Marijuana headlines are half-baked

Neil Seeman- National Post

April 4, 2002

What's a pot smoker to think? He wakes up one morning and reads three incongruous headlines: Heavy Marijuana Use Lowers IQ, Study Finds, (Canadian Press/The Toronto Star); Effect of Pot on IQ Temporary, Study Says, (National Post); and Smoking Pot No Risk to IQ, Study Says, (The Globe and Mail). No, he thinks, this isn't April Fool's; that was the day before.

How do we explain the dueling headlines? In the immortal words of Buffalo Springfield, nobody's right if everybody's wrong. The study's results, reported by Carleton professor Peter Fried in the current edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, were largely inconclusive owing to a number of factors, not least the small sample size.

The study followed 70 youth from birth, evaluating their IQ in their preteens, before any were introduced to drugs, and again in early adulthood. After gauging how much pot the subjects now smoke as young adults, the investigators then assessed the differentials in IQ scores from preteen years to early adulthood for the following groups: current heavy users, current light users, former users and never-users.

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