Reason # 1,293,888 to be glad you quit
http://www.foxnews.com/story/
Study: Smokers Have Lower IQs Than Non-Smokers
Reuters
February 23, 2010
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.
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.
(FULL TEXT AVAILABLE BY CLICKING LINK ABOVE)
