Could Failure to use Marijuana Responsibly for 5-6 Years as an Adult Pose the Same Mental and General Health Risks as Childhood Use or Even Failure to Exercise?

  Recent research has confirmed findings from the early 2000s which showed an increase in IQ among responsible adult users of marijuana in comparison to those who never used cannabis. While childhood use has been shown to be indicative of negative health consequences concurrent with reduced prolactin levels, looking into the effects of marijuana as a predictor or causal agent in positive health effects outside of the realm of cancer prevention has been relatively untilled ground. That builds on previous research which explored the possibility of using cannabis to reduce levels of dependence on other products with responsible adult use, even as childhood use has been proven to negatively impact the odds of responsible adult use. This paper will review some of the basic facts which longitudinal studies have demonstrated as an effect of responsible adult marijuana use, and how those effects can play out on a society while evaluating some very glaring inconsistencies or limiting factors which have presented.

  The impact of IQ on income and social class has been long established and is well publicized in today's highly technological global community. Less known are its predictive values for life expectancy and more severe mental health complications. Childhood IQ can predict mortality between groups with great discrepancies (Whalley). Lower childhood IQ has been associated with many mental health issues, though it has been shown to predict a lower rate of adult mania, an interesting anomaly which may merit some attention but does not disturb the nature of this trend (Koenen). While the impact of changes in IQ from adult or childhood use of marijuana, whether positive or negative, on life expectancy are minimal, paling in comparison to regular physical activity, which can add as much as a decade, or somewhat akin to tobacco use, shown to remove 1-2 years (Ferrucci), among a population these changes can demonstrate a viable advantage which should not be overlooked. 

  A horizontal shift in IQ can double the highly gifted and geniuses among a society with an average IQ of 98, such as the USA, and will continue to produce significant gains as IQ increases. Massive gains have been seen in the past (Flynn), with many factors that can be held responsible from removing environmental toxins such as lead to increased availability of educational factors which can play roles. The gains which are being described have yielded greater total and proportional numbers of college and high school graduates, which is yielding advantages to all spectrums of society (Moretti). There is no reason this trend should not remain the case.

  Responsible adult use of marijuana has been shown to increase IQ in a causal fashion (Fried) in a manner equivalent to the decline in IQ associated with childhood use. Heavy use is here substituted with childhood use because of later research which showed that the probability of becoming dependent on marijuana are around half of that of alcohol at age 18 and virtually zero by age 21 (Chen). Recent research has shown that the increase in IQ is a causal consequence of cannabis exposure, and not one of a predictive nature, a conclusion largely apparent from research (Filbey). That was research which also helped to investigate some of the mechanisms behind higher brain functioning. This would appear to now be a manner of basic deductive reasoning to see that this increase in IQ also will give a concrete benefit to society with responsible adult use encouraged by the spreading legalization of recreational marijuana.

  Some problems have presented, however, and many of the same issues which have negatively impacted attempts to prohibit cannabis now impede an honest recommendation of use for the purpose of mental health at least, though the anti-cancer properties appear to be solid in nature. Many mental health disorders are accompanied by self-inflicted harm, hard drug use, and other certain outcomes which leads to a negative stigma and a serious approach towards treatment. Early childhood use has been shown, commiserate with a declining IQ and mental functioning, to increase such negative outcomes along with other negative physical and mental effects including decreased mortality (Manrique). Interestingly, however, responsible adult use has "only" been found to result in equivalent outcomes among responsible adult users as those who had never used in all methods of evaluation including hard drug use and mortality from all causes (Andreasson). 

  The research outlined previously does not indicate any limiting factors which should be present in regards to mental health or life expectancy concerns: all countries involved in such research do have room for improvement which far outweighs any contribution from cannabis use of virtually any nature. It is unlikely that there is an organization responsible for the wholesale massacre of 1-2% of the marijuana using community, or slightly early termination of individual marijuana users that could explain the lost additional productivity, life expectancy, and mental health gains which are to be expected in any country, much less the developed countries where this research has taken place, so this particular confounding situation will have to stand as an anomaly or unexplained phenomenon. That statement may appear provocative and the latter precludes the former. Should the former be the case, the mental health gains would still be evident without a targeted shock among the mentally ill. There could also be an issue with multiple research studies, notably the work of Whalley, which would alter this conclusion should heightened IQ not causally impact greater life expectancies, or perhaps most likely, that the Swedish researchers led by Andreasson vastly overestimated the use of marijuana by the conscripts in their study, with heavy use occurring in childhood users but without the vast numbers of extraneous responsible adult users in excess of the childhood users which present in the USA, and naturally with a substance of the type. That is deemed as most likely due to the tendency of European cultures to expose younger children to age-restricted substances than in America, at least. The nature of a bell curve does indicate that the lower tail of IQ performance will demonstrate a limited effect on outliers with further horizontal shocks, so the failure to materialize significant declines in hard drug use or self-inflicted harm and other indicators of lower intellect are not outside of expectations and does not indicate confounding material or discrepancies in research.

