Cannabis London - Agencies Young people who smoke cannabis run the risk of a significant and irreversible reduction in their intelligence quotient, or IQ, a scientific research has revealed. The findings come from a study of around 1,000 people in New Zealand. An international team found those who started using cannabis below the age of 18 – while their brains were still developing – suffered a drop in IQ. A UK expert said the research might explain why people who use the drug often seem to under-achieve. For more than 20 years researchers have followed the lives of a group of people from Dunedin in New Zealand. They assessed them as children – before any of them had started using cannabis – and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38. Having taken into account other factors such as alcohol or tobacco dependency or other drug use, as well the number of years spent in education, they found that those who persistently used cannabis suffered a decline in their IQ. The more that people smoked, the greater the loss in IQ. The effect was most marked in those who started smoking cannabis as adolescents. For example, researchers found that individuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and then carried on using it for years showed an average eight-point IQ decline. Stopping or reducing cannabis use failed to fully restore the lost IQ. The researchers, writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that: “Persistent cannabis use over 20 years was associated with neuropsychological decline, and greater decline was evident for more persistent users.” “Collectively, these findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects.” One member of the team, Prof Terrie Moffitt of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, said this study could have a significant impact on our understanding of the dangers posed by cannabis use. “Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today. “It is such a special study that I’m fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains.”