President Donald Trump: Consumers Can “Lose IQ Points” By Using Cannabis

• The recording was released by the attorney of Lev Parnas, who is an associate of Rudolph Giuliani.
• The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that there’s no correlation between diminished IQ and cannabis use.

The legalization of cannabis has been evolving for quite a while, but one of the big concerns amongst the opposition is the way that the substance impacts the user’s mental state. In a recent article in Forbes, it seems that the US President has a specific idea of exactly what it does. According to a secretly recorded conversation of President Donald Trump, he believes that marijuana can cause the loss of IQ points.

During the clip, which was recorded by an associate of President Trump’s attorney Rudolph Giuliani, named Lev Parnas, Trump states, “In Colorado, they have more accidents.” Colorado was one of the first states to legalize both recreational and medical use of cannabis. He also stated, “It does cause an IQ problem.”

Marijuana arose in the conversation when Parnas asked Trump about the lack of banking services available to businesses in states that have already legalized marijuana. Trump said, “Cannabis, look, you’re talking about marijuana, right? You can’t do banking there?”

Parnas explained that “none of the banks accept the money.” This video, which shows a dinner conversation that was held in 2018, was released to the public by Joseph Bondy. Bondy is Parnas’s attorney, he has also separately was a lead attorney regarding a lawsuit that is challenging the way that federal laws restrict marijuana.

In response, Trump stated, “That whole thing is working out. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.” Trump has previously said that he was in support of allowing states to create their own policies without the intrusion of the federal government.

On the evolution of cannabis, Trump stated last year, “We’re going to see what’s going on. It’s a very big subject and right now we are allowing states to make that decision. A lot of states are making that decision, but we’re allowing states to make that decision.” In a meeting last November, Trump met with health officials regarding the vaping industry when he said that drug prohibition is ineffective.

He stated, “When you watch prohibition, when you look at the alcohol, you look at cigarettes, you look at it all, if you don’t give it to them, it’s going to come here illegally. That’s the one problem I can’t seem to forget.”

In the recording, Trump can also be heard asking many questions about cannabis, including, “Do you think the whole marijuana thing is a good thing?” and “But it’s actually good for opioids.” One of the attendees at the dinner stated the same support for cannabis, adding that it offers more benefits than alcohol or prescription painkillers. Though Parnas suggested getting ahead of the cannabis movement, the president didn’t directly respond to t it.

The claims made by Trump are the opposite of what the National Institute on Drug Abuse has said. The federal agency has remarked,

“[R]ecent results from two prospective longitudinal twin studies did not support a casual relationship between marijuana use and IQ loss.” The NIDA added, “This suggests that observed IQ declines, at least across adolescence, may be caused by shared familial factors (e.g., genetics, family environment), not by marijuana use itself.”

The full video can be viewed: