WARNING: Teens Addicted To Cannabis Risk Damaging Their IQ And Show Signs Of Alzheimer

The results are significant because while cannabis has been blamed for relatively rare mental health problems such as schizophrenia, this is the first firm evidence of it wreaking damage on everyday life. Professor Robin Murray, a consultant psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘It is, of course, part of folklore among young people that some heavy users of cannabis seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up achieving much less than one would have anticipated.

Researcher Professor Terrie Moffitt, of the Institute of Psychiatry, said: ‘Research has shown that IQ is a strong determinant of a person’s access to college education, their lifelong total income, their access to a good job, their performance on the job, their tendency to develop heart disease and even early death.

“Individuals who lose eight points in their teens and twenties may be disadvantaged, relative to their same-age peers, in the most important aspects of life and for years to come.”

The analysis, detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found those who used the drug persistently from their teens did worse on a memory test used normally to spot tell-tale signs of dementia.