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College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

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Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#91

Post by paulcole »

devrandomguy wrote: post #60
paulcole wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We 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.

I 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.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but there is no Santa Claus.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#92

Post by drewmol »

fzeroracer wrote: post #75

Of 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…

I 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.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#93

Post by adrianN »

weberc2 wrote: post #84
chickenfries wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You could probably do the same thing for alcohol. Or video games.

Wasnt the article comparing pot users with non pot users? Presumably the control group included people who drink same play video games as well?

Probably pot users also drink an play video games, so they don't affect the difference in performance.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#94

Post by prostoalex »

dingo_bat wrote: post #72
snuxoll wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, who would have thought a distraction would affect grades? Video games, alcohol, parties, weed, whatever - you think any of these benefit your grades? Of course not. The results of this study aren't surprising, but the potential for it to be used as political ammo rightfully annoys pro-marijuana advocates. Personally, I'm all for legal weed - but trying to shuffle this study under the deck doesn't benefit anyo…

Does this study tell us anything about the reason for the fall in grades? Can we assume it's due to "distraction" or is it possible that there is a detrimental effect on learning ability? It's a big cause for alarm if the latter is true.

How would one conduct a double-blind study of long-term learning ability effects? You'd need to find a control group and a test group with prcisely the same learning ability, which already sounds like a stretch.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#95

Post by prostoalex »

chillwaves wrote: post #14
meri_dian wrote: post #2

Weed is not a panacea. Some people foolishly think otherwise. It should still be legalized, but we have to be realistic about its negatives

Nobody believes weed will make you better at studying. Nobody.

I 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... - 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.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#96

Post by thebigspacefuck »

phaed wrote: post #45
valuearb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Or did you forget?

I'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 a…

I 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.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#97

Post by mejari »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #71
jtl999 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose a placebo in this context?

well 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.

Except 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.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#98

Post by mejari »

oculusthrift wrote: post #40

so 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.

No, 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.

Re: College students lost access to legal pot and started getting better grades

#99

Post by inpdx »

tommynicholas wrote: post #48
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #33

It'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 lo…

Once weed is legalized, as it should (obviously), these kinds of studies will be less political. Until then, you can't blame people.

I live in Oregon where it's legal, and if reddit posters on /r/portland are any example, legalization doesn't (at least instantaneously) stop this instinctive bias against anything negative. You'll see minimization, denial, and "it's better than alcohol" on every thread whenever a study even hints marijuana isn't a 100% universally beneficial, no-side-effects, perfect drug. It's fascinating to behold.
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