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Cannabis Smoking Makes Students Less Likely To Pass University Courses
Bruce66423 writes: A large scale European study shows that students who were unable to buy cannabis legally were 5% more likely to pass their University courses. Below-average students with no legal access to pot were 7.6% more likely to pass their courses, and the effect was five times more pronounced when dealing with courses involving math. One of the study's authors said, "We think this newfound effect on productivity from a change in legal access to cannabis is not negligible and should be, at least in the short run, politically relevant for any societal drug legalization and prohibition decision-making. In the bigger picture, our findings also indicate that soft drug consumption behavior is affected by their legal accessibility, which has not been causally demonstrated before. ... Considering the massive impact on cognitive performance high levels of THC have, I think it is reasonable to at least inform young users much more on consequences of consuming such products as compared with that of having a beer or pure vodka."
So, the 5% of people who smoked weed at university, and realized university is a RE-EDUCATION CAMP where special educational tools are used to break the most dangerous young minds and prepare them for a life of productivity in service to the Man. *bong smoke floats out of my stained beanbag nest.*
And say that availability of alcohol has a vastly higher effect than 5%.
Television, video games, beer, and anything else potentially distracting to poorly performing students should be illegal too!
Have studies been conducted in which the ability of students to obtain alcohol was removed? I'd find it incredibly hard to believe that, over an entire population of students, alcohol doesn't have an effect on the students ability to pass their courses.
Does this mean that even though I never bought it, just because I had legal access to it, I was 5% less likely to pass?
Is this some special "flawed studies" day on slashdot?
playing too much unreal took way more than 5% off of my grades.
i didn't start using cannabis regularly until after college, it's vastly superor to alcohol in the "how functional am i at work the next day if i overindulge" department.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Its hard to make a slave out of the enlightened.. Its also hard to make the enlightened out of slaves.
Wasn't it already obvious that pot makes people lazy and perform lesser than those that don't smoke?
Ok, what am I missing? I mean, this seems obvious.
Being stoned, just like being drunk, has kind of an obvious affect on your current cognitive abilities. For both drugs, you are looking a a time-frame of hours where you cannot study or work effectively. TFA even notes that the magnitude of the effect on grades is similar.
If you drink alcohol or smoke pot on nights when you need to be studying, your grades are going to suffer. If you restrict yourself to times when you really don't have any obligations, then there won't be a problem. Young adults being, well, young adults, they may not always have the necessary self-awareness and self-discipline - hence, their grade may suffer while they are learning this life lesson.
Make sure people are aware of the effects of the drugs. Encourage self-control and self-discipline. Prohibition is, and has always been, a non-solution.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I think that whoever decided to fund this 'study' were stoned when they did it, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the 'researchers' were stoned the entire time they were conducting it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I find it quite surprising.
Sure being a pot head is going to have a detrimental effect on your grades.
But given my experiences with university in a place where marijuana was not legal I can't believe there are enough students who would not smoke when it is illegal but would when it is legal to swing the overall grade by 5%.
In these days of ever-increasing volumes of information being thrown about it's important to be clear and unambiguous in the first few sentences of writing. I, for one, don't have the time to not not figure out the negative-reverse implications of failing to undisclose previously inversely unhidden assertions. Not.
I wonder if chewing bubble gum would also impact a below average student's exam scores. Seems like minimize the distractions from sex, alcohol, and cannabis would tend to help most below average students.
Also, if you can only smoke in these Dutch coffee shops, and spend all your time there instead of in your apartment or dorm, then less studying might explain away some of the exam scores.
But despite the above concerned, I think most of us all assumed that there is some cognitive impact while someone is using cannabis. The debate has always been if this is temporary or is the impact long term. I tend to find a lot of holes in research that shows the negative impact to be long term. I have a hunch that there could be some neutral impact that is long term (changes but not detrimental), but that has been rather tough to measure.
(researching comfortably from my armchair)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
One complaint that I've heard of from people who claim to smoke weed is that it can severely shrink one's gonads. I've overheard people at the mall and on the bus talking about how their testes and scrotum shrunk significantly after repeated use of marijuana, for example. I've read the same claim online, too, and I think I even heard a caller to a radio show mention it once.
