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

washingtonpost.com

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

#111

Post by owebmaster »

beaconstudios wrote: post #107
owebmaster wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a study. It should be released regardless of agendas or politics or if it didn't agree with someone's worldview Not if the study is politics itself and a weapon to support someone's agenda. Studies and researchs don't grow wild in nature, you know.

that makes no sense - how can you be sure that any paper isn't somehow political? Any psychology paper could be argued to be political because there is a left-right opinion divide on the human mind. The only reasonable approach in my opinion is to publish everything and let the replication studies and meta-analyses sort the wheat from the chaff.

> he only reasonable approach in my opinion is to publish everything and let the replication studies and meta-analyses sort the wheat from the chaff.

The only reasonable approach would be to finance research from both sides of spectrum which never happens because most if not all companies and corporations have a "right-wing" mindset.

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

#112

Post by tmnvix »

richardknop wrote: post #108
tmnvix wrote: post #3

Still less detrimental to a life than prison, because let's face it - legal or not, students will smoke pot.

I don't think you go to prison for smoking pot. The only way I can imagine you end up in prison is if police catch you with some massive amount of weed which means you are a big time dealer / manufacturer. A student with few grams of pot on him/her will not go to prison for sure.

Probably depends on your background.

I'm pretty sure people are regularly imprisoned for marijuana possession due to 'three strikes' laws (in many states, possessing what I would consider to be a reasonable quantity for personal use would qualify as a felony).

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

#113

Post by sundvor »

danso wrote: post #74
sundvor wrote: post #9

Would love to see the same experiment repeated somehow, but for alcohol / partying. Then compare the two.

I didn't try marijuana until way past the age when it could be considered rebellious. But in my experience with friends, smoking pot seemed to just leave them unfocused and unmotivated, which may have been the point. But people (leaving alcoholics aside) drink alcohol for relaxation and for stimulation. For example, some see it as "liquid courage" and after a buzz, do things that they wouldn't have sober, some of the…

Yeah. I've actually never tried recreational narcotics, however have taken up the (now rather moderate) use of alcohol in the later years.

I would rate drinks + a good sleep as better for my work performance as higher than no drinks / poor sleep. So many factors. Having a baby certainly tested the sleep thing; I've been far more productive with a serious hangover than some of the nights where I've been up most of it looking after the baby. In fact, sleep deprivation was rather harsh on my cognitive abilities at that time.

Some of my best memories come from stuff of extreme adrenaline, and they far surpass anything on alcohol. Such as riding a motorbike at Phillip Island, being able to make a pass on a guy with a far better bike than the one I had at the time. Or a really good mountain bike ride where I really nailed a particular section.

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

#114

Post by chickenfries »

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?

This is one of the problems with recreational drug studies. Its hard to find people who only do one drug and then people who live similar life styles to them but sober. I remember and MDMA study that looked at ravers in Utah because a large number of them were sober to study the effects of MDMA while accounting for the raver lifestyle of staying up for many hours dancing and often dehydrated.

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

#115

Post by beaconstudios »

owebmaster wrote: post #111
beaconstudios wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that makes no sense - how can you be sure that any paper isn't somehow political? Any psychology paper could be argued to be political because there is a left-right opinion divide on the human mind. The only reasonable approach in my opinion is to publish everything and let the replication studies and meta-analyses sort the wheat from the chaff.

> he only reasonable approach in my opinion is to publish everything and let the replication studies and meta-analyses sort the wheat from the chaff. The only reasonable approach would be to finance research from both sides of spectrum which never happens because most if not all companies and corporations have a "right-wing" mindset.

And most studies from public bodies are influenced by academia's hard left leanings. Universities are very well funded and produce the vast majority of scientific papers.

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

#116

Post by heurist »

bigspider421 wrote: post #39
chillwaves wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nothing is absolute - I'm a medical user (with anxiety/ADHD/depression) and it's been a complete lifesaver for me, working where pharmaceuticals did not. I did not respond well to traditional stimulants (they only made me more anxious and racy) but medical cannabis is literally the only reason why I was able to function through my PhD program which I had completed two years ago at a top-tier U.S. institution. FWIW, I…

Same here. Anxiety + ADHD + depression made college extremely difficult for me. It wasn't until I began smoking regularly after college that I began to gain perspective and control over my life and surrounding environment. Had I started a little sooner college could have been a much more positive experience for me. Agreed that only certain strains have a positive impact, still trying to figure out what works for me but it's difficult when local options are so limited...

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

#117

Post by mejari »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #104
mejari wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> "But even then it's not always appropriate" It can be appropriate it you get consent to be part of the experiment. You don't have to have the whole student body be part of the experiment.

What is your point? I said that it's _not always_ appropriate, not that it is _always not_ appropriate. And the ability to do it is not the sole deciding factor on whether it is appropriate.

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

#118

Post by mejari »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #105
mejari wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> "this isn't an experiment" Well then this "study" is just an observation. So it probably doesn't warrant the amount of attention it is getting, to say nothing of people using this "study" as evidence. Observation is an early step of the scientific method, but now they need to perform a scientific experiment in order to make this newsworthy. (Well I guess it is "newsworthy" in that it makes for high click-through...…

>Well then this "study" is just an observation.

Yes. Many studies are.

> So it probably doesn't warrant the amount of attention it is getting, to say nothing of people using this "study" as evidence.

It seems like you lack an understanding of how science works? Because the fact that this is an observation doesn't mean that it isn't evidence. Observation is like one of they key kinds of evidence.

>but now they need to perform a scientific experiment in order to make this newsworthy

No they don't. That's not how this works, at all. It's still valid meaningful evidence. I mean, do you ever read stories about stellar discoveries? Do you think they aren't worth reading because they didn't do an experiment to re-create the black hole they discovered in a lab?

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

#119

Post by K0SM0S »

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…

Honestly, the major problem when talking about "weed" is that considering the amazingly wide array of effects, depending on the variety/strain and dosage (from mild relaxant to big high, passing by stone and huge social-bubble alteration), any point based on the generalization of "weed" as a single substance/effect is pretty much moot from the get go.

Most studies and discussions focus on the "high"/"stone", which are already two vastly differing effects, the former may help one work/socialize at low dosage, whereas the latter would generally hinder these activities. Conversely, most people who speak of a positive experience with regular weed consumption refer to milder effects usually based on the genetics of the strain they use and the kind of dosage they apply to themselves. Apples and carrots...

Then there's the matter of whether students or any party-going demographics is better off smoking weed or drinking alcohol, as a matter of public health, when discussing the legalization of these substances. Considering that alcohol is the #1 death factor in the world, not even counting collateral damage (e.g. most violence/abuse done to women and children happen correlatingly to alcohol use; most alcoholics suffer from dire social issues), I, for one, am pretty sure legalizing weed makes sense to a large degree, if we're gonna have other, more dangerous drugs such as alcohol, legal still.

The negative effects of weed, as any drug, are also better contained through education and public health infrastructures rather than morality (subjective) or justice (punitive).

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