Are you kind of an idiot? Did you own more than two named bongs as a teenager? Have you ever smoked weed out of an apple procured from a high school lunchroom? Well then, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has a brand new study for you. Researchers based at Duke followed 1,037 New Zealanders from birth for 40 years, looking at many different factors in their lives (as part of the massive Dunedin Longitudinal Study), and found an average eight percent decline in IQ among heavy weed smokers (compared to an average one point increase among non-users), controlled for a wide variety of things, including education levels. What’s more, the effect seems to be irreversible.Neuropsychological testing was conducted at age 13 y, before initiation of cannabis use, and again at age 38 y, after a pattern of persistent cannabis use had developed. 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.Of course, we’re talking about eight points here, which isn’t enough to ungenius a genius or turn an already kinda dumb person into a ward of the state. As someone that thinks weed culture is just the worst and is cursed with brain chemicals that don’t react in any good way with pot, I’d love to blow this way out of proportion and say something like enjoy your idiocracy suckers, but not really. I’m actually more concerned about this getting incorporated into War on Drugs bullshit, and the United State’s continued crush on state-level decriminalization/legalization. Not that it would probably matter all that much in the warning message sense — when I was a teenager, DARE was telling us way worse things than weed maybe making is slightly less intelligent, and I’m not entirely sure that stopped anyone ever from smoking tons of weed.
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