  Finally, some issues have been noted with application of the positive and negative health benefits of cannabis to adults from a financial perspective, in terms of productivity gained. While there is no question that the general economy has fared more effectively in a large part due to intellectual progress and increasing regulations which have made American children and adults healthier, application of this theory has fallen apart when applied to responsible adult users of marijuana (Cerdá). As a group, according to research, the increase in IQ should be easily described as an economic shock, giving a great advantage in terms of productivity and social class. Both of these are frustratingly missing after economic research. Unlike the discrepancy in life expectancy, and perhaps exacerbating that conundrum, there are pieces of information which present to address this situation. Because childhood and responsible adult use are not distinctions made previously in research on health care costs, it must be assumed that the costs of childhood marijuana users tend to be much higher as a result of marijuana dependence and psychological or physical manifestations of this. Therefore, research showing that cannabis users as a population have the same per capita health care utilization as those who have never used could be interpreted to show significant gains among the responsible adult users (Fuster). As health care can make up hundreds of thousands of dollars over a life time, and is among the dominant expenses both for an individual and for the government, this may be communication of the gained productivity from cannabis use to healthier lifestyles or investments, if not more financially frugal decisions.

  The research is fascinating and demanding in nature. Seeing the demographic dispersion among groups of people after laboratory or controlled experiments which add a political or social aspect to the work is relatively rare. It can be concluded that responsible adult use of marijuana does indeed result in productivity gains associated with the increased IQ, and equal to the detrimental effects from childhood use. These gains in the current population of marijuana users, as a significant minority, are invested heavily into healthcare, though there is a low likelihood that this would continue with a regulated industry, while the trend may remain to some extent. In terms of life expectancy, the results are anything but clear, and this deserves further attention, investigation, or experimentation. While childhood users face increased mortality risks as expected, the responsible adult users live exactly the same lifespan as those who have never used. The 1-2% gap between expected and actual life expectancies is not explained by limits on health care returns: countries have greater life expectancies than the USA. It does not detract from the massive predicted and realized gains of responsible adult users of marijuana in terms of productivity and health care, or tarnish in anyway the great impact legalized recreational marijuana will have on the United States of America and the world in coming years.

References: 

Andreasson, S., and P. Allebeck. "Cannabis and mortality among young men A longitudinal study of Swedish conscripts." Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 18.1 (1990): 9-15.

Cerdá, Magdalena, et al. "Persistent Cannabis Dependence and Alcohol Dependence Represent Risks for Midlife Economic and Social Problems A Longitudinal Cohort Study." Clinical Psychological Science (2016): 2167702616630958.

Chen, Chuan-Yu, Megan S. O’Brien, and James C. Anthony. "Who becomes cannabis dependent soon after onset of use? Epidemiological evidence from the United States: 2000–2001." Drug and alcohol dependence 79.1 (2005): 11-22.

Ferrucci, Luigi, et al. "Smoking, physical activity, and active life expectancy." American journal of epidemiology 149.7 (1999): 645-653.

Filbey, Francesca M., et al. "Preliminary findings demonstrating latent effects of early adolescent marijuana use onset on cortical architecture." Developmental cognitive neuroscience 16 (2015): 16-22.

Flynn, James R. "The mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932 to 1978." Psychological bulletin 95.1 (1984): 29.
Fried, Peter, et al. "Current and former marijuana use: preliminary findings of a longitudinal study of effects on IQ in young adults." Canadian Medical Association Journal 166.7 (2002): 887-891.

