How Marijuana Use is Tied to Social and Financial Problems Later On in Life
We’ve all heard the negative stories and stigma that surrounds marijuana use. “Marijuana makes you lazy.” “Marijuana will make you unintelligent.” “Marijuana will prevent you from achieving your goals.” The list goes on and on. But for the longest time, there existed no real, stable, evidence-based studies that showed certain legitimacy in such concerns. The above negative phenomena were always just the stigma that surrounded marijuana.
Now, we have actual studies and research documents that show a surprising correlation between marijuana use, social problems, and financial problems. It was found from such research projects that longtime marijuana use has a direct correlation to increasing antisocial behaviors at work, monetary theft, lying, having familial problems, having intimate partner violence, being unable to hold a job, and having personal problems with others.
According to lead researcher, Magdalena Cerda, an Associate Professor in the department of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis who published a 2016 study on the negative effects of heavy marijuana use: “The economic and social problems experienced by regular, persistent cannabis users are not due to other, pre-existing characteristics of cannabis users. We need to be aware that persistent heavy cannabis use may have consequences for how well people do in life, how they perform and function at work and in relationships with others.”
The research project also found that longtime marijuana users tended to struggle with major financial struggles, mostly due to their habit. According to Professor Magdalena Cerda: “We also found that both cannabis and alcohol dependence similarly predicted declines in social class, antisocial behavior in the workplace and relationship conflict. Participants who were dependent on cannabis experienced more financial difficulties than those who were dependent on alcohol. So, the idea that cannabis is somehow safer than alcohol was not supported in our study.”
Worldwide Studies Contribute to Truth About Marijuana
Professor Cerda and her research group collected information from over one-thousand children born between 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand. The study followed the lives of those children for more than forty years. The research gathered information on study participants who had at least three to five marijuana assessments from the age of eighteen to the age of thirty-eight.
Among these individuals who had several assessments, eighteen percent were legitimately marijuana-dependent, and fifteen percent were regular pot smokers. The social class, work environment, and relationship situations were all seen to be more difficult, more strenuous, and more complicated and unpleasant in heavy marijuana users as opposed to light marijuana users.
Now, the only caveat here is that the study cannot prove that heavy marijuana is a direct cause of all of the above difficulties. However, the fact that financial struggles, relationship difficulties, employment problems, and an overall lower quality of life was almost always present in heavy marijuana users and far less prevalent in lower-use individuals is itself pretty indicative.
The Truth About Marijuana
When Attorney General Jeffery Sessions tries to say that marijuana is just as bad as heroin, we all kind of throw back our heads and laugh. Such concepts are more than a little ridiculous. However, we cannot deny that marijuana does have negative implications, especially when people abuse it very frequently and become quite dependent on it.
As a closing statement, the University of California, Davis’s study was able to prove that heavy marijuana users were more likely to have another substance abuse problem than light marijuana users were. All negative side effects aside, marijuana is a gateway drug and should be avoided for that reason and others.
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