When talking about weed people usually just say it's "safer than alcohol," but is that
true?
New science looked at THAT QUESTION and their findings might kill your buzz.
Howdy 420 familiars, Trace here for DNews.
Recently, the University of California-Davis announced the first results of a nearly 40-year
long study exploring if marijuana was worse for you than alcohol.
According to their findings, “People who smoked cannabis four or more days of the week
over many years ended up in a lower social class than their parents, with lower-paying,
less skilled and less prestigious jobs than those who were not regular cannabis smokers."
To put it as simply as I can, after following over 1000 people from birth until age 38,
and controlling for every variable they could think of, people who were supposed to be here,
were here - and the only correlation they could see as to why they weren't here -- was
pot.
Yah, I know, you're already down in the comments, but let's break this down and explain why
this study is super important to science.
Firstly, let’s go back to that “four or more days per week, over many years."
The researchers weren't trying throwing shade at pot users, they were drawing a box around
"heavy use" and how that affects their life.
Heavy use categories are those who are consuming more of a drug than the average.
Heavy use for alcohol was determined ages ago, as5 or more drinks in day, 5 days in
a month.
Once they know what heavy use is, they can see how lifestyles of heavy users are affected
by their drug of choice.
Secondly, sociologists have been studying social class for decades with tens of thousands
of people from across the globe; researchers are able to predict what level someone with
specific social upbringing, opportunities and personalities should reach.
So, that’s where these researchers started from.
They KNOW people who are say, middle-class SHOULD clear certain social and economic hurdles
-- remaining in the middle class UNLESS something changes.
So they followed a bunch of people for almost four decades to determine what, if anything,
changed.
The interesting thing about this, is researchers wanted to know what specifically affects people
over time.
So they looked at absolutely everything: credit rating, debt, net worth, what jobs they've
taken and the successes and troubles at said job, food security, relationship quality or
abuse, whether they were on welfare or unemployment, missed credit card payments, traffic violations,
childhood IQ, childhood achievement, ethnicity, level of self-control, and information about
their parent or parents!
This study was crazy.
After all that they put the data into a computer program and started looking for correlations,
finding…
perhaps surprisingly, a connection between heavy pot use, and a drop in expected class.
Super intriguing, right?
People don't normally just, drop in class for no reason…
so they wanted to see how, and why…
It looks, based on this data, a lot of the drops had one thing in common: the people
were smoking pot four days a week or more.
AKA, heavy use.
So, to bring it back: is pot worse for you than alcohol?
More research is needed.
This study didn't look at health, or driving, or whether you raise kids well, or creativity,
just at how regular, heavy pot use over time affected people's place on the economic and
social ladder.
With the legalization of marijuana comes more scrutiny.
The scientists for this UC-Davis study now say marijuana is not, quote "safer than alcohol."
And, in fact, the data indicates "persistent cannabis users constitute a burden on families,
communities, and national social-welfare systems."
They went on to say heavy use of pot did not cause less harm that heavy alcohol use when
it comes to people's social and economic livelihood.
And if it was good, scientists would definitely say so!
They have!
Studies done with thousands of twins found marijuana didn't negatively affect IQ!
And because opioids are habit-forming, cannabis may be a "safer" choice for pain management,
just to name a couple.
Scientists simply want to study pot use to find out what it does to people.
Because alcohol is legal and heavily studies we know it can affect personal lives, work,
relationships, driving, et cetera…
We don't have definitive answers about all this when it comes to weed, yet.
Use pot, don't use pot, that's up to you, but either way, when it comes to heavy use
and socioeconomic effects, now we know.
If you're thinking about pot and saying, YEAH!
AND IF YOU SMOKE POT, you'll go through some gateway into harder drugs!
Is that true?
We looked into it… here.