I'm a competitive swimmer. Does marijuana use affect the size of a man's testes and scrotum?
Smoke weed + swim in cold water = devastating combination :-P
This article needs a soundtrack.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Maybe the medical reason that has made marijuana legal for them is the underlying reason that they did worse in school.
> who would not smoke when it is illegal but would when it is legal to swing the overall grade by 5%.
Grocery stores know that they sell a lot more candy of they put it at the checkout counter. People buy a lot more if it's within arms reach than if they have to walk down the aisle to get it. For pot we talking about much more than walking an extra 30 feet, you have to call and wait for a pot dealer, andbpot dealers are notoriously unreliable and rarely punctual. Vs stepping inside the store you're walking by across from campus.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if many people who used to smoke a few hits once a week now walk by the pot store and decide to take a few hits TWICE per week. Even the guy who used to smoke most nights may well do more lunchtime tokes if carrying it isn't going to send him to jail. So the people who would smoke anyway could easily smoke 5% MORE.
Also, there are a few law abiding citizens who don't illegal drugs. Particularly young people haven't yet firmed up their own beliefs as much, so they look to others for validation of their potential decisions . Having the entire population vote that pot is okay will influence some young people's decisions.
Duh?
Pot lets you see a bigger picture. If the sober mind is concentrated like a spotlight, unconscious of things to the side, the high mind is like a wider beam that shines not as far, illuminating things others have seen around you all along. There's a reason artists use it. If passing university wasn't about rote memorization and application of dogma and instead measured creativity, pot would help.
Since we are entering an era where any smartphone in earshot will be able to answer any factual question faster than anyone in the room, what should we be teaching?
It didn't work in the 20s, it didn't work in the 70s, and it doesn't work today.
"[...] and should be, at least in the short run, politically relevant for any societal drug legalization and prohibition decision-making."
Nobody should be making decisions regarding whether other people are "allowed" to have a possession. Especially a plant. And it won't be in the short run; government increases, it generally doesn't decrease. (Alcohol prohibition did stop, though.)
In other news, party animals who spent their time on drugs, cannabis, or alcohol instead of studying were more likely to fail their courses.
The prohibitionists touted the study as a great victory for prohibition. The legalizers touted the study as proof that responsible use was necessary.
And the parents raged that their stupid kids were wasting all their time on parties instead of doing some actual work.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
...was 5% statistical significance?
I've gotten to the point where I ignore these types of studies... they already have decided what the conclusion must be: "Reefer madness is real and must be stopped" so they furiously look for cause/effect relationship to prove their point. However, there is endless information about the significant impact of alcohol and tobacco to society; and I'm sure that usage impacts the ability to pass university courses also... not to mention your lungs, liver, heart, increase in work absences, harm to pregnancy, etc. etc. etc. The bottom line is making the substance illegal does more harm to society than having it be legal. Why are we spending billions if not trillions of dollars a year to keep people from growing and smoking a plant. I think we as a planet have more pressing concerns, like clean water, clean air, global warming... those trillions of dollars could be put to better use. It's the same thing as people whipping themselves into a frenzy about gay marriage. Who cares, mind your own business and worry about putting food on your families table.
Don't know about gonads...
But Michael Phelps was photographed smoking marijuana, and he holds the most records for Olympic swimming gold medals
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Author Johann Hariwrites a fascinating history of the war on drugs in Chasing the Scream. The main reason given for banning drugs - the reason obsessing [Harry Anslinger and] the men who launched this war - was that the blacks Mexicans and Chinese were using these chemicals, forgetting their place, and menacing white people. Anslinger's crackdowns created the drug smuggling industry and the related crime, theft, prostitution (p 26). Alcohol far and away has the most dangerous community impact (Nutt research in Lancet).
No. Wrong. You are stupid.
You say:
smoking cannabis => being less likely to pass university courses
I say:
smoking cannabis => being a nigger or retarded white = being a subhuman with inferior IQ => being less likely to pass university courses
Oh, that's noting new now. Sorry for ruining your 'discovery'.
