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[Lyn Farel]

I recently read about those new studies.

Still less damageable than tobacco me thinks, but until now most people and I tended to think of it as mostly harmless compared to harder drugs (unless you take into account driving while smoking that shit and that kind of things ofc).

[Jev North]

Still not really convinced it's much to worry about. "The men had smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for on average 20 years." That's not even heavy use, that's near-religious dedication to the cause of being stoned. Drink five beers a day for twenty years, see if that changes your brain structure any, not to mention the rest of your internal organs. Hell, eat five hamburgers a day - you'll probably die.

[lallara zhuul]

Each group had 15 or 16 individuals?

I doubt that shows causality very well.

I don't know how the brain works that well or how the size differences in the different parts of the brains affect anything, but it does sound to me like people deducing personalities of others by measuring the shape of the skull.

Good point about the 5 joints a day, that means... whoo boy.
Give me two or three puffs and I'll be baked for an hour or two, 5 fecking joints.
That takes dedication.

[Graelyn]

Yeah, I read this study carefully, and while it's a lot less stupid than most of the other half-assed attempts to release clinical studies on the subject, it's still far from what I would call 'reliable'.

Maybe in a few decades we can get something with some scientific clarity on the topic. The Bad Science done in the name of slurring the drug thus far have been pretty blatant and embarassing.

But we're getting there.

[Louella Dougans]

There was another thing out recently, a long term study of people, and it showed that people that started marijuana abuse before the age of ~18 or so, had significant detrimental effects on memory and concentration and stuff of that nature.

Think it was something called "Dunedin" or similar, after the group of people being studied, they've been tracked for 30 or so years i think.

http://www.nature.com/news/drop-in-iq-linked-to-heavy-teenage-cannabis-use-1.11278 example

[Matariki Rain]

If it's the Dunedin Study, maybe poke around its website.

(I know some people in this. They don't live in Dunedin any more, but keep in touch for their check-ins. It's a major piece of work.)

[lallara zhuul]

Still, the sample was 50 people that had their IQ drop by 8 points.

The way I see it, it is pretty much a hen and an egg kind of situation.

Do people with tendency to have drop in IQ turn into heavy cannabis users or does heavy cannabis use trigger the tendency of the IQ to fall?

It would have been interesting to see how much watching day time television would cause your IQ to drop, or being unemployed, depressed, being on anti-depressants, playing rugby or surfing.

Also... isn't IQ tests pretty much obsolete nowadays with the concept of different kinds of intelligences taking over?

[Makkal]

Hmmm...
It's a really small sample size.

I find myself wondering if the change in brain structure is a result of all the pot use or if a pre-existing condition spurred on a heavy addiction.

And that's not even taking into consideration other possible factors. Do these men have steady jobs, access to health care, and proper nutrition? Are there any other recreational substances they've enjoyed? Most *heavy* pot smokers I know have trouble holding down a job, tend to also drink heavily, and have experimented with other drugs.

Oh, the article answered one of my questions. "The heavy marijuana users, average age 40, said they had used other illicit drugs less than 10 times, the researchers said."

[hellgremlin]

Shrinks my brain, eh? Good. It's too big and... functiony for my liking anyway. I'd be far happier demented and senile than fully cognizant of the world's uncounted horrors