Category: Research

Marijuana users do not use health care services at rates that are higher than non-users, according to a study published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine.

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin assessed the relationship between marijuana use and health care utilization in a nationally representative sample of 174,159,864 US adults aged 18 to 59 years old.  The study found no significant association between marijuana use and healthcare utilization such as outpatient health care visits and overnight hospital admissions.  The study also found that the frequency of marijuana use does not have significant impact on healthcare utilization.  Read the report – Marijuana users do not have increased healthcare utilization.

This result is consistent with a previous assessment, published in 2014 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.  Researchers form the Boston University School of Public Health and the Cleveland State University School of Health Sciences similarly found no association between frequency of marijuana use and health, emergency department use, or hospital utilization.  Read the report – No Detectable Association Between Frequency of Marijuana Use and Health or Healthcare Utilization.

There is much debate about the impact of adolescent cannabis use on intellectual and educational outcomes.  British investigators assessed the relationship between adolescent cannabis use and IQ and educational attainment in a sample of 2235 teenagers.

After researchers adjusted for potentially confounding variables, such as childhood depression and cigarette use, they reported, “[T]hose who had used cannabis [greater than or equal to] 50 times did not differ from never-users on either IQ or educational performance.”

By contrast, teen cigarette smoking was associated with poorer educational outcomes even after researchers adjusted for other variables.

Researchers concluded, “In summary, the notion that cannabis use itself is causally related to lower IQ and poorer educational performance was not supported in this large teenage sample.”

Read the full report – Are IQ and educational outcomes in teenagers related to their cannabis use?  The report was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.