Smoking pot is not exactly good for your brain.

There have been some very dumb criminals chronicled on the pages of PopFi over the years, and they share a common thread:  pot use.  From the prisoner who used the Bible as rolling papers to the guy with the pot baggie stuck to his forehead, pot and dumb people go hand in hand.  According to researchers from Duke University, there’s a pretty good reason for that.  Smoking pot during your teenage years drops your IQ a staggering 8 points.

“The findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects,” said study researcher Madeline Meier.

The study followed 1,037 New Zealand children for 25 years; participants took IQ tests at age 13 before any marijuana use.  They were restested at age 38, and throughout the survey, they were frequently given surveys about their drug use.  Only 5 percent of those tested became marijuana users as teens, but among that cohort, those that smoked weed four times a week ended up with an 8-point IQ drop that could not be explained by any other reasons aside from pot use.

Previous studies have linked lower intelligence to pot use, but they weren’t able to rule out the possibility that pot users were just naturally dumber at the start than non-smokers.

Tags: madeline meier, duke university, marijuana, pot use, pot use and iq, pot linked to 8 point iq drop in teens, iq drops with long-term pot use, marijuana use linked to iq drop, marijuana iq drop, unusual studies, new zealand, pot and brain functioning, marijuana and brain functioning, pot makes you dumber, intelligence and marijuana

I’ve never had a problem eating food from a gas station.  Just two weeks ago, I ate a couple of hot dogs purchased from a gas station.  They were delicious.  That’s not the first time I’ve eaten gas station food, and I doubt it will be the last.  There’s nothing like a fun food novelty. […]

Commissioner Roger Goodell gathered 32 NFL owners for one big question.  One of the league’s most wanderlust-stricken franchises is looking to move again.  The Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland Raiders, tired of gutting it out in a run-down stadium, were once again looking for greener pastures.  Only the Miami Dolphins refused to cooperate.  With a vote of 31-1, […]

In 2006, an injury to Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe opened the door for an undrafted free agent by the name of Tony Romo to take the helm of America’s Team and lead the Dallas Cowboys to an early playoff exit.  Bledsoe went from starter to afterthought in a season.  Now, the circle continues […]

For 89 years, Oscars has never had a major mistake.  The last few Oscars might have had a few flubs, but at least they never got the most important category of the night wrong.  Well, that’s now changed, all thanks to OG Bonnie and Clyde legends Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.  When Faye Dunaway called […]

Tom Brady has been wildly successful, if controversial.  He’s the first quarterback ever to win five Super Bowls and only the second player to do so after Charles Haley.  Unlike Haley, Brady won all his Super Bowls with the same team, the New England Patriots.  The only thing that seems to be able to stop […]

Ben Affleck, no matter what you might think of him, is a talented actor and director.  He’s got the goods, but he’s smart enough to know when he’s in over his head.  All along, since he took on the mantle of Batman, he’s had his eyes on writing, directing, and starring as the Caped Crusader. […]

In May, students for the for-profit American College of Education were running into some problems.  Their access to email accounts and course information was locked down by Google, who had disabled their accounts.  The reason why?  A fired IT worker for the American College of Education locked the school out of their Google cloud account. […]