Teenagers who become hooked on cannabis before they reach 18 may be
causing lasting damage to their intelligence, memory and attention, according
to the results of a large, long-term study published on Monday.
Researchers from Britain and the United States found that persistent and
dependent use of cannabis before the age of 18 may have a so-called neurotoxic
effect, but heavy pot use after 18 appears to be less damaging to the brain.
Terrie Moffitt, a psychology and neuroscience professor at King's
College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the scope and length of the
study, which involved more than 1,000 people followed up over 40 years, gave
its findings added weight.
"It's such a special study that I'm fairly confident cannabis is
safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains," she said. Before
the age of 18, the brain is still being organized and remodeled to become more
efficient and may be more vulnerable to damage from drugs, she added.
Moffitt worked with Madeleine Meier, a post-doctoral researcher at Duke
University in the United States, to analyze data on 1,037 New Zealanders who
took part in the study. About 96 percent of the original participants stuck
with the study from 1972 to today, she said.
At age 38, all participants were given a battery of psychological tests
to assess their memory, processing speed, reasoning and visual processing.
Those who had used pot persistently as teens scored significantly worse
in most of the tests. Friends and relatives regularly interviewed as part of
the study were more likely to report that the heavy cannabis users had
attention and memory problems such as losing focus and forgetting to do tasks.
The researchers also found that people who started using cannabis in
adolescence and continued for years afterwards showed an average decline in
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test scores of 8 points between the age of 13 and
38.
"Study subjects who didn't take up pot until they were adults with
fully-formed brains did not show similar mental declines," Moffitt said.
"MARIJUANA
IS NOT HARMLESS"
She said the decline in IQ could not be explained by alcohol or other
drug use or by having less education, and Meier said the key variable was the
age people began to use pot.
Meier said the study's message was clear: "Marijuana is not
harmless, particularly for adolescents." While 8 IQ points may not sound
like a lot on a scale where 100 is the mean, Meier said an IQ drop from 100 to
92 would mean dropping from being in the 50th percentile to being in the 29th.
Higher IQs also correlate with higher levels of education and income,
better health and longer lives, she said. "Somebody who loses 8 IQ points
as an adolescent may be disadvantaged ... for years to come," she added. Robin
Murray, a professor of psychiatric research at King's Institute of Psychiatry,
who was not involved in this work, said the study was impressive and the
findings should be taken "very seriously".
"It is of course part of folk-lore among young people that some
heavy users of cannabis seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up
achieving much less than one would have anticipated," he said in a
statement. "This study provides one explanation as to why this might be
the case."
Previous research on cannabis use has also pointed to potential
long-term psychiatric effects. A study published in March last year found that
people who use it a lot in their youth dramatically increase their risk of
psychotic symptoms, and that continued use of the drug can increase the risk of
developing a psychotic disorder.
Meier pointed out that it was not possible to say from this latest study
what a safer age for persistent pot use might be, or what kind of dosage level
causes damage.
According to the 2011 United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
global drugs report, which used data from 2009, between 2.8 and 4.5 percent of
the world's population aged 15 to 64 - or between 125 and 203 million people -
had used cannabis at least once in the previous 12 months.
Yahoo Canada
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