8/27, Monday - The Day The Music Died

hotballa · Aug 28, 2012

With apologies to the "I'm High" thread

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/national/researchers-find-mar1juana-may-harm-adolescent-brain-lower-iq

Researchers find mar1juana may harm adolescent brain, lower IQ

Posted: 08/27/2012
Last Updated: 7 hours and 47 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Teens who routinely smoke mar1juana risk a long-term drop in their IQ, a new study suggests.

The researchers didn't find the same IQ dip for people who became frequent users of pot after 18. Although experts said the new findings are not definitive, they do fit in with earlier signs that the drug is especially harmful to the developing brain.

"Parents should understand that their adolescents are particularly vulnerable,'" said lead researcher Madeline Meier of Duke University.

Study participants from New Zealand were tested for IQ at age 13, likely before any significant mar1juana use, and again at age 38. The mental decline between those two ages was seen only in those who started regularly smoking pot before age 18.

Richie Poulton, a study co-author and professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, said the message of the research is to stay away from mar1juana until adulthood if possible. "For some it's a legal issue," he said, "but for me it's a health issue."

Pot is the most popular illegal drug in the world, with somewhere between 119 million and 224 million users between the ages of 15 and 64 as of 2010, the United Nations reported. Within the United States, 23 percent of high school students said they'd recently smoked mar1juana, making it more popular than cigarettes, the federal government reported in June.

Young people "don't think it's risky," said Staci Gruber, a researcher at the Harvard-affiliated MacLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Gruber, who didn't participate in the new work, said the idea that mar1juana harms the adolescent brain is "something we believe is very likely," and the new finding of IQ declines warrants further investigation.

Experts said the new research is an advance because its methods avoid criticisms of some earlier work, which generally did not measure mental performance before mar1juana use began.

"I think this is the cleanest study I've ever read" that looks for long-term harm from mar1juana use, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped fund the research.

Ken Winters, a psychiatry professor at the University of Minnesota and senior scientist at the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, said the new findings aren't definitive, but they underscore the importance of studying how mar1juana may harm young people. He had no role in the work.

Meier and colleagues reported their work online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was funded with governmental grants from the United States and Britain, and a foundation in Zurich.

The study drew on survey data from more than 1,000 people in New Zealand, everybody born in the town of Dunedin during a year-long span ending in 1973. In addition to IQ tests, they were interviewed five times between ages 18 and 38, including questions related to their mar1juana use.

At age 18, 52 participants indicated they had become dependent on mar1juana, meaning that they continued to use it despite its causing significant health, social or legal problems. Ninety-two others reported dependence starting at a later age.

Researchers compared their IQ scores at age 13 to the score at age 38 and found a drop only in those who had become dependent by 18.

Those deemed dependent in three or more surveys had a drop averaging 8 points. For a person of average intelligence, an 8-point drop would mean ranking higher than only 29 percent of the population rather than 50 percent, the researchers said.

Among participants who'd been dependent at 18 and in at least one later survey, quitting didn't remove the problem. IQ declines showed up even if they'd largely or entirely quit using pot at age 38, analysis showed.

The researchers got similar overall results for IQ decline when they compared participants who reported having used mar1juana at least once a week on average for the past year. The researchers had no data on how much was used on each occasion or how potent it was.

Dr. Duncan Clark, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, said he's not convinced that mental decline is only in those who become dependent by age 18. He said the main lesson he sees in the overall study results is that to preserve one's IQ, it's best to avoid mar1juana entirely, no matter what your age.

The researchers also surveyed people who knew the study participants well at age 38. They found that the more often participants were rated as mar1juana-dependent in the surveys over their lifetimes, the more memory and attention problems were noticed by their acquaintances over the previous year.

Read more: http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/nation...-harm-adolescent-brain-lower-iq#ixzz24omwYzvI
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TLDR: smoking mar1juana makes you stupid, now with SCIENTIFIC proof!

lalala902102001 · Aug 28, 2012

Dude -- stop smoking. It's bad for ya brain.

tmoney1101 · Aug 28, 2012

ballerboy001 · Aug 28, 2012

Well, shoot. I didn't smoke growing up, and I'm still an idiot. What's my excuse? Hehe.

/self-deprecation

dharocks · Aug 28, 2012

Interesting stuff. As much of a proponent of legalization as I am, like tobacco I think it would probably be best to only offer it to people 18 and older. Even if the study is bunk and smoking weed at a young age has no long-term effects on cognitive development, it's an easy substance to abuse, and (for most of us) when we're young it's tough to do much of anything responsibly.

HombreDeHierro · Aug 28, 2012

Lol keep tokin

Nero · Aug 28, 2012

And in other news, water is wet.

da_juice · Aug 28, 2012

I wonder though if this is more correlation/causation. I know the kids who started weed at 12, and they were always the ones getting in trouble, doing bad in school etc. However, I know honors students who do it regularly (and started when they were younger).

heypartner · Aug 28, 2012

Wonder if they've done a study on teens who were alcoholics before age 18.

REEKO_HTOWN · Aug 28, 2012

Surfguy · Aug 28, 2012

That's like saying people who drive risk dying in an accident.

I bet it applies more to those people who don't exercise their brain enough. You know...the ones in the commercials who don't have jobs, are still living with Mom, Mom comes in going "did you find a job today?", and guy is scrambling to open a window while yelling "nah...Mom" as he exhales.

I'm not really buying it. I think it applies to the stupid stoner crowd more than anything else...probably those types with dumbed down service industry jobs who never graduated from college and never really made anything of themselves career-wise.

dharocks · Aug 28, 2012

Surfguy said: ↑

That's like saying people who drive risk dying in an accident.

I bet it applies more to those people who don't exercise their brain enough. You know...the ones in the commercials who don't have jobs, are still living with Mom, Mom comes in going "did you find a job today?", and guy is scrambling to open a window while yelling "nah...Mom" as he exhales.

I'm not really buying it. I think it applies to the stupid stoner crowd more than anything else...probably those types with dumbed down service industry jobs who never graduated from college and never really made anything of themselves career-wise.
Click to expand...

Yeah, one thing I thought about was that I imagine a significant percentage of people who tried weed for the first time after their 18th birthday probably did so in college. So there's that to consider.

krnxsnoopy · Aug 28, 2012

REEKO_HTOWN said: ↑

Click to expand...

7"

sammy · Aug 28, 2012

heypartner said: ↑

Wonder if they've done a study on teens who were alcoholics before age 18.
Click to expand...

/thread

Partying/hangovers are much worse for college students.

moestavern19 · Aug 28, 2012

Anything damaging you do to your brain during the development stages is going to have adverse effects. This really isn't anything new, this study has been done before.

Rocketboi · Aug 28, 2012

I stopped reading after this word

Teens who routinely smoke mar1juana risk a long-term drop in their IQ, a new study suggests.

HombreDeHierro · Aug 28, 2012

The compounds don't physically damage the brain, but psychologically having a tool as powerful as mar1juana can be too much for an immature mind

Angkor Wat · Aug 28, 2012

Yea I don't think this is anything new. Young kids shouldn't be smoking or drinking.

HombreDeHierro · Aug 28, 2012

The compounds don't physically damage the brain, but psychologically having a tool as powerful as mar1juana can be too much for an immature mind

across110thstreet · Aug 28, 2012

19-21 year old mar1juana users here aren't going to like this study.

nah, they're going to go out and GET HIGH RESPONSIBLY.

that'll show 'em!

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8/27, Monday - The Day The Music Died

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REEKO_HTOWN I'm Rich Biiiiaaatch!

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