Researchers at UC San Diego have confirmed something that has long been suspected anecdotally: Those stoned kids in high school just don’t keep up.
According to a recently released study involving more than 11,000 teens who were tracked from the age of 9-10 until they were 16-17, “cannabis use [is] tied to slower gains in memory, focus and thinking speed, as well as worse memory over time during key years of brain development.”
Studies of illegal drug use are always complicated by ethical concerns, of course — researchers can’t provide the substances to those being researched — so the scientists instead allowed the children to self-report their marijuana use. That data was augmented with biological testing, including hair, urine and saliva samples, from which researchers can determine cannabis use going back several months…