plenty of aggressive people on skunk starting trouble while working the door.

[rIKmAN]

If your working the door you can be 99.9% sure they have been drinking as well though so thats not really a good comparison.

Basically it should be legalised but it won't because of money...I made a big post in another thread a while back with my views on this, but to outright say "potheads will say it does this and that" without any kind of research just makes you look is silly.

edit:
Just to add a lot of these "mental" effects are likely caused because it is unregulated and people are buying shit weed grown in lofts and sprayed with all sorts of shit.

In the post I mentioned above I went into the different strains of weed (Indica/Sativa) and the various effects of both, if it was legalised then the weed would be medical grade and would change the effects it had on people rather than the mainly Indica strans we get in the UK which are the ones that make you want to munch food and cabbage on the couch.

[Over Carl]

She also cautioned that there may be another explanation, such as depression, which could result in lower IQ and cannabis use.

At least this researcher has been honest enough to admit this which is often not mentioned - there's been a spate of new articles about cannabis causing mental illness all of which seem to ignore the fact that correlation does not equal causation.

Makes me wonder why that side isn't studied - whether cannabis is the cause or a symptom.

[Mystical_2K]

Yeah that's the difference between pot smokers and non pot smokers I just want a go on the young lady

fuck!!!.............its affecting me more than i thought!

Will not matter to most pot heads as thay think it's the cure from every thing from MS to whatever Ells thay can think of ... My 18 year old lad is a bit of a pot head and all you get out of him is it's never killed any one it helps me with my ADHD blah blah blah and so forth and so on

very true, i have met plenty of people who seem to think that pot is the cure for all problems and its definitely not however it has proven medical properties and i am all for its use in medicine and legalisation as such, recreational use is another matter entirely

LOL My first thought exactly Mystical!
I didn't understand the rest of the article due to my low IQ...






It's people with your attitude that is the problem, open your eyes, do some research and reading before you start giving it a bad name.


I dunno about where you live but I don't see groups of people fighting outside my local cos they are stoned, or dying of liver disease cos they smoked too much weed, yet there is a pub on every corner.


Not saying it's for everyone but get some perspective.

yeah gotta be honest never had a fight whilst stoned but have definitely had a few scrapes over the years, i would say 99% involving alcohol but some people want to fight, regardless of what they have had, mixing pot with alcohol will also not usually end well for most people


sadly pot gets lumbered into the same category as other drugs and it makes people see it in the same light, however people who have taken drugs understand the difference between cannabis and other drugs, theirs a huge difference

where i work they do drug research and because i smoke pot naturally i wanted to know what these scientists and pharmacists thought of it and how dangerous it is, they said on the whole it wouldnt cause you any harm, however the idea of Alzheimer's and stuff is always a possibility and causes of these conditions and really still unknown and as such they can't deny their could be a correlation, the long term effects of any drugs and generally unknown apparently, also something they told me which i wasn't aware of was that when they hand in their research the government doesn't need to actually use that data.

e.g. say where i work decided that they found cannabis to be 100% safe in their opinion but other companies submitting their findings to the government disagreed, well the government just picks and chooses which studies it wants to use, so they can tailor their results to whatever they want basically, now i know this happens all the time but its different to just hear about it and be told by one of the people who's studies they didn't use because it went against the current trend, i found that quite shitty personally

[Bald Bouncer]

At least this researcher has been honest enough to admit this which is often not mentioned - there's been a spate of new articles about cannabis causing mental illness all of which seem to ignore the fact that correlation does not equal causation.

Makes me wonder why that side isn't studied - whether cannabis is the cause or a symptom.

I think a lot of the problem is similar to smoking causing cancer in the way it was always difficult to prove a direct link because of so many factors being involved not least the fact there are also many other things that can cause the body to react with the same result, I am not fighting a corner damning cannabis far from it I would like to see it legalised and prescribed for some medical conditions but I do believe some cannabis smokers have there heads in the sand to the same degree smokers have or at least used to have.

[supraman54]

"I have seen plenty of aggressive people on skunk starting trouble while working the door."

My sentiments entirely.. I had someone close to me become phsychologically altered by doing and ounce of Skunk a month over a long period and they smoked it neat ... no ordinary baccy in those joints.
It destroyed relationships so i'm more against that than the use of resin etc.