However your point of view has one advantage: it is politically correct. No matter how scientifically incorrect. Not saying the n-word is the most important thing!
But but but but but....they get free tuition at Stanford et al.
Yawn. A. Ppl/gov needs to consider the cognitive impairment effects more? I'm pretty sure that's exactly what is being considered and sought out when smoking weed. B. Study performed in europe. Lots of confounding issues due to borders, geopolitics, and a range if other factors. C. Causal? Mmmm that's a stretch. They've got 2 out of 3: 1 a relationship and 2 the ban came in time before the increase in passing classes. However, the big one, accounting for other possible causes, is (at least in tfa's write up) is not addressed. Methinks there are several more impactful events that could account for a rising course completion rate. Generation size, increased competition, a recognition of greater skill needs for a more technical job market, reduced standards, reconfiguration if classes to address a slump in graduates/grades, increasing political/economic stability, etc. Etc.
is that the same can be said of alcohol. If the students are not able to get drunk or high, they will likely study more and do better.
BUT, the real issue is, can society stop drugs? The answer is no. As such, it is better for all if the drugs are legalized, only allowed to be manufactured locally (with tight regulations), and then sold locally only. By removing the real money from it, it will make students focus on going after their degrees.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Smoking dope makes you stupid (at least while you are high). Drinking makes you stupid (at least while you are drunk). Etc, etc. If you can admit this and 'get stupid' occasionally, no problem. But when people start to justify some drug's use as being beneficial, mind opening concious raising, etc. that's the addiction talking. Time to stop and check into NA or AA.
Have gnu, will travel.
Whats the percentage on those who have functioning sex organs passing classes, and those who do not?
I always figured that result had pretty much been established by the efforts of thousands of college students with their own unfunded studies over more than the last fifty years.
I guess this guy just found a way to get someone else to pay for his pot.
Just a reminder, needs to go along with all of such studies. Who knows what affects are going on, take it with a grain of salt.
Or maybe the type of person who would smoke also is one that would not do well on test. You would expect someone who would drive drunk to have worse grades then one that knows not to drive while drunk.
And for all those researches that failed Introduction to Statistics - what you utterly failed learn is Correlation does not imply (and sure as hell does not prove) Causation.
I don't do any drugs legal or otherwise. But I do so despise disingenuous douchebags spraying their political agenda all over the internet.
Studies have shown that long-term use of marijuana causes permanent memory loss and ... um ... er .... lots of other bad things I can't think of at the moment.
Prohibition worked quite well.
The shocking violence of prohibition days was only shocking becasue there was so little violence among the non-gangster population. In comparison to the violence associated with today's drug gangs, the violence of Al Capone and friends was trivial. The "Saint Valentine's Day Massacre" (1929) only involved the death of six mobsters (NOTHING on the scale of a typical Chicago weekend these days... and a modern Chicago weekend is more likely to involve dead innocent civilians)
The other thing proponents of drugs and alcohol do not want to face is the health statistics; Liver disease in the US wen down during prohibition. I'll quite from an NIH report on the subject:
"Cirrhosis mortality rates in the United States have changed substantially over time. Early in the 20th century, these rates were at their highest point. As shown in figure 2, overall cirrhosis mortality rates declined precipitously with the introduction of Prohibition. When Prohibition ended, alcohol consumption and cirrhosis mortality rates increased until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when these rates began to approach levels seen in the first decade of the century."
Personally, I tend to lean more-libertarian and oppose such prohibitions on grounds of a little thing called "personal liberty", but it is factually wrong to always robotically claim that "prohibition doesn't work" (whether it "works" depends on what your goals are, and public health is an argument FOR prohibition). I believe every individual should be free to consume what he or she wants BUT I also believe that if you harm others with your abuse of drugs or alcohol the punishment should be SEVERE - (I'd support beheading drunk drivers, if you want to get drunk or get high STAY HOME or at the bar until you are sober). The price of personal liberty and freedom is personal accountability and responsibility - and that includes NO government assistance to those who abuse substances and then cannot hold a job.
Been there, done that. Here's my $0.02 FWIW. I found pot in school to be both helpful and harmful depending on the context....
