Posted on 02/23/2010 11:38:41 AM PST by nickcarraway
Cigarette smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers, and the more a person smokes, the lower their IQ, a study in over 20,000 Israeli military recruits suggests.
Young men who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day or more had IQ scores 7.5 points lower than non-smokers, Dr. Mark Weiser of Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and his colleagues found.
"Adolescents with poorer IQ scores might be targeted for programs designed to prevent smoking," they conclude in the journal Addiction.
Slideshow: Celebrities Who Quit Smoking
While there is evidence for a link between smoking and lower IQ, many studies have relied on intelligence tests given in childhood, and have also included people with mental and behavioral problems, who are both more likely to smoke and more likely to have low IQs, Weiser and his team note in their report.
To better understand the smoking-IQ relationship, the researchers looked at 20,211 18-year-old men recruited into the Israeli military. The group did not include anyone with major mental health problems, because these individuals are disqualified from military service.
According to the investigators, 28 percent of the study participants smoked at least one cigarette a day, around 3 percent said they were ex-smokers, and 68 percent had never smoked.
The smokers had significantly lower intelligence test scores than non-smokers, and this remained true even after the researchers accounted for socioeconomic status as measured by how many years of formal education a recruit's father had completed.
The average IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before entering the military. IQ steadily dropped as the number of cigarettes smoked increased, from 98 for people who smoked one to five cigarettes daily to 90 for those who smoked more than a pack a day.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
In before the Obama pics...
You’ve left us speechless! LOL!!!
I wonder if this means I’ve gotten smarter over the years? :D
>> The average IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94
Yet, the murdering professor apparently has an IQ of 180. Twice is smart - yet, infinitely more idiotic.
Seems to me that smoking saves lives.
Smoking less? See there!
Smarter people make better decisions.
I guess I am real stupid. Who knew?
All I know is I went the other way. When I quit smoking (cold turkey), I turned into a mouth breather. I developed the attention span of a gerbil. Coherent lengthy conversation with me was impossible. It was so bad my wife hauled me into the doctor’s office, “Look at him! He’s a vegetable!” Turns out nicotine was the only thing that kept those synapses firing like spark plugs in Ferrari. On the up side I’m more easily amused now, and I’ll live longer.
i have been smoking for 40 years.......IQ is 132.....suck it libs...
“Who knew?”
Incoming! Incoming!
What you make lack in the intelligence quotient, you make up in courage! LOL!
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I'm not going to argue with their well-researched claim.
“Cigarette smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers, and the more a person smokes, the lower their IQ,”
Or, maybe, the lower the IQ, the more they smoked?
Are they sure these weren’t pot smokers?
and pole smoking drops it even lower!
I smoked 2 or 3 packs a day for 40 years. Quit cold turkey (the ONLY way to quit) in 1999.
I guess I’m in big trouble.
I don’t believe it. I don’t trust the no-smoking police to tell the truth.
These are the same people who lie about second-hand-smoke.
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