I saw a huge ad in the New York Times today aimed at parents, trying to convince them to stop their kids from smoking weed or else they'll drop out of school and their hair will fall out or something. Then they hit you with some statistics to prove their point, that D students are 4 times more likely to have used marijuana in the past month than A students.

Ok, so this means that smoking pot causes bad grades, right? Well for those of you who haven't learned yet, statistics can be used to prove just about anything you want. This ad makes out pot to be a cause, and bad grades an effect. Now this may very well be true, but what if it goes deeper than that? What if pot use and bad grades are both symptoms of another affliction?

Now, I didn't use pot until the summer after I graduated high school (I'm a sophomore in college now), but the majority of kids who smoked pot and got bad grades in my high school had troubled home lives. For some kids I knew this to be a fact, but for others, it's just too obvious. The academic achievers (some of whom smoked weed) in my school were, by and large, from loving and intact families.

Now, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that when Dad is out of the picture and Mom is struggling with two jobs and is verbally abusive, getting high looks like a great idea. Such an environment doesn't exactly create the self-esteem and motivation needed to excel in school either. So does this make pot the cause of the problems in school?

Learn to pick out these half-truths in the anti-pot propaganda.
Sgt. Pepper Reviewed by Sgt. Pepper on . Marijuana use has been linked to poor performance in school! I saw a huge ad in the New York Times today aimed at parents, trying to convince them to stop their kids from smoking weed or else they'll drop out of school and their hair will fall out or something. Then they hit you with some statistics to prove their point, that D students are 4 times more likely to have used marijuana in the past month than A students. Ok, so this means that smoking pot causes bad grades, right? Well for those of you who haven't learned yet, statistics can be used to Rating: 5