Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What we fear most

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/14/high-iq-linked-to-drug-use/?hpt=hp_t2

This article is about a British study on kids with high IQs being more likely to use illegal drugs.

I thought this thread would be about snakes.

Their cutoff for "high IQ" is 107.

Isn't that most of the U.S. college population?

I was hoping for "death" myself.

That article does a terribly job of reporting the actual study. You can find the full thing, plus a file of supplementary data, on this page:
http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/recent
(at least, I can: it may be that I'm silently getting past a paywall by virtue of being at work. If so I won't distribute copies, as that would be illegal, but I'm happy to look up the answers to questions.)

At a quick read, they've got an interesting, apparently solid study that does show the effects summarised. They report data by IQ sextile (so the highest sextile is those with IQs of 130+) and it does seem to show that the likelihood of using illegal drugs goes up with IQ (even after adjusting for social class, income etc.) e.g. is higher in those with 130+ than in the next group down etc., not just that those at 107+ are more at risk than those at 93- (or whatever it was). This is interesting and potentially worrying. However, looking at the tertile data, the difference between the risk in the lowest tertile and the middle one is typically much bigger than the difference in risk between the middle and the highest tertile. IOW, assuming one were not terribly worried about the risks for an average-IQ child, one shouldn't be all that much more worried about the risks for a 130+ child.

It would, of course, be interesting to know what happens further out on "our" tail, but I don't think they have that data (you can imagine the difficulties).

You are. I get a payment request.

Thanks ColinsMum, that seems like a good way to walk the line.
So my burning question is - how many people over 130 were included?

also
How much drug use was needed to be 'drug+' documented? Personally I'd be much more upset if a child grows up to be a daily user than a less than once every 2 weeks user. I'm hoping for 'zero' by age 30, but then, I'm hoping for zero by age 30 for alcohol too, and most people don't think that's 'normal.'

How much increased was the risk of the over 130 group to the next lower group?

I wonder how good a job they did of controlling for SES. At my workplace everyone gets a drug test when they are hired, (although not routinely) but most people with my occupation never get a drug test - so I'm sensitive to the 'people with IQ under 107' are much more likely to have jobs with routine drug tests which means that Alcohol is much more favorable than Pot. (Is it still current thinking that from a medical point of view Pot and Alcohol are quite similar? It's been so long since I've followed this question!) My personal impression is that 'daily either' doesn't look good on people, although some tolerate it better than others.

I wonder if I can get funding to study how IQ correlates with Drug testing at work?

Actually I'm more curious about the difference in alcohol and drug use with ADHD plus IQ. My guess would be that the 2e folks would be at both edges, and the 'only high IQ' folks would be more in the middle.

Smiles,
Grinity

What about those with IQ over 140? 150?

My guess is that the rate of drug abuse would go UP . . .

When I saw the thread title, the first thing that came to mind was my dd3's absolute fear of BUGS!! She has even had nightmares about bugs!

That probably depends on your internal position on the War on Drugs.