The More a Person Smokes the Lower IQ Has
An intelligence quotient or IQ is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests intended to detect intelligence. Usually IQ scores are used in various situations: as predictors of educational achievement or additional needs, by social scientists who study the distribution of IQ scores in populations and the relationships between IQ score and other variables, and as predictors of job fulfillment and income.
A recent investigation found that almost all cigarette smokers have lower IQs than non-smokers and even the long period of smoking can lower his/her IQ.
Researchers investigated more than 20,000 Israeli military newcomers.
At the end of the investigation they found that young men, who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day or more, had an IQ scores lower than non-smokers.
The investigated group did not include anyone with major mental health problems, because these individuals are disqualified from military service.
The research has been investigated by Auckland University expert Dr. Marewa Glover, who said it was experiment of a successful campaign by the tobacco industry to target those with lower IQs by using methods such as cartoons and free illustrations.
“They already know that people with poorer cognitive functioning, and populations where that is focused, are going to be more exposed to selling tactics that are not dependent on competence skills,” said Dr Glover, the director of the Centre of Tobacco Control Research at the university.
Researchers also found that the usual IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before becoming military.
So, IQ dropped as the number of cigarettes smoked increased. For example from 98 for people who smoked one to five cigarettes every day to 90 for those who smoked more than a pack a day.
In general adolescents with poorer reasons on cognitive tests might be targeted for programs designed to prevent smoking.
While there were findings for a link between smoking and lower IQ scores, many studies had depended on intelligence tests given in childhood, and had also involved people with mental and behavioral problems, who were both more likely to smoke and more likely to have low IQs.
Researchers concluded that 28 percent of the study participants smoked at least one cigarette a day, about 3 percent said they were ex-smokers and 68 percent had never tried to smoke.
The findings also suggested that lower-IQ individuals were more likely to choose to smoke, rather than that smoking made people less intelligent.
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