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College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades
- perpetualcrayon 9y agoHere's the study in question: http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MS20610manuscript.pdf http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MS20610manu...
- meri_dian 9y agoWeed is not a panacea. Some people foolishly think otherwise. It should still be legalized, but we have to be realistic about its negatives
- hartator 9y agoThis. I am for legaization, but it feels people start to think it's no drawback drug when it's not.
- stretchwithme 9y agoI hear it can affect spelling.
- chillwaves 9y agoNobody believes weed will make you better at studying. Nobody.
- travisjungroth 9y agoNot directly, but many people take weed to relax or relieve anxiety and believe that those things are helpful for their studies.
- maratd 9y ago> many people take weed to relax or relieve anxiety and believe that those things are helpful for their studies They believe it's helpful to their life in general, which this study isn't measuring. Nobody in their right mind smokes weed to improve their GPA.
- sevenfive 9y agoUndergrad here. Plenty of people believe this.
- paulcole 9y agoYou haven't spent much time in /r/trees. If there's a nutty belief about weed, more than a few somebodies there buy into it.
- Govindae 9y agoThere can be no opinion so wrong that no one will hold on to it. https://www.quora.com/Does-smoking-weed-help-studying https://www.quora.com/Does-smoking-weed-help-studying
- emmab 9y agoBut anti-weed will make you better at studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant (nootropic but can cause suicide, CB1 inverse agonist)
- bigspider421 9y agoNothing is absolute - I'm a medical user (with anxiety/ADHD/depression) and it's been a complete lifesaver for me, working where pharmaceuticals did not. I did not respond well to traditional stimulants (they only made me more anxious and racy) but medical cannabis is literally the only reason why I was able to function through my PhD program which I had completed two years ago at a top-tier U.S. institution. FWIW, I am very selective with my strains - only certain types actually help, and my dosage is mild enough to not have strong psychoactive effects (higher CBD-strains). Medical cannabis has truly had a significant impact on the trajectory of my life.
- wyclif 9y agoonly certain types actually help Out of curiosity, what are those? I'm not an expert and I'm really only aware of the sativa/indica divide.
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoFrom the GP: "higher CBD-strains" Here's a description of how CBD differs from THC: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/whats-the-deal-with-these-high-cbd-strains https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/whats-the-deal-with... and I can attest to what it says. I don't like feeling high, but I do like feeling mellow. It's sort of like the difference between having a glass of wine and pounding shots to me.
- heurist 9y agoSame here. Anxiety + ADHD + depression made college extremely difficult for me. It wasn't until I began smoking regularly after college that I began to gain perspective and control over my life and surrounding environment. Had I started a little sooner college could have been a much more positive experience for me. Agreed that only certain strains have a positive impact, still trying to figure out what works for me but it's difficult when local options are so limited...
- southphillyman 9y agoDue to it's impact on short term memory I'm not sure it's the best thing for "studying"...but I knew of some med students who would smoke then write R code on datasets until the wee hours of the morning. I guess they were using it as an Adderall substitute of sorts
- owebmaster 9y agoI do, by personal experience.
- prostoalex 9y agoI believe what's currently known is that some amounts of THC lead to lower "default mode network" activity in the frontal core. The default mode network - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lsd-may-chip-away-at-the-brain-s-sense-of-self-network/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lsd-may-chip-away... - is associated with daily activities we think of as distracting - anxiety, worrying about the future, going over the past failures, incessant needs to check e-mail, Instagram or respond to a push notification. Subduing default mode network provides a pathway to concentration, if one's mind is set on it, like reading the book or going over the test question bank. But it could also be squandered on other activities unrelated to learning.
- _jal 9y agoHumans: still acting like humans, film at 11. It also shouldn't need saying that this is hardly unique to pot. Also, it won't change. How many millennia have been spent since someone figured out fruit ferments into something that makes you feel good? And yet people continue to slide into alcoholism every day, in every culture. Even the ones where it is illegal. That said, sure, I can see a temporary effect where legal pot is "new" (really, very old, but that's a different discussion), and so trendy, and the media feedback-loop kicks in so certain kinds of parents have something vaguely novel to upset themselves with. We'll be past that in a generation.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> And yet people continue to slide into alcoholism every day, in every culture. Even the ones where it is illegal. This is a strange thing to "even". You'd expect alcohol to be illegal where it was more of a problem, not where it was less of a problem. In cultures where nobody succumbs to alcoholism, why would alcohol be prohibited?