Fuster, Daniel, et al. "No detectable association between frequency of marijuana use and health or healthcare utilization among primary care patients who screen positive for drug use." Journal of general internal medicine 29.1 (2014): 133-139.

Koenen, Karestan C., et al. "Childhood IQ and adult mental disorders: a test of the cognitive reserve hypothesis." American Journal of Psychiatry (2009).

Manrique-Garcia, Edison, et al. "Cannabis use and depression: a longitudinal study of a national cohort of Swedish conscripts." BMC psychiatry 12.1 (2012): 1.

Moretti, Enrico. "Estimating the social return to higher education: evidence from longitudinal and repeated cross-sectional data." Journal of econometrics121.1 (2004): 175-212.

Scallet, Andrew C. "Neurotoxicology of cannabis and THC: a review of chronic exposure studies in animals." Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior 40.3 (1991): 671-676.
Whalley, Lawrence J., and Ian J. Deary. "Longitudinal cohort study of childhood IQ and survival up to age 76." Bmj 322.7290 (2001): 819.

Societal Impacts of Alcohol and Marijuana, Revisited: the German Model.

    In Germany, over the last 25 years the consumption of alcohol has fallen by a third. Legal marijuana use rates (in the Netherlands or abroad, or in decriminalized settings at home) have increased in 18-24 year olds from 7% to 28% during this time period. The economic growth has been enormous, suggesting a link between the two, in order to confirm it would be advantageous to compare the numbers with those outlined in the data from my previous paper on societal impacts of alcohol with a low to moderate impact on the national IQ. In this paper it was demonstrated that while the first 5-10 points of IQ decrease would remove 80% of the geniuses or highly gifted workers from a community, more than this had limited effects until the damage reaches 20 or 30 points. This is because the population begins to move along a straight line on the bell curve, where the initial damage from lead, or once the pollutants in the environment are removed, from illegal or decriminalized marijuana (it should be noted that in a legalized setting, marijuana has been associated with a societal increase of 5 points in IQ, while contaminants or parasites in illegal or decriminalized pot have been connected to a decrease) or alcohol, moves along a steep exponentially defined curve.
    Lead was removed around the same time as this trend in drinking occurred. According to the DAX, the Deutsch (German) stock market, the value has risen by over 4 or 5 times since then, as seen in this graph (1989-2014) from under 2000 points to over 9000 points. The GDP, which is predicted by the DAX, a list of around 30 of the heavyweights in the German economy, to a great extent, also has increased in this period from under 1500 to nearly 4000. These are both in keeping with the increase indicated by an increase in geniuses of 500% in an intellectual property dominant economy (such as Germany or America) as found in most of the modern world.
DAX index of German listed companies:

German GDP from 1970-2014

     While this can seen initially as true and true and unrelated, the fact that previous research in SPECT scan imaging has made the connection between responsible drinking and low cognitive functioning concrete in the last few years seems to indicate that this link is more causal than correlative. This can be seen in previous research into light and moderate alcohol or marijuana use this year. That the hypothetical model outlined in the research into societal impacts of these substances fits exactly to the statistics gathered in the real world is encouraging as well, and demonstrates that this is a legitimate and probably accurate method and application of the scientific information available.

http://platophilosphy.blogspot.com/2014/07/effects-of-regular-or-light-marijuana.html
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/germany-stock-market.png?s=dax&d1=19890101
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/germany-gdp.png?s=wgdpgerm&d1=19870101
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/140619/germany-non-alcoholic-beer
http://platophilosphy.blogspot.com/2014/09/societal-impact-of-currently-under.html

Societal impact of currently under-regulated legal substances: Alcohol and Marijuana in comparison to lead

As seen in the Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography scan imaging, the cognitive damage from alcohol is legitimate; there is damage being done to the brain in significant and substantial amounts over any amount of use. In a heavy marijuana user, one region of the brain increased in function and activity, while the rest remained strong. It would appear that humans have become used to a level of alcohol (a naturally fermenting fruit rotting on the tree at late harvest will not have alcohol over .5%). For adults, while the damage is not permanent, it is significant, and by removing the toxins the brain has the capability of returning to normal. See the video below, posted before, to see an example of this.

