Smoking weed does not make you dumb

[saor]

Who cares, if people want to smoke the stuff let them smoke it, let it be their free choice.

I would much prefer to have a stoner as a friend than a drunk who kills people on the road and gets aggressive with their families while hardly being able to stand and puking everywhere, been there seen that with friends, disgusting.

If smoking does impact intelligence or affect IQ, people can make a more informed decision. It will also determine in those places where it's legal - at what age it should be legal. People can't just draft laws without sufficient information to support those laws, and something like the ages during which a person is most susceptible to being impaired by weed is a useful metric. If indeed any such impairment occurs.

And even for adults it's important to know the risks. It's like having a lackadaisical attitude toward cigarettes in the 70's: "Ah man it's all good enjoy!" But we don't think that way anymore because we have sufficient information about cigarettes to make a conscious decision to smoke less / not at all. And I don't think weed should be exempt from that attitude.

 

[rayven_king]

Bollocks. Smoking weed makes you lazy and inclined to not study as much. It may not affect IQ, but it sure does make you dumb.

actually I do a lot of reading after having my evening MJ

 

[LCBXX]

What exactly is the point of this study? Just legalize and regulate it already!

 

[C4Cat]

This is related to an earlier study that showed that smoking mj before the age of 18 permanently lowers IQ

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/459835-Cannabis-smoking-permanently-lowers-IQ

This newer study shows that it is not the case - in fact marijuana does not cause decline in intelligence among teenage users.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/marijuana-does-not-cause-decline-intelligence-among-teenage-users-1538607

US researchers looked at more than 3,000 individuals, including twins, measuring cognitive decline of cannabis users compared to non-cannabis users.

Researchers from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles noted that marijuana use in adolescence has previously been associated with reduced intelligence, memory, attention and verbal ability. But whether the drug directly causes cognitive decline, or if there are other factors at play, is unclear.

But importantly, researchers showed there was no evidence of a correlation between frequency of use and decline in intelligence and there was no difference in cognitive declines between twins where one sibling used marijuana and the other did not. This, they say, suggests the apparent cognitive decline seen among marijuana users is likely not directly caused by the drug directly.

The findings echo similar research carried out in the UK on 2,235 teens. Published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, scientists noted that previous research had shown teenage cannabis users tended to have higher rates of behavioural problems, depressive symptoms, use alcohol and smoke cigarettes.

After adjusting for these factors, they found there was no difference in the IQs and educational performances of teenagers that used marijuana and those who did not. "Cannabis use by the age of 15 did not predict either lower teenage IQ scores or poorer educational performance," they wrote. "These findings therefore suggest that cannabis use at the modest levels used by this sample of teenagers is not by itself causally related to cognitive impairment. Instead, our findings imply that previously reported associations between adolescent cannabis use and poorer intellectual and educational outcomes may be confounded to a significant degree by related factors."

 

[daveza]

This newer study shows that it is not the case - in fact marijuana does not cause decline in intelligence among teenage users.

All teenagers know everything.

 

[Baxteen]

I was going to clean my room

I was going to sing along to this song...

 

[kianm]

Legalize it :erm: