Personal Evolution

Cannabis Use Steals 8 IQ Points from the Teenage Mind

Scientists have found that regular use of cannabis during adolescence reduces IQ by an average of 8 points.  Even more strikingly, this loss cannot be undone by kicking the habit later in life.

According to a news story on the UK news site Western Spring, the guinea pigs in the experiment were born in 1972/73 and were quizzed about their cannabis usage at the ages of 18, 21, 26, 32 and 38.

Professor Terrie Moffitt said “persistent users, who started as teenagers, suffered a drop of eight IQ points at the age of 38, compared to when they were 13”.

That 8 point drop would mean that for an individual of average intelligence (an IQ of 100 in Great Britain), instead of 50% of the population being more intelligent than them the figure would be 71%. The study also found that a weaker memory and attention span were common.

The results were less true for those in the experiment who took up smoking the class B drug in their 20s, thus demonstrating that the still developing adolescent mind was particularly sensitive to such chemical disruption.

This insight comes at a time when, for the first time, Cannabis users out number tobacco users at American High Schools.  Figures about usage among British youth do not seem to be available.

The popularity of Cannabis has grown throughout the 90s and 00s though the promotion of ‘gangsta rappers’ on popular youth platforms such as MTV.

In a Britain devoid of meaning and confidence young people are increasingly left to find identity anchor points from whatever residual ‘culture’ that surrounds them.

Too many seem to take confidence from emulating the strutting, gun-toting, pot-smoking rule-breakers who flash their ‘bling’ on music television every day on the shinning TV screens before the glazed eyes of our youth.

With a failing economy, massive increases in student debt and average house prices that nearly reach 5.5 times the average annual income we have to ask ourselves how many more of our children will succumb to the desperate , nihilistic life-opt-out that is Cannabis smoking.

To all those who want to realize a brighter picture, I encourage you to shake of the leadership of the poisonous, paralysing liberal elite who have, since the 60s, stripped away our pride, confidence and identity and join us in building a movement that will give our children a life where they have real direction, surety and sense of pride that will once again make the very idea of such brain numbing pastimes a pitiable foreign habit.

The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by King’s College London and Duke University in the USA.  The experiment was conducted in Dunedin New Zealand.