[Over Carl]

I think a lot of the problem is similar to smoking causing cancer in the way it was always difficult to prove a direct link because of so many factors being involved not least the fact there are also many other things that can cause the body to react with the same result, I am not fighting a corner damning cannabis far from it I would like to see it legalised and prescribed for some medical conditions but I do believe some cannabis smokers have there heads in the sand to the same degree smokers have or at least used to have.

As much as no study has proven a link between cannabis and cancer, I think it's common sense if you take a filtered cigarette which is proven to cause cancer, then put half the contents into a joint, the other half being something that has been grown with no quality controls and could be contaminated (there was a lot of sand/glass added a few years back for instance), and smoke this without a filter then obviously the smoke will be carcinogenic, even if it hasn't been proven.

So with regards to physical health I think it's obvious cannabis won't help (unless people go off on a tangent and start talking about how stoners sit indoors giggling/staring at walls instead of getting pissed and into punch ups). However the mental side I reckon could do with a lot more research (specifically on whether it is a symptom or cause) before people start making any claims. Just for instance, the brain has specific receptors for cannabinoids and cannabis helps a lot of people be more creative so I think something subtle is happening in the background that we don't really understand.

[Over Carl]

My sentiments entirely.. I had someone close to me become phsychologically altered by doing and ounce of Skunk a month over a long period and they smoked it neat ... no ordinary baccy in those joints.
It destroyed relationships so i'm more against that than the use of resin etc.

An ounce of skunk a month is nothing. I would say even an oz a week is nothing really. I suspect something may have already been happening and he used cannabis to try and calm himself down or maybe it just tipped him over the edge.

[Mystical_2K]

"I have seen plenty of aggressive people on skunk starting trouble while working the door."


My sentiments entirely.. I had someone close to me become phsychologically altered by doing and ounce of Skunk a month over a long period and they smoked it neat ... no ordinary baccy in those joints.
It destroyed relationships so i'm more against that than the use of resin etc.

to give you an idea, i have smoked approximately 1/2 oz a week (and more, never less) for the past 10 years, now in that time i have been to college, been to university (and passed), got a full time job, bought a house and adopted a kitty cat, oh and have also had 2 long term relationships during that time, at no point did pot cause any problems with any of my relationships, college work, going to work etc. (have skipped a couple of days due to hangovers tho)


oh and i can assure that i have always got my pot from the same guy for the past 5 years and i can assure you the quality control is out of this world

[darkstar]

LOL My first thought exactly Mystical!
I didn't understand the rest of the article due to my low IQ...



It's people with your attitude that is the problem, open your eyes, do some research and reading before you start giving it a bad name.

I dunno about where you live but I don't see groups of people fighting outside my local cos they are stoned, or dying of liver disease cos they smoked too much weed, yet there is a pub on every corner.

Not saying it's for everyone but get some perspective.

People like me ..get some perspective .... Would you be one of the pot head brigade by any chance ...yes it may have some benefits medically and yes most pot heads don't go and smash things up like piss heads but sick and tired of pot heads saying it does no harm

[greaseweasel]

to give you an idea, i have smoked approximately 1/2 oz a week (and more, never less) for the past 10 years, now in that time i have been to college, been to university (and passed), got a full time job, bought a house and adopted a kitty cat, oh and have also had 2 long term relationships during that time, at no point did pot cause any problems with any of my relationships, college work, going to work etc. (have skipped a couple of days due to hangovers

Unlucky, just think what you could have achieved if you'd stayed clean

[BigBird]

As I said earlier I have only tried it once but I do have friends that smoke on a regular basis. I have always been of the opinion that the harm it does in nothing when compared to alcohol which in my opinion is one of the most abused, and destructive, drugs available. When people hear me talk about the relatively harmless effects of cannabis they probably think I smoke it myself. I don't, but have never had a problem with people that do. I would rather be in the company of someone stoned on Cannabis than someone pissed on alcohol. (">

[greaseweasel]

As with most drugs (including alcohol) its the regularity that does the damage.

Getting stoned once in a while is just like the odd binge on booze. I'm sure most of us do it.

It's hitting the stuff everyday that will do the damage, in the same way it will with booze etc.

[prezzy]

It's hitting the stuff everyday that will do the damage, in the same way it will with booze etc.

Hardly - I have smoked weed pretty much every day for the last 19 years if I had done that with alcohol I think I would have some sort of liver disease by now?

Just finished a degree at 33 and not having studied for around 14 years I can't see my IQ has dropped much either