What is the impact of this? It was in low and moderate marijuana users found to be nearly 5 points on average an increase in IQ (Fried et al.), there have been studies that suggest marijuana has a detrimental effect though this can be attributed to increased levels of toxoplasma gondii as marijuana is grown in greater amounts in home operations and has exposure to cat feces and has only been observed in states with illegal or decriminalized marijuana laws and recent exposure of leading anti-marijuana academics as corrupt and accepting corporate bribes without disclosing their anti-marijuana bias (Fang). Of low and moderate alcohol users: a "number of studies have noted a measurable diminution in neuropsychologic parameters in habitual consumers of moderate amounts of ethanol" (Eckardt). Taken into context, the estimated damage of lead poisoning (affecting the majority of Americans before the 90's or so, but today only affecting a minority) is 5-10 points  (Bellinger). Translated, as seen on the graph below, this means that the first toxin a population is exposed to will reduce the number of gifted (IQ of 125+) by 80% while when multiple of these are introduced, the bell curve flattens and the damage from 15 points for example will well within 85% (How Pollutants Affect Brain Development). Due to this nature of the bell curve and the improving environmental standards in the United States, there is now the capability to definitely recommend the regulation of alcoholic drinks and foods to under .5 percent.

It should be noted, however, that this graph is not perfectly accurate, and there is a skew on the graph towards a lower IQ where the population is more gradual, as seen demonstrated in actual IQ data below. This means that the effect that is being observed on the high end of the scale is "mirrored" on those with functional or mental retardation and with some substance there is no noticeable effect, and at some point there is an amount at which the number dramatically increase (closer to 20 or 30 points, perhaps associated with illegal narcotic or prescription drug use). An example of this can be seen by looking at the Chinese economy following the legalization of hard drugs in the 1800's which was associated with a loss of approximately 95% of the economy (Major Economies' Share of Global GDP, 0-2005) in just a few generations.

The economic impact of the loss of the gifted group is real, as IQ is directly correlated with achievement, productivity, and income. While the income difference between 90 and 110 IQ points is in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, from 110 to 125 or 130 can be over 500,000 dollars annually (seen below, extrapolating decile into percentile using an exponential scale). So it may only be two percent of the population that is substantially impacted by lead poisoning or unregulated alcohol and marijuana, but the impact to the economy is exponentially greater. This can be seen in the change in the workplace today, populations with clean environments, high-tech industry and low substance use rates have averages of 10 or 20, sometimes just 5 or 6 employees for each manager. Low tech industry in the 1960's involved hundreds of employees per manager or executive in companies and poorly qualified supervision. In countries and parts of the US with low environmental standards or high use rates this can continue to be seen, both legally and in illegal sweatshops.

Source: NLSY79, Bureau of Labor Statistics

By regulating the use of these substances to fall within safe levels, the cultural and societal benefits can be retained, while creating an artificial "Flynn" effect, where environmental factors such as health care, nutrition, or mating and marriage regulation and rules gives a boost to the population as seen below.

Addendum: Due to information on infection from toxoplasma gondii and resulting psychosis and schizophrenia that has only been compiled in a meta-analysis in 2014, the impact of marijuana on the IQ may be incorrect in places with legalized marijuana industries. It would appear that the most severe perceived negative effects of marijuana are in actuality the effect of a small parasite that is present in many cats, the fece of which will infect soil and crops in a home-grow operation for up to a year. The information provided here on the impact of illegal or decriminalized marijuana holds, however, as these laws encourage home grown operations meaning many users will contract the parasite as they will buy from a cat owner at some point. In addition the research was confounded using economic variables, and funding was sourced illegitimately to corporations in an investigation.

Bibliography:

Bellinger, David C., Karen M. Stiles, and Herbert L. Needleman. "Low-level lead exposure, intelligence and academic achievement: a long-term follow-up study." Pediatrics 90.6 (1992): 855-861.

Eckardt, Michael J., et al. "Effects of Moderate Alcohol Consumption on the Central Nervous System*." Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research22.5 (1998): 998-1040.

Fried, Peter, et al. "Current and former marijuana use: preliminary findings of a longitudinal study of effects on IQ in young adults." Canadian Medical Association Journal 166.7 (2002): 887-891.

Fang, Lee. "Leading Anti-Marijuana Academics Are Paid By Painkiller Drug Companies | VICE News." VICE News RSS. VICE News, 7 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Fischer, P. A. (2014). Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography - Alcohol and Marijuana light use, case study.