Smoking marijuana during adolescence linked to verbal IQ difficulties

Smoking marijuana at an early age by teens may cause brain impairment in the areas of verbal IQ. Teens who start smoking marijuana at an early age tends to drop out their school than those who light up their first joint at the age of 17, a new study has found. Researchers from the University of Montreal in Canada suggested that there might be a little ill effect if smoking marijuana is delayed by teenagers by the age of 17.

The findings, published in the journal of Development and Psychopathology, indicate that the adolescents, who smoke pot as early as 14, do worse by 20 on some cognitive tests and tend to drop out of school sooner, which helped to explain the decrease in their verbal abilities.

"Overall, these results suggest that, in addition to academic failure, fundamental life skills necessary for problem-solving and daily adaptation <...> may be affected by early cannabis exposure," said the study.

It has also been found that teenagers who started early smoking are very likely to attend school than non-smokers, which may affect opportunities to further develop verbal intelligence.

Conversely, the early users also had good verbal skills and vocabulary.

"It takes quite a lot of skills for a young adolescent to get hold of drugs; they're not easy-access," said Castellanos-Ryan.

According to the research, it has been found that smoking cannabis during adolescence was only linked to later difficulties with verbal abilities and cognitive abilities of learning by trial-and-error and those abilities declined faster in teens who started smoking early than teens who started smoking later.