Wild Eggs

A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine was completed on 5,263 teenage students in Switzerland and is producing some surprising results:

From all 5,263 students in the study they break down like this: 1,703 smoked marijuana and cigarettes, 455 smoked only marijuana and 3,105 abstained from both marijuana and cigarettes. Directly from the study the researchers state, “Our findings in this nationally representative sample of adolescents show that 6 percent of them use cannabis without having used tobacco and that one-fifth of current cannabis users (21.1 percent) declare never having used tobacco.”

When you look at the students that claimed to have never used marijuana or cigarettes, you find interesting and unexpected differences. The survey found that non-users that claimed to play sports tallied up to 76.6 percent but 85.5 percent of “marijuana only” users played sports. With the repeated mentions of amotivational syndrome found in marijuana users in other studies, the sports participation was definitely surprising. In addition to sports, 87 percent of marijuana users said they had good friendships opposed to 82.2 percent of non-users. A nearly 20 percent difference was found in sensation-seeking teens with 37.8 percent of marijuana users seekers and 21.8 percent of non-users sensation-seekers. The parent relationships didn’t have a striking difference with 74.1 percent of teens using marijuana less likely to have a good relationship with their parents and 82.4 percent of non-users less likely to have a good relationship with their parents. As one can imagine, it can be a challenge to have a good relationship with any teen on the parental level throughout the various stages of their teen years if marijuana is involved or not.

Looking directly at the original comparison between marijuana only users and tobacco and marijuana users, you see bigger differences in the sports and grade portions of the study. When looking at playing sports, marijuana only users were at 85.5 percent and marijuana and tobacco users only had 66.7 percent of them playing sports. So a nearly 22 percent difference of these users playing sports seems to show that cigarettes put the kabosh on extracurricular activities in school. An 11 percent difference showed up when talking about grades in school. Marijuana only users were tallied at 77.5 percent with good grades and marijuana and cigarette users were only at 66.5 percent. As you might expect, the grades suffered due to using too many substances at once. It was eluded to in the survey that teens using marijuana and cigarettes were more likely to abuse alcohol and other illegal drugs too.

Other important parts of the study to take note of were that marijuana users were less likely to have drank alcohol in the last 30 days and less likely to have used any other illegal drugs when compared to students who smoked both marijuana and cigarettes. One thing to note about the marijuana only users that seems to show a reason for some of the differences is they claimed they were less likely to have used marijuana more than once or twice in the last 30 days. So although the teens classified as marijuana only users were in fact using marijuana, they truly were not spending their afternoons toking up.

Read more at CHYCHO.COM - Happy 420.

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