University of Washington
Marijuana Use Study
You may ask, What exactly is this? In brief terms...
...This is a look into the effects of Marijuana on The lives of our peers in a variety of aspects of their lives, as computed by a combination of survey, Research papers, and national data sources.
In more detail...
...OUr survey was conducted over a series of a week, with the spread of participants primarily coming from personal connections. This model is not representative of the population, thus extrapolations to the entire community are difficult. However, the insights are valuable in combination with our dataset from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health services Administration as well as a series of academic papers on the selected subtopics.
this report is a part of the Informatics 478 population health metrics course, and was conducted and created by sharan jhangiani, saurav kharb, arvindh natarajan, and anushka raheja. We hope this is informative and allows for a more educated approach to marijuana usage at the university of Washington and beyond.
We'll start by looking at National Demographics on marijuana usage:
Percentage of 18-25 year olds who have consumed marijuana in the last 30 days over year ranges
Average Percentage of people who have consumed marijuana in the last 30 days distributed by age
Thus, given this connection to our peers and Facing a lack of data on marijuana and its direct effect on our peers we decided to take things into our own hands and surveyed 200+ current University of Washington students on marijuana's role in their lives...
we begin with taking a deeper look into the people we Surveyed
Distribution of age's of students who responded to survey
distribution of majors of students who engaged in survey
with 65.83% of our sample stating that they have consumed Marijuana in the last 30 days, and only 20.06% of the same age group nation wide, it is difficult to safely make any inferences from our sample...
...however, the responses and insights we collected still shed light on the impact of marijuana in our community
looking at the frequency of marijuana consumption from our sample...
Number of days a week a single student consumes marijuana
...we can see in This intriguing plot a visual demonstration of marijuana usage; either a student was an infrequent user or a student was a heavy user, with a clear lack of "medium leveled" smokers. This might be related to the fact that our sample is skewed towards those who are more directly connected to marijuana consumption.
A look at distribution of reported majors and marijuana consumption from our sample on these majors...
Daily Consumption Rate Broken down by major
...WE see no obvious trend within the data regarding a specific subset of majors that are more common.
However, academic research states, "More frequent marijuana use was related to more academic difficulties," which may be inherently present within our sample given the difficult nature of the university of Washington as a whole institution. (1)
Finally, we observed consumption rates as broken up by gender identified...
Daily Consumption Rate frequency broken up by gender
...WE see no obvious trend within the survey regarding an emphasis on sex.
Our survey showed that marijuana smokers at University of Washington come in all shapes and sizes - there doesn’t seem to be a significant difference between the genders or majors that people study.
in addition to usage information, we wanted to take our analysis one step further to investigate a more nuanced impact on our survey participant's lives in the means of mental health...
On the basis of anxiety, Based on our survey, anxiety we found that:
the odds of an individual consuming marijuana given that they are dealing with anxiety is 1.69 times higher than someone who isn't dealing with anxiety...
...We follow up these findings with a series of academic paper testimonials on anxiety's relationship with marijuana
‘marijuana use and marijuana-related problems among college students are related to social anxiety , depression, and schizotypal personality traits’ (2)
‘we found anxiety broadly, rather than specific types of anxiety (in our study, social anxiety), was related to marijuana use status.’ (3)
‘For the most part, marijuana use (regardless of whether infrequent or frequent) was associated with greater mental health problems (anxiety, depression, hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, paranoia, psychoticism).’ (4)
‘Specifically, although there are multiple reasons for marijuana use, certain emotionally vulnerable individuals, such as those high in AS, are particularly apt to use for coping-oriented reasons.’ (5)
Continuing our look into mental health and now looking at stress, Based on our survey we found that:
the odds of an individual consuming marijuana given that they are dealing with Stress is 1.69 times higher than someone who isn't dealing with Stress.
Finally, we observed the relationship of depression and marijuana from our survey, observing:
the odds of an individual consuming marijuana given that they are dealing with depression is 1.42 times higher than someone who isn't dealing with depression...
...With the following research paper testimonials adding to the legitimacy of the relationship
"weekly users had less depressed mood, more positive affect, and fewer somatic complaints than non-users."
"Daily users reported less depressed mood and more positive affect than non-users"
"Using marijuana to cope with depression leads to increased distress"
"...using marijuana leads to reduced depression"
In addition to the connections Marijuana has to mental issues, it is also widely known as a gateway drug to other substances. We wanted to see if we could find any similar tendencies with peers that we surveyed
Based on our survey we found that:
the odds of an individual consuming another drug given that they consume marijuana is a whopping 8.57 times higher than someone who doesn't consume marijuana.
From an academic standpoint, our findings were quite contested...
“Nonusers of marijuana reported fewer symptoms of alcohol use disorder, nicotine dependence, and generalized anxiety disorder than any category of marijuana users”
“More persistent regular marijuana use in young adulthood was positively related to more symptoms of cannabis use disorder, alcohol use disorder, and nicotine dependence at age 33.”
However, we are still confident that, Through our survey results and academic papers, we found that marijuana consumption seems to have some sort of a link to consumption of other drugs. Our survey showed that people who use marijuana definitely have high odds to consume other drugs as well. Numerous past studies, back this and is some sense of an indicator of how drugs could affect someones potential health in the future.
In Conclusion:
We came into this project trying to see the effects of marijuana on our peers, both through a hands-on personal method as well an academic lens. Though our sample might be partially skewed we were still able to get meaningful insight about marijuana use and its effects on mental health. It was interesting to see how academic papers backed our findings within our survey that marijuana can negatively affect mental health and lead to an increase in anxiety, stress, and the use of other drugs.
Appendix:
academic research citations:
(Caldeira et al., 2008, Compton et al., 2004)
(Bidt, 2008, Buckner & Schmidt, 2009, Buckner et al., 2006)
(Buckner, Keough, & Schmidt, 2007)
Guttmannova, Katarina, et al. "The association between regular marijuana use and adult mental health outcomes." Drug and alcohol dependence 179 (2017): 109-116.Buckner,
Julia D., Anthony H. Ecker, and Alex S. Cohen. "Mental health problems and interest in marijuana treatment among marijuana-using college students." Addictive Behaviors35.9 (2010): 826-833.
Bonn-Miller, Marcel O., Michael J. Zvolensky, and Amit Bernstein. "Marijuana use motives: Concurrent relations to frequency of past 30-day use and anxiety sensitivity among young adult marijuana smokers." Addictive behaviors 32.1 (2007): 49-62.Denson,
Thomas F., and Mitchell Earleywine. "Decreased depression in marijuana users." Addictive behaviors 31.4 (2006): 738-742.
Green, Brian E., and Christian Ritter. "Marijuana use and depression." Journal of health and social behavior (2000): 40-49.
As visible above, the general trend of marijuana usage from 2004 onwards has been steadily growing in 18-25 year old individuals, the age group most college students fall in. Additionally, the majority of marijuana usage was in the age group of 18-25.