Pubdate: Fri, 05 Apr 2002
Source: Lake City Reporter (FL)
Copyright: 2002sLake City Reporter
Contact:  http://www.lakecityreporter.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1712
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

THAT IS WHY THEY CALL IT DOPE

Before your 17-year-old waves Tuesday's paper in your face and says, "See, 
man: Marijuana doesn't make you stupid," prepare yourself by reviewing the 
evidence. Tuesday's report, of a study by Peter Fried, a psychology 
professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, actually found considerable 
harm done to intelligence levels among heavy marijuana users. The key is 
that the harm exists only during the period that they are using marijuana 
regularly, and not over the long term. Provided they stop, according to an 
editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

By smoking five or more joints a week, users are lopping four points off 
their IQ ( which is roughly the effect felt by children whose mothers 
smoked crack cocaine when they were pregnant, or consumed three alcoholic 
drinks a day.

As long as they habitually smoke weed, they have every bit as good a jump 
on life as a former crack baby, or someone growing up with fetal alcohol 
syndrome. Like the rest of this luckless fraternity, they're now at much 
higher risk of dropping out of school or being fired from their job. And 
they may discover the brutal joys of addiction ( scientists now believe 
that today's highly potent marijuana (roughly five times as strong as that 
sold on the street 30 years ago) can be psychologically and physically 
habit-forming.

Why did any of the heavy users in Dr. Fried's study quit? They told him 
that their short-term memory and attention span were suffering. Whether 
that effect lasts, Dr. Fried doesn't know. As he stressed in his report, he 
didn't measure these other crucial elements of cognition.

Noteworthy, too, is that Dr. Fried's sample of heavy users was small, with 
only nine people. Keep in mind that lab tests on rats have found lasting 
brain damage in about 5 percent of those heavily dosed with marijuana. 
Regular teen-age users, whose numbers have been growing sharply in the past 
few years, should know that they are dumbing themselves down, in more ways 
than one.
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