In School:
Trying to grasp a new concept - helpful. Like others have posted, it gets you out of your tunnel vision and be able to see things from slightly different angles. It leads to those "Ah ha" moments when the light bulb goes on and you actually start to understand what the heck the prof was talking about. Big picture stuff.
Memorizing fine details - harmful. The mind wanders, and isn't that sort of the point?
In the Real World:
Doing intensely boring work - helpful. Makes long boring days a little less boring.
Doing anything interesting or creative - harmful. Can't program worth a damn because I can't seem to hold on to the variables long enough to do anything useful with them. Can still do a lot of a programmer's job though, think formatting Word Docs, or preparing an RFP. See previous point about boring work.
The legality has nothing to do with it. I had plenty of access to it then and it's readily available now. Wasn't legal then, not legal now. And anybody that thinks there's no hangover from smoking pot hasn't tried hard enough.
drag reduction. Swimmers shave off body hair to reduce drag; Reduced "protruberances" = reduced turbulence and drag = higher speed (grin)
So being photographed while smoking pot makes you a good swimmer. I think these researchers missed that.
Students who cannot leagally obtain weed must get it by alternative means. Those means require much more intellectual rigor than popping down to the weed bar. The mental exercise involved activates parts of the brain necessary for doing well in college courses, especially Math and Science.
but what you're seeing here is the same effect that makes test scores lower in America. We test _everyone_ for college at one time or another, including people who are just plain not smart enough. Other countries have programs to train those people to be plumbers and what not and skip the testing.
Now, I think what we do is actually better. There are plenty of folks who can make it through college and will be better for it, and we give them opportunities they don't have in other countries. But it does skew our test scores in a way folks like to ignore. I'm guessing you're seeing that here. People who don't smoke pot are more likely to make it through a course at the U.
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You are not arrested simply for possessing a small amount of soft drugs.
However, the story is quite surprising. Considering that most students in Maastricht are Dutch citizens, and were therefore legally able to buy cannabis all the time. Furthermore the story correlates test scores only against the legality of bying drugs. It does not say that the prohibition resulted in either less or more or stronger dope getting smoked.
By not investigating the motivations why the students are somking cannabis, they have omitted the far stronger correlation of social and personal stress factors in relation to success in exams, that is farm more impacting than the actual use of cannabis. Fail studies are fail.
I just realized it doesn't matter if weed "causes" lower grades or if students with lower abilities are attracted to smoking and so on. What matters is the pattern: if you find yourself being at a university and happen to be smoking weed regularly, you are a bit likelier to have lower grades. That is all.
That is, assuming the study is done properly, this one kind of looks so.
Candy is an impulse buy and something that children will whine and beg for in a checkout line. I don't think pot is really that similar. Plus if it isn't legal chances are you still only gave to walk 30 feet - we are talking about a location where it is available legally for some people. I recall cigarettes and alcohol being easily available in high school because there was always someone old enough to get it and resell it.
I also doubt that smoking 5% more is going to drop your grades by 5%. Smoking double isn't going to drop your grades by 100% after all.
If they have the numbers then they have the numbers (I haven't actually read the study or methodology or anything) I'm not trying to say they are wrong. I'm just saying I don't find it "not surprising".
If we'd taken the $1 trillion dollars wasted in the war on drugs and had instead invested that into research to find safe and effective recreational drugs that also have positive side-effects on cognition and motivation, where might we be today?
Some portion of the population is always killing themselves with home-made drugs and home-made alcohol, (and home-made food, and lots of other amateur-made stuff). Conflating self-inflicted deaths from incompetent fabrication of ANYTHING with arguments about legalizing drugs or alcohol is nutty; it's not even as sane as blaming those deaths on the "maker movement" (an argument I'd also reject, but which would be closer to the cause of the deaths).
And, Slate as a source for rational argument?? REALLY?????? They're about as neutral and unbiased on this subject as Jerry Falwell on The Ten Commandments or gay marriage.
Captain Obvious.
Marijuana is a depressant. It makes you LAZY & STUPID. Been around a ton of stoners working for
the sheriff's department for almost 20 years. All they want to do is skateboard, get tattoos, smoke dope
and DO NOTHING.
"smoke weed" => "ban it ! People should not be able to chose ! government may reduce personal liberties !"
"get a shop to bake you a gay mariage cake" => "you may not impose those poor sales peopel to sell stuff ! Religious rights ! Right to discriminate ! Eleventy !"
This is in a nutshell the big hyprocrisy. they are for the rights and freedoms that conservative likes, but those right and freedom they do not likes, suddenly are to be made illegal.
The funny things is that there is more religious interdiction that conservative breaks, which are cited far more than homosexuality, but conservative ignore them, because they would look stupid upholding them (think not eating shellfish or mixing cloth of different fiber, working on saturday/sunday or paying 30 shekels in silver and forcing a woman to marry her rapist). On the other hand homosexuality which is barely mentionned suddenly is a religious freedom issue. The sad reality is that it is not a religious aversion, it is a disgust they feel at homosexuality and they try to make up any excuse to impose their own disgust over the population". Well anyway I can't wait for this generation to "pass away". In 20 years all republican of today and tea party guys of today will be seen the same way as those who were for racial separation back in the 50ies / 60ies : they will be seen as incredible biggoted fucktard.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Who would have thunk it?
Are we sure it's not that "Smoking Cannabis Instead Of Stydying Makes Students Less Likely To Pass University Courses"? That said, yeah, pot can wreak havoc on a developing brain, and you're not out of that phase until well into your 20's, so I could see this being a major issue for college aged habitual users. Of course, then, there are also studies showing that it's much easier to recall memories when you're in the same mental state as when you learned them, so it could also be that students who study high should also test high, but there are numerous other reasons not to do that, as well.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
dollars -->>> doughtnuts
i live in Portugal, cannabis isn't legal, but you can have it, you can smoke it, but you can't sell it. You don't go to jail for smoking.
Prohibition of the selling part raises problems:
1. there is a demand in the market for a product
2. creates a illegal market with no quality control, you never really know what you are buying
3. as it is illegal the selling is done by doubtful people with low qualifications
4. you can't go and smoke in a licensed establishment, like a beer after the exams
5. when you buy it, is more than one day, no drug dealer sells you 1 or 2 joints for the night
6. misinformation about the dangers/benefits of short long term usage
7. creates unnecessary crime related to the selling
8. unregulated
The consumption of alcohol is more dangerous for health on short and long term, and there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and violence, yet it is legal, but got even worst on the US with the Eighteenth Amendment.
About the exams, cannabis usage isn't responsible for bad reasoning of the person, you should know better than smoke a joint while studding calculus, or maybe not, as it is illegal/unregulated didn't came with the known side effects in the package :/
...dead.
Apparetly drugs can help a creative mind, which isnt what you want when studying logic based subjects, but if doing somethign something expressive, creative, original ...
You do realize that you are arguing that the generation with the most experience with drugs and their long term effects, the baby boomers, are not in a position to comment on the danger of drugs?
You do realize that you that the f the law attitude of the boomers that led to the corruption was the same f the law attitude that led them to all that heavy drug use also? Indulging in whatever they felt like at the moment rather than what was best? Drugs when they were young, money and power when they were older. The occupy generation will most likely do the same.
Hide their dope and I bet the same kids are equally stupid. I guarantee it! It's a hard world out there and not everyone passes college ...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
The Guardian article doesn't link to the study it describes. I'd be interested to know how the study attempts to correct for factors such as differences in socioeconomic status between the locals and the nationals from other countries. Apparently, the cited study results have not yet been published, only presented at a conference. In other news, higher crime rates are corellated with a higher number of churches per square mile.
Getting high can harm grades. What a surprise. Next thing you know those lying scientists are going to claim getting drunk every weekend at frat parties can harm grades too.
Queue all the potheads who think they are doing human rights work sitting around eating Doritos and saying I love you man.
I think all the focus on how cannabis may cause this or makes it more likely to develop that is just scare mongering. We all know that indulging in intoxication is harmful to some extent; the point is that cannabis has been demonstrated to be a lot less harmful, overall, than things like alcohol and tobacco, not to mention the so-called legal highs.
In a sensible society, we would address this differently - we would accept that people will always want to have this kind of recreational substances, and we would actively try to develop something that gave the maximum pleasure for the minimum harm. We would educate people about how to use these things safely, how to recognise danger symptoms, how to help those in trouble with some substance, and we would sell them legally under a licence and with a certain amount of taxation. There will always be people who get into deep trouble with substance abuse; but a cold, socio-economic calculation shows that the costs of using cannabis is less than the cost of tobacco and alcohol - and if better drugs were developed, the difference would be even starker.
I wonder if having access to cannabis also impacts the quality of statistical research?
This is the quote. See the second half of the sentence:
"The grade improvement this represents is about the same as having a qualified teacher and, more relevantly, similar to decreases in grades observed from reaching legal drinking age in the US.”
So, by this study, being able to get alcohol legally and being able to get pot legally are about the same. So why is one a schedule 1 drug in the U.S.?
So much of university learning in Germany and France is centered around drill*.
No wonder that people with different learning styles can have problems in this format. Those are the ones more likely to smoke weed, imo.
The authors take "passing courses" as a metric for success. But they fail to realize that there are many previously A grade students who in research positions suddenly don't know what to do since they never developed a proper creativity together with a longing to explore.
This whole mentality of "let's grow our economy by pushing people to what we think is good for growing our economy" is a big stupid fad and will lead to nothing but short-term sucess and long-term mediocrity of failure.
__
* (and I assume it's not that different in the Netherlands were the study was conducted)
> Smoking double isn't going to drop your grades by 100% after all.
It did in my case. Twenty years later, I'm trying again. So far it's. Working a lot better after reducing marijuana consumption by 100%. No doubt, getting stoned was fun. It just wasn't compatible with doing much else.
http://ftp.iza.org/dp8900.pdf
The authors of this study ignore the previous dip (which is almost exactly the same dip, 6 months previous to 2011 October) in grades by the Dutch, German and Belgian students.
Their graph is hilariously broken.
http://imgur.com/J89nr1r
This isnt even junk science, its total crap. For shame slashdot, for shame.
No one stopped to think that perhaps those people who has a medical or mental condition that interferes with their day to day life so much that they have legal access to medical drugs might be operating under those very same additional stressors that are the reason they've got their access, and that those stressors might even make a few percent difference to their performance?
How was it decided to attribute the lower performance to the medicine instead of the underlying condition?
I have taken a wide range of antidepressants, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety related medication over the years. Their side effects can indeed interfere with my work, but when the underlying condition interferes with my work more, I'll use them, as overall I have an improvement, however I'm still performing under less than ideal conditions.
Should you make antidepressants illegal, because they can/might/correlate to detract from ability to concentrate? (Actually perhaps we should, but the efficacy of mental health drugs is a whole other debate), or should you recognise that those workers taking them are combatting bigger issues than their side effects?
Regardless, sounds to me like a pretty poor study, but yeah, i didn't read the full article, so feel free to slam me if there's something that addresses this.
Just read enough of the article to see that those who were given access to marijuana were a cultural selection, not a medical or random selection, but I could use those same numbers to argue that Dutch, German & Belgians tend to like to smoke more than do school work, or that they have a higher incidence of physical/mental issues that marijuana alleviates, that they generally consider worth the minor side effects, or so on.
TLDR: Bad study is bad.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
I hate "studies" like this that make unwarranted assumptions.
They are trying to draw a conclusion of the cognitive effects of cannabis based on access to the drug and graduation which is BS.
A much more likelier conclusions is that the type of people to seek out and gain access to cannabis are more prone to screwing off and not studying and applying themselves properly rather than some ill conceived idea of reduced mental capacity.
I've gone to school with enough pot heads to know that they are not stupid. Some lack motivation perhaps. You could look at the number of people that booze it up too much in school also and party themselves out of a degree. Doesn't mean that alcohol somehow diminished their mental faculties...
Science proves addictions kill brain cells.
That study is a lie. ...but....but....I forgot why.