- _jal 9y agoYou know, this isn't a question of philosophy. We're not reasoning from first-principles. You might consider looking to the googles for an answer as to which nation-states currently ban alcohol, and then consider what commonalities they might share. I'll save you the first half of that effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_alcohol_prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_alcohol...
- thaumasiotes 9y agoThose are Islamic countries. Do you think there's a reason the prohibition was made? Do you think there might be a reason it stuck? Alcohol is also frequently prohibited on Indian reservations. Why do you think that is?
- AstralStorm 9y ago
- tmnvix 9y agoStill less detrimental to a life than prison, because let's face it - legal or not, students will smoke pot.
- vlunkr 9y agoDoesn't this study maybe suggest otherwise? (That these students didn't replace it with illegal stuff)
- firethief 9y agoStudents don't go to prison for smoking pot.
- richardknop 9y agoI don't think you go to prison for smoking pot. The only way I can imagine you end up in prison is if police catch you with some massive amount of weed which means you are a big time dealer / manufacturer. A student with few grams of pot on him/her will not go to prison for sure.
- tmnvix 9y agoProbably depends on your background. I'm pretty sure people are regularly imprisoned for marijuana possession due to 'three strikes' laws (in many states, possessing what I would consider to be a reasonable quantity for personal use would qualify as a felony).
- devrandomguy 9y agoI bet banning refined sugar products would have a more significant effect.
- venning 9y agoHonest question: is there any evidence that refined sugar has a deleterious effect on brain function? I can find this: [1], but I'm not sure how to interpret it. Yes, weed and sugar are both addictive, but it is my understanding that the reduction in performance is not due to the addiction itself. [1] http://neuro.hms.harvard.edu/harvard-mahoney-neuroscience-institute/brain-newsletter/and-brain-series/sugar-and-brain http://neuro.hms.harvard.edu/harvard-mahoney-neuroscience-in...
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoWhile I'm not aware of any study that ties intake of excess sugar to a decline in cognitive function, there was a study that linked diets with a high glycemic index to higher rates of depression, specifically post menopausal as the participants were new mothers: http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2015/06/24/ajcn.114.103846.abstract?papetoc#aff-1 http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2015/06/24/ajcn.11...
- paulcole 9y agoWe get it you vape. Seriously though, I don't get what we're supposed to take away from your statement. Your guess that there might be something worse than weed? Just because weed causes less problems than something else doesn't mean it causes no problems.
- devrandomguy 9y agoI am under the impression that refined sugar interferes with the optimal functioning of the brain, in addition to skewing a person's energy level, but I don't have citations or anything. It's a just info that I internalized as a child, from a family member who works with children who have learning disabilities.
- phaed 9y agoThis the main reason I quit use of THC for pain relief. It wrecks your memory recall abilities. You lose a good 10 IQ points. Not good for devs.
- valuearb 9y agoSource? Or did you forget?
- phaed 9y agoI'm talking from personal experience. Your ability to keep a train of thought is impaired, you struggle to build the house of cards in-memory to do any kind of extended analysis, the cards you put down simply vanish from memory. You feel empirically dumber. At its worse, you start to talk about a topic, branch into a subtopic, and are unable to find your way back. You find yourself asking people "what was I talking about?" all of the time, imagine doing this in the middle of a presentation or while talking to a client. Relevant Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3931635/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3931635/
- rconti 9y agoYou mean, while you're actually intoxicated? No kidding! Or do you mean while NOT impaired, as a result of regular "after-hours" use?
- phaed 9y agoNot only while medicated. The memory issue is cumulative, it is slow onset and stays with you until at least 3 months after complete abstinence.
- thebigspacefuck 9y agoI find I am just like this if I'm sleep deprived. In general my memory is incredible, but I occasionally have terrible recall outside of my current train of thought. I used marijuana quite heavily for some periods of time in high school and college and it did have some effect, but not as great an effect as sleep-deprivation. For me, the two are correlated.
- darpa_escapee 9y agoBetter to keep it illegal, so that if students get caught with it, they lose their student aid and federal loans instead.
- perpetualcrayon 9y agoIt might be interesting for them to keep track of how long it takes the black market to reappear, and see whether the negatives that come along with allowing criminals to monopolize the business of dealing drugs to people in the area reappear also.
- perpetualcrayon 9y agoCome to think of it, given that they state in the article: drug tourism was posing difficulties for the city I wonder if they take into account the fact that these "problems" could've been affecting students and their grades as well. What happens if only the "drug tourism" disappeared?
- scott00 9y agoThis was controlled for by the native students, who also experienced any improvement in the city's environment, but did not experience the ban.
- hug 9y agoNot entirely. The students who were banned were those visiting from out of country so it's possible to argue that the students performance is increased by preventing them from being drug-tourists. Not sensible, but possible.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sundvor 9y agoWould love to see the same experiment repeated somehow, but for alcohol / partying. Then compare the two.
- markbnj 9y agoHeh came here to say this. Take away legal alcohol and see what happens to grades.
- analog31 9y agoIf it were possible to go back and dig up historical data, there was a time period when the drinking age in the US shifted from 18 to 21, thus reducing access to alcohol for high school students. Anecdotally, my mom noticed that her students were coming back from lunch sober. It might be a chance for a similar study.
- ojr 9y agoThat's a good point, if the drinking age was moved to 25, I think it'll be a bigger effect
- danso 9y agoIn college I was a residence hall advisor in a dorm that was advertised as being more studious, including a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol (students could be kicked out if seen even holding an empty beer can). I'm sure the grades in the dorm were higher, but hat dorm tended to attract students who were going to be more studious/less drunkenly already.
- nxc18 9y agoSame, except the only people in that dorm were kids who had super strict parents and who often were placed there because their parents were worried... The 'drug and alcohol free' floor was probably among the worst in terms of drug use, alcohol use, partying, and worst of all, floorcest.
- threatofrain 9y agoI have an anecdote about a religious college that bans alcohol, and students would get drunk outside and drive back drunk, so there's a lingering question about whether the policy saves more lives in sum. I don't see the same complexities or side effects with banning video games, TV, or even weed.
- foota 9y agoI haven't read the study, but I would be willing to suggest that another effect could be that removing access to marijuana meant students spent less time high, and correspondingly more time productive.
- harry8 9y agoSignificance and size of the effect. Ban Netflix (and all other video and movie entertainment) and you'd get a bigger for both, less emotive than "Illegal Drugs!!!11!" though.
- scott00 9y agoDoes anybody know if you can take the pot out of the cafes or if you have to smoke it there? I wonder if it's not less pot smoking but less going out.
- CryoLogic 9y agoThe sole reason I don't smoke pot even when my friends are to is because in addition to my existing ADD, my memory span on pot is diminished significantly.
- pat_space 9y agoYikes. I wouldn't recommend working or studying on it, but I think it has it's place, like before a yoga session.
- bigspider421 9y agoI've found the opposite - certain strains have been remarkable for my ADHD (although out of reach for anyone in a non-medical state). The strains I generally use have low psychoactive properties and alleviate anxiety without sedative effects.
- ntsplnkv2 9y agoIt's sad to see such a brigade of hate/insecurity around any pot study. It's a shame. Every time there is some inkling of negativity the panic sets in, they criticize the study (which is valid, but how often is the criticism valid), they bring up how alcohol is worse, when this wasn't even a comparison to alcohol. Marijuana should absolutely be legalized. But we can't just ignore its effects. I get it-weed helps a lot of people out, and it isn't that bad of a drug. But you can't just simply dismiss everything that you don't like that comes out.
- 43224gg252 9y ago>Every time there is some inkling of negativity the panic sets in, they criticize the study Source? Is there any empirical evidence that this is happening or is this just what you're telling your self? IMHO, it's quite the opposite -- anytime cannabinoids are shown to have medical value people claim "correlation does not imply causation" and "we need more studies" and "this only works in a lab!!1".
- linkregister 9y agoI think the parent poster is just referring to negativity in this thread, not claiming a statistically significant sentiment trend in comments sections about marijuana studies. I agree that among policy makers, unfounded anti-cannabis bias is predominant, despite the studies you mention.
- mejari 9y ago>Source? The bottom half-dozen comments on this article?
- weberc2 9y agoSeems like you're only supporting his point, mate.
- tommynicholas 9y agoOnce weed is legalized, as it should (obviously), these kinds of studies will be less political. Until then, you can't blame people.
- ellyagg 9y agoI believe it. However, there's more to life than squeezing maximal efficiency and productivity out of human beings.
- chickenfries 9y agoExactly. You could probably do the same thing for alcohol. Or video games.
- trentlott 9y agoOr novels, or nonfiction.
- thescribe 9y agoThis is not data, but in my peer group there is a strong connection between those who dropped out and those who had self control issues with any of those.
- weberc2 9y agoWasnt the article comparing pot users with non pot users? Presumably the control group included people who drink same play video games as well?
- adrianN 9y agoProbably pot users also drink an play video games, so they don't affect the difference in performance.
- chickenfries 9y agoThis is one of the problems with recreational drug studies. Its hard to find people who only do one drug and then people who live similar life styles to them but sober. I remember and MDMA study that looked at ravers in Utah because a large number of them were sober to study the effects of MDMA while accounting for the raver lifestyle of staying up for many hours dancing and often dehydrated.
- oculusthrift 9y agoso the study compared international students who didn't have access to pot legally versus students who were citizens? Am i misinterpreting something? It seems more likely that international students are simply better students. I doubt it would be that hard for them to get weed anyway.
- mejari 9y agoNo, it compared individual students' grades before and after they lost access to recreational marijuana. They mention the local students because it was a group where no event happened so it helps show that there wasn't some other factor that brought up everyone's grades over that time.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago"The most rigorous study yet" I searched the article for placebo and didn't find any mention.
- jtl999 9y agoHow would you propose a placebo in this context?
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agowell it would be hard with marijuana leaf. But you could have a vaping placebo, and compare that with vaping the real thing. Maybe the vaping placebo material could be made from marijuana but with the cannabis removed. I don't know enough how marijuana works, tbh, but something along those lines.
- mejari 9y agoExcept this isn't an experiment, where they control the conditions. It's monitoring natural behavior. Just saying "placebo" makes no sense for this kind of study. That'd be like asking for a placebo in a national poll. The kind of thing you're talking about would be an experiment, where they bring people in and use various measures to quantify various types of intelligence after smoking marijuana. In that situation yes you could use a placebo as one group. But even then it's not always appropriate, and just skimming an article and dismissing it by saying "no placebo!" makes no sense. Not all experiments do use or should use a placebo as part of their methodology, and this isn't even an experiment.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago> "But even then it's not always appropriate" It can be appropriate it you get consent to be part of the experiment. You don't have to have the whole student body be part of the experiment.
- mejari 9y ago
- indspenceable 9y agoSeems like no one's commenting that the study isn't actually about marijuana - it's regarding the access to the cafes. My instinct tells me that they're probably not entirely off on the conclusion but it seems like a more complicated relationship - if I couldn't get into the place where all my friends hung out, of course I'd have more time to study!
- perpetualcrayon 9y agoAppears they accounted for whether amount of study time increased as a result of the ban. From the study: We find no change in reported study hours, which suggests that we can eliminate effort adjustments as one channel of our results. [1] My thought on this is focused mostly on the fact that the city was apparently filled with "problematic drug tourism". In other words it appears they're saying the city was becoming (if not already) a "college party town". I'd be curious to know what kinds of "distractions" ended up leaving the city because of the ban. [1] http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MS20610manuscript.pdf http://www.restud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MS20610manu...
- siliconc0w 9y agoI knew a couple of semi-heavy users that were great students but they were probably the exception. Similar to alcohol, young people tend to fall into the 'more is better' fallacy and overdo it. Especially with things like concentrates or edibles. I think there is a bit of a 'ballmer peak' to help with certain tasks but it requires some diligence around strain and dosage and it's not for everyone.
- jumbopapa 9y agoThere are obviously exceptions - the last bit of the article kind of explained that. >But what the Maastricht study can do is provides highly credible evidence that marijuana legalization will lead to decreased academic success — perhaps particularly so for struggling students Basically good students will continue to.be good, but the bad students will suffer.
- sverige 9y agoI quit smoking weed years ago when I noticed when I was reading that I had forgotten the meaning of some words that I once knew. Smoking is great until it makes you stupid.
- flukus 9y agoHow do you distinguish what you forgot from smoking weed with what you just plain forgot? It's amazing what you can forget, even stuff that has been drilled into you. I'd forgotten how to do long division until recently, despite doing it over and over again in primary school to pick one example. The brain is very much "use it or lose it".
- sverige 9y agoI had known these words for years. The feeling of knowing that you used to know what, say, "superannuated" or "collusion" or "hegemony" meant, but right now you haven't a clue, is distressing. These words were in long-term memory. My memory was slowly restored after I quit. Smokers will readily admit that their short-term memory is damaged by marijuana use, but not much is said about damage to long-term memory.
- IIAOPSW 9y agoWhat happened when the students lost access to Adderall?
- fzeroracer 9y agoOf course, the largest flaw with any sort of marijuana-based study is that the effects of marijuana on the user vary based on the strain and THC content. The authors admitted that the level of THC content in Maastricht’s strains of marijuana tend to be around double that of the US. Unfortunately any real controlled studies are going to be difficult as long as Marijuana remains such a vilified topic, which results in studies like this being used as ammo rather than another point of data.
- drewmol 9y agoI agree. Not real strongly opinioned on either side, but I encourage data based research and rational discussion. A specific semi-common irrational opinion I've noticed with the growing percentage of states to legalize marijuana: The mentality that we must change regulation in order to keep 'stoned' drivers off the road (be able to issue DUI's). It's my understanding that marijuana had a negligible impact on the motor-cortex and reaction timing wrt operating a motor vehicle. Many professional athletes testify to using it before performing some of the most coordinated, reaction timing dependent physical activities of anyone on earth. DUI's were a result of the fact that drunk people tend get in more car wrecks, especially fatal ones.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ninjahatori1 9y agoI come from a place (Jaipur, IN) where weed is legal since a very long time, there are people I've met who are 90 and still consuming marijuana on daily/weekly basis and don't regret about it, I hadn't listen any incident/accident that happened because of weed. neither to folks are underachievers, they are respected professors, artists or daily wage workers. meanwhile, drink and drive accidents are very common here, and consuming liquor is considered a malignant.
- voidhorse 9y agoI'll just reiterate what a great deal of other sensible folks have already said: I think it's quite silly to try and use this study to draw or support any overarching conclusion about whether weed should be legal or not. Of course your grades will be affected if you smoke when you ought to be studying. Of course your grades will be affected if you drink when you ought to be studying. Of course your grades will be affected if you study (the wrong course material) when you ought to be studying. Basing decisions about legality and restraints on individual freedoms on things like average academic performance reduces individualism and pushes, by default, a sort of nationalistic view. "No you may not do X because it makes you a less valuable asset to the nation state, and you are meant for nothing more than service to the nation state." Even innocent studies like this hide dangerous potential ideologies and subterranean reductions of individual freedom that politicians will try to push.
- WheelsAtLarge 9y agoThanks to scare tactics and the never ending publicity that wants us to believe it's a miracle drug. We've lost sight that pot really has it's downside. We need fact based education, no bs scare tactics, to emphasise that to users. Pot has its strong benefits but we can't lose sight of its bad side and users need to understand that. Specially now that it's being legalized in so many states.
- xfiz 9y agoHuh, I'm surprised they could do it, ban EU-citizen while still allowing Ditch nationals. I thought they aren't allowed to do that within the EU.
- apexalpha 9y agoIt is allowed, see EU court results here: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?pro=&lgrec=nl&nat=or&oqp=&dates=&lg=&language=en&jur=C%2CT%2CF&cit=none%252CC%252CCJ%252CR%252C2008E%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252Ctrue%252Cfalse%252Cfalse&num=C-137%252F09&td=%3BALL&pcs=Oor&avg=&page=1&mat=or&jge=&for=&cid=735144 http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?pro=&lgrec=nl&nat=or&...
- richardknop 9y agoAnother anecdote from personal experience. Smoking pot decreased my cognitive abilities quite dramatically (not only while intoxicated but for days/weeks after). I am certain it is detrimental to your intellectual abilities at least temporarily. It would definitely lower your grades and I think it is also detrimental to any job where you do mental labour (e.g. software engineering).
- pasbesoin 9y agoMy friend who wanted to become a doctor was blowing it in his undergrad science classes. He took my suggestion to turn the music off while studying for his next test. And got an A. Just saying...