A new study of teens in New Zealand has found that dependent use of pot during adolescence can result in a decline in IQ, attention span and memory.
The findings underscore the fact that marijuana use "is not harmless," researchers say, particularly when it comes to adolescents.
For their study, researchers from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, followed more than 1,000 New Zealanders who started smoking up in their teen years and continued to use cannabis for years afterwards.
Dependent users were defined as those who used more than once a week and who continued to smoke up despite health, social and family problems.
The results showed an average decline in IQ of 8 points when their tests at age 13 and 38 were compared -- a significant slide that can put teens at a major disadvantage later in life, researchers point out, given that higher IQ has been linked to higher education, income, better health and a longer life span.
The study also found that quitting pot-smoking did not appear to reverse the loss. The reason: before the age of 18, the brain is still developing and continually being remodeled, making it particularly vulnerable to the damaging effects of drugs.
For the cognitive test, subjects at the age of 38 were assessed on their memory, processing speed, reasoning and visual processing. Those who used pot as teens scored significantly worse on most of the tests, assessments corroborated from interviews with friends and family who reported that those who used marijuana were more apt to have short attention spans and to be forgetful.
The findings, which were published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 27, build on previous research which likewise found that marijuana use at a young age can impair cognitive flexibility, defined as the ability to switch behavioral responses according to different situations.
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