If you are a teenager and you use pot, you may need to take a step back and reconsider after reading this alarming discovery.

Smoking marijuana apparently affects the verbal IQs of adolescent users aged as young as 14. According to a new study, the cognitive abilities of teenage pot smokers diminish by the time they reach 20.

Researchers from Universite de Montreal in Canada found out that teens who keep from smoking marijuana till they reach the age of 17 will most likely exerience little ill-effects compared to those who started earlier.

"We found that adolescents who started using cannabis at 17 or older performed equally well as adolescents who did not use cannabis," the researchers said.

The findings gathered by the researchers led by Natalie Castellanos-Ryan was published in the journal of 
Development and Psychopathology. The study revealed that adolescents who tried a joint as early as 14 face higher risks and will tend to drop out of school sooner. 

"Overall, these results suggest that, in addition to academic failure, fundamental life skills necessary for 
problem-solving, and daily adaptation may be affected by early cannabis exposure," the study figured.

The researchers conducted a variety of cognitive tests on various teenagers in different age groups: 13, 14, and 20. About 294 teenagers participated in the study and filled out a questionnaire once a year between 1991 and 1998.

Roughly half (43 percent) of the respondents admitted that they smoked pot at a certain point during those times but most claimed that it only happened a few times a year. 

At age 20, up to 51 percent of the respondents owned up to still using the substance. 

The study revealed that those who used cannabis early gained poor short-term memory and poor working memory, which is the ability to simply store information such as a phone number long enough to use it.

The study concluded that smoking marijuana during adolescent years could only be linked to later complications with verbal and cognitive abilities to learn through trial-and-error. Such abilities decrease faster in teens who began smoking pot earlier than later in life.