Pubdate: Wed, 16 Jan 2013
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2013 Tribune Newspapers
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Page: 17

PREVIOUS STUDY BLAMING LOWER IQ ON POT USE IS DISPUTED

In late August, baby boomers (and others whose teen years were spent 
in a haze of marijuana smoke) seemed to get the comeuppance they had 
long feared: A study suggested that early and frequent pot smoking 
resulted in depressed intelligence scores well into adulthood.

But a new analysis suggests that in assigning blame for the lower IQ 
scores they found, the authors of that study may themselves have 
gotten caught in a haze of confusion.

Social and economic disadvantage in youth - a factor that predisposes 
kids to early marijuana use as well as to adult lives that suppress 
intelligence scores - may explain the earlier findings, asserts a 
Norwegian economist writing this week in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences.

Ole Rogeberg of the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in 
Oslo, Norway, pored over the August marijuana study in search of an 
alternative explanation for the pot smokers' loss of intelligence in adulthood.

"Simulation results suggest that (socioeconomic status-related) 
cognitive decline is sufficient to reproduce" the results found in 
the early research, he wrote.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom