Let’s be clear: being unintelligent and getting crappy grades are two entirely different things.
Want to know why pot smokers get lower grades? Not because smoking the herbal makes you dumber, but because they just don’t give a shit. It has nothing to do with their IQ. So f*ck the Daily Mail for publishing this wildly misleading headline: “Cannabis DOES make you stupid: Weed smokers have consistently low grades through school, study finds.”
Clickbait 101 right there. Saying weed makes you stupid is like saying eating food makes you fat. Technically, yes, but it’s not because of the food itself, it’s because you have a shitty diet. Apples and oranges. Pot smokers don’t get worse grades because they’re any less intelligent, but because they’re probably skipping class to, ya know, smoke weed. I resent the hell out of people who think that smoking weed makes you dumber because that is NOT true … it just makes you lazier.
Via Daily Mail:
Researchers observed 1,100 teenagers who had started college in the US with similar rates of academic success over two years. However, the participants all smoked different amounts of cannabis and consumed various levels of alcohol. Grade Point Average (GPA) data was tracked for each participant, while their previous exam results were also assessed.
The teenagers were then split into three groups: youths who used little or no alcohol or marijuana, people who drank a lot but didn’t smoke much pot, and heavy users of both substances. They found that the students who drank a lot but didn’t smoke tended to get lower grades during the first semester of college. However, they then went on to achieve similar grades in comparison with sober students, according to the study published in PLOS ONE.
For the first semester, the mostly sober student group had an average GPA of 3.1 and the heavy drinkers had an average GPA of 3.03 – the equivalent of a B. But for students who were heavy users of both substances, their academic success continued to decrease. They had an average GPA of 2.66, which is equivalent to a B- or a C+.
So, don’t let this study get you down, stoners. You’re just as smart as the rest of them, you just don’t give a shit, and that’s a virtue.
