President Trump: Marijuana Makes You “Lose IQ Points”

Originally published at blog.NORML.org < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a recently released recording of a conversation that President Trump had with Lev Parnas and others, a short conversation about marijuana can be heard where the President espouses long-debunked claims that echo from the propaganda film Reefer Madness.

“Do you think the whole marijuana thing is a good thing?” Trump asked. Many voices at the table quickly reply “no.” A few moments later, Trump added, “It does cause an IQ problem. You lose IQ points … but it’s actually good for opioids.”

Most studies published on the subject refute this claim.

“We found little support for a potential causal effect of cannabis use on cognition, consistent with previous twin studies. Results suggest that cannabis use may not cause decline in cognitive ability among a normative sample of cannabis users.” – Reseachers published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2019

“Associations between cannabis use and cognitive functioning in cross-sectional studies of adolescents and young adults are small and may be of questionable clinical importance for most individuals.” – Researchers published in JAMA Psychiatry, 2018

“It is troubling that in 2020 we still have a president whose views on marijuana are rooted in long debunked rhetoric,” stated NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri, “Thankfully, the American people are clearly ‘high IQ’ individuals that have elected to base their views on actual scientific research, which has led the vast majority of them to support ending our failed prohibition and moving towards legalization and regulation.”

For more data, see our full factsheet on Marijuana Exposure and Cognitive Performance.