Will Smoking Weed When You’re Young Make You Dumb When You’re Old?

We’ve all just accepted that people who smoke a lot of weed eventually become burnouts— folks whose brains have been so fried by years of chemicals that they are a little slow on the uptake.

Their reaction times or maybe a little slower, and their attention spans may not be as sharp. Some scientists from Amsterdam are calling bullshit, though, arguing that smoking weed when you’re young does not eventually lead to burnout status later on in life.

The study surveyed 5,162 men who were born between 1949 and 1961. Those who started smoking weed when they were young not only did not show signs of cognitive decline later in life, but adults who regularly smoked weed showed no more cognitive decline than those who didn’t smoke.

Smoking Weed When You’re Young Probably Won’t Ruin Your Brain When You’re Old

The only real, tangible difference between the two groups is that is that the group who smoked on average had an IQ I was 1.3 points lower than those who didn’t. While people generally do put way too much weight on the result of an IQ test, the difference between the two groups was not significant.

The researchers note that there are some drawbacks to the study, like how it only studied men. Despite this limitation, the researchers say that the results still fall in line with a few recent studies that did include women, particularly an Australian study and another one from the US—all of which found that smoking when you’re young has little to no effect on your brain later in life.

If you put down the bong to read this article just in case it said that there would be really bad long-term consequences to smoking weed, please pick up the bong again, press into your lips, and like that bitch up, because your brain will be fine. For now. Maybe there will be another study in 20 years that says otherwise.

Until then, smoke’